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Your Magazine from the British Ecological Society The BulletinYOUR MAGAZINE FROM THE BRITISH ECOLOGICAL SOCIETY BES BULLETIN VOLin 45:144:4FOCUS / MARCHDECEMBER 2014 2013 Photo: Nicola Jenner Yearling blackbacked jackal (Canis mesomelas) watches as its faecal sample is collected for genetic analysis. Image taken as dusk on Namibia’s desert coast. 2 Contents March 2014 OFFICERS AND COUNCIL FOR THE YEAR 2013-4 REGULARS President: William Sutherland Welcome / Alan Crowden 4 Past-President: Georgina Mace Vice-Presidents: Richard Bardgett, President’s Piece: The Symbiotic Society / William J. Sutherland 5 Mick Crawley Honorary Treasurer: Drew Purves Society News 6 Council Secretary: Dave Hodgson Honorary Chairpersons: Ecology Education and Careers 8 Andrew Beckerman (Meetings) Making ecology for all: equality & diversity in ecological education and careers / Alan Gray (Publications) Christina Ravinet Lesley Batty (Education, Training and Careers) Juliet Vickery (Public and Policy) Science Policy Richard Bardgett (Grants) Wales Policy Group: An invitation to members / Tim Graham 10 Will 2014 be a step towards healthy seas? / Katherine Maltby 11 ORDINARY MEMBERS A 21st Century Challenge: Bringing Agroecology into the Mainstream / Greg Counsell 13 OF COUNCIL: Retiring Emma Goldberg, 2014 Forthcoming BES Events : Special Interest Groups 15 William Gosling, Ruth Mitchell Special Interest Group News 16 Julia Blanchard, 2015 Greg Hurst, Paul Raven Meeting Reports Emma Sayer, Owen Lewis, 2016 Matt O’Callaghan Silvicultural approaches to restoration / Scott McG Wilson 24 Diana Gilbert, Jane Hill, 2017 Rethinking Agricultural Systems / Geoff Radley 26 Joanna Randall Creating a Buzz / Sarah Blackford 30 Bulletin Editor: Alan Crowden Letter to the Editor 31 48 Thornton Close, Girton, Cambridge CB3 0NG Of Interest to Members 31 Email: [email protected] The Chartered Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management / Sally Hayns 55 Associate Editor: Emma Sayer Department of Environment, Earth Publishing News and Ecosystems, The Open University, Preprints: a new challenge for ecological journals / Peter Livermore 57 Walton Hall, Milton Keynes MK7 6AA Email: [email protected] Journals News 59 Book Reviews Editor: Peter Thomas Book Reviews 63 School of Life Sciences, Huxley Building, Keele University, Keele, Diary 74 Staffordshire ST5 5B Tel: 01782 733497 Email: [email protected] FEATURES PUBLISHING IN What are the forthcoming legislative issues of interest to ecologists 32 THE BES BULLETIN and conservationists in 2014? / William J. Sutherland et al The Bulletin is published four times a year in March, June, August and Moving onto a PhD & Mastering Ecology: A BES Student Ecology Symposium 38 December. Contributions of all types are welcomed, but if you are planning Dom Andradi-Brown to write we recommend you contact one of the editorial team in advance Project Management, Fellowships and Grants: A Workshop full of top tips 40 to discuss your plans (Bulletin@ Jess Stephenson, Emma Gillingham and Susan Withenshaw BritishEcologicalSociety.org). Material should be sent to the editor by Botany is dead, long-live eXtreme botany! / Jonathan Mitchley 42 email or on a disk in Word or rtf format. Pictures should be sent as jpeg or TIFF Economists and Ecologists and Ecosystem Services – Finding a Common Language? 44 (*tif) files suitable for printing at 300dpi. Claire Wansbury and Rupert Haines Books to be considered for review should be sent directly to the Book Reviews ‘Academic development practitioner’: A role waiting to evolve? / Haseeb Md. Irfanullah 45 Editor Peter Thomas. The call of the wild – perceptions, history, people & ecology in the emerging 47 Cover: Black-browed albatross paradigms of wilding / Ian Rotherham (Thalassarche melanophrys) in the winning entry for the BES Photo Competition 2013. The photograph is From our Southern Correspondent / Richard Hobbs 50 by Zoe Davies of the University of Kent. For more information see p36. Be careful what you wish for / John Wiens 53 Design: Neo (weareneo.com) Print Management: H2 Associates (Cambridge) Ltd. 3 BES BULLETIN