As a Pan-European transdisciplinary project, RestPoll benefits from the different perspectives of researchers from varying disciplines, partners from industry and local governmental leaders. The researchers are agriculturalists and biologists, ecologists and economists, geographers and social scientists. Each of the disciplines has its own motivation for contributing to the preservation and restoration of our precious ecosystems. Let’s learn more about what motivates the RestPoll researchers and partners to do their bit for nature.
Field inspection by the team at Lund University (Sweden)
Collaboration
As a large, transdisciplinary project, collaboration is important in the project and many researchers value it. This could be working with other parties in the field such as farmers, as Laura Roquer-Beni at the Center for Ecological Research and Forestry Applications (CREAF) says: “RestPoll is a co-designed project in which researchers work together with farmers and stakeholders” which makes it “easier to apply restoration measures, assess their effects on pollinators and society”.
Another form of collaboration is with other researchers. Louis Sutter (Agroscope) says: “One of the aspects I enjoy most about this project is the opportunity to work with an amazing consortium of leading worldwide experts in pollinator conservation”. Likewise, Richard Comont of the Bumblebee Conservation Trust states his wish “to understand more about bumblebees across Europe and how that fits what they’re doing in Britain”.
Landscape
Home soil can also be an important motivation for wanting to preserve the landscape. As Hanna Honchar at the Helmholtz-Centre for Environmental Research says: “Growing up in a rural area, I developed a deep appreciation for nature and the role of pollinators.” Jess Knapp at Trinity College Dublin speaks to the same combination: “I am particularly interested in how our landscapes can best support pollinators and pollination services.”
“How landscape configuration affects pollinator community structure and plant-pollination networks” is what motivated Emilie Andrieu at the French National Institute for Agriculture, Food, and Environment INRAE to join the RestPoll project. Tristan Berchoux at the Mediterranean Agronomic Institute of Montpellier also knows that “as a geographer specialised in spatial planning, pollination services are critical and need to be considered in landscape planning and decision-making.”
Farming
Closely connected to the natural landscape is the ancient human activity of farming. Its relevance to RestPoll’s research is evident from the many motivations among members. Some seek to unite nature and farming, such as Claus Rasmussen at Aarhus University: “Denmark is intensively cultivated, yet we used to have some of the rarest bee species within and around agricultural fields 70 years ago. Why can’t we have that again?” Talis Tisenkopfs at the Baltic Studies Centre (BSC) in Latvia’s capital Riga is likewise strongly interested in the “relation between beekeeping, nature management and wildlife care”.
Other researchers come from an agricultural angle to look at the natural side of affairs. Tibo Costaz at Agroscope has a background in integrated pest management and agro-ecology and is interested in “linking ecosystem services with conservation”. Daniel Rossi at Confagricoltura, which is an organisation representing the Italian agricultural sector, has “seen climate change, posing new challenges and imposing new decisions” so that we “need to restore the balance of nature, safeguarding the vital role of pollinators”.
Economy
Apart from an interest in nature, agriculture of course has an economic benefit as well. Richard Walters at Lund University seeks to “better understand the conservation value of restorative actions on pollinators” and how to “improve the cost-effectiveness of these measures”. Simon Potts at the University of Reading adds his wish to “mobilise knowledge to help industry embed […] biodiversity conservation into their businesses”.
Likewise, the perspective of the consumer also plays an important roll in RestPoll. The motivation for Vasilis Angelopoulou (University of Thessaly) to join the project was to “study how consumers can support [restoration] effort[s] through choosing products that have been produced with pollinator-friendly methods”. His colleague, George Vlontzos, is out to gauge “consumers’ awareness of the importance of pollinators and pollination”.
From a wider social perspective, Anda Ādamsone-Fiskoviča at the Baltic Studies Centre is very keen on “strengthening society-wide capability to reverse wild pollinator decline and stabilising pollination services and their societal benefits”. A colleague, Ilze Mileiko, is “interested in discovering how a social sciences perspective can be beneficial to helping restore pollinator habitats and informing the society about the importance of this topic”.
Nature
During the kick-off meeting for the project in Lund last year, Alexandra-Maria Klein (the coordinator of RestPoll) mentioned the role of intrinsic motivation for implementing the project. In her own words, she experiences “a strong intrinsic motivation to improve pollination of plants and promote as many flower-visiting species as possible in diverse, beautiful landscapes”. To her and many others, plants and pollinators are reason enough to care.
The beauty of nature is a source of inspiration to countless colleagues. Zehra Başaran (Mediterranean Agronomic Institute of Montpellier) puts her passion into words: “From a young age, I was captivated by colourful flowers and the bees, butterflies and birds surrounding them.” Sándor Piross at the HUN-REN Centre for Ecological Research connects this love of nature to his home environment: “The project brings me back to the beautiful lands of South-Heves county, where I started my fieldwork.”
Positive communication
Communicating our findings and creating solutions motivates Marios Vasileiou at the University of Thessaly, who joined the RestPoll project as it “aligns perfectly with my passion for leveraging information and communication technologies to address pressing environmental challenges, particularly the decline of wild pollinators”. At RestPoll, we are well aware of the value in such communication.
Likewise, the future impact of RestPoll is what motivated some members to join. Georgina Alins at IRTA, the Institute of Agrifood Research and Technology, “feels committed to participating in projects that involve both agriculture and ecology as part of the solution”. Finally, Dimitry Wintermantel at the University of Freiburg puts it a bit bluntly: “I usually study what kills bees and other pollinators, particularly pesticides. It is great to take a more positive outlook here and see how pollinator populations can be restored”.