VOL 45:1 / MARCH 2014 WELCOME The British Ecological Society is the oldest ecological society Ecology makes in the world, having been established in 1913. Since 1980 it has been a Registered Charity a splash limited by guarantee. Membership is open to all who are genuinely interested in ecology, whether in Not so long ago water supplies in parts of depriving themselves of their own copy of the the British Isles or abroad, and the UK were at worryingly low levels. In early Bulletin) and the meetings are small, informal membership currently stands at 2014 western and southern parts of the UK are and friendly, ideal for networking. There are about 3700, about half of whom suffering flood levels rarely encountered before. increasing numbers of meetings organised jointly are based outside the UK. The arguments about who’s at fault and what between two or more Groups, and offering needs to be done have already started. I do opportunities for newer members to present their The Society holds a variety of hope a few policymakers kept their copy of the work or learn new skills. Events manager Amelia meetings each year. The Annual BES Ecological Issues publication ‘The Impact Simpson has prepared a summary of the events Meeting attracts a wide range of papers, often by research of Extreme Events on Freshwater Ecosystems’. already set for this year (p15) and look through students, and includes a series Iwan Jones and his co-authors pointed out that the SIG news (p16 onwards) and you’ll learn of of informal specialist group extreme weather events are occurring with a plethora of talk-based events, workshops, field discussions; whereas the Annual greater frequency and intensity and advocated trips and training sessions. To give a flavour of Symposium and many other the ecosystem approach as a key principle of the range on offer there are reports on forest smaller meetings are usually sustainable management. When the waters restoration (p24), rethinking agriculture (p26), more specialised and include recede no doubt the first response will be to deciding whether to pursue PhD research (p38) invited speakers from around dredge rivers and build flood barriers, since and applying for grants and fellowships (p40). the world. politicians must be seen to be doing something, but let’s hope science can be allowed to guide There is no rant from Markus Eichhorn (or Proceedings of some of these the longer-term mitigation efforts. anyone else) this time, but there are ripples still meetings are published by from past issues raised. Jonathan Mitchley refuses the Society in its Ecological The challenge of injecting science into policy to let botany die (p42) and Ian Rotherham Reviews book series. The Society affects BES members everywhere. Richard reflects on the issues of wilding (p47). Markus distributes free to all members, four times a year, the Bulletin Hobbs has a state government that pursues an claims no monopoly on authorship of the Rant which contains news and views, evidence-free policy for discouraging sharks column (though, like one of the Vogons from The meeting announcements, a from Western Australian beaches (p50) and Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, he is rather fond comprehensive diary and many John Wiens gives a couple of examples of how of shouting) so if others have a topic they want other features. In addition the successful conservation efforts in the USA have to get off their chest do please try your ideas out Society produces five scientific had unexpected consequences (p53). on us at [email protected]. journals. The Journal of Ecology, Journal of Animal Ecology, In his President’s Piece (p5) Bill Sutherland Claire Wansbury and Rupert Haines address the Journal of Applied Ecology and emphasizes the need for collaborations of all need for ecologists to find the right language to Functional Ecology are sold at sorts to meet the challenges for ecology and use when speaking with non-ecologists. When a discounted rate to members. conservation in the modern world. You’ll see dealing with policy makers or academics from Methods in Ecology and Evolution evidence that this is happening in this issue. other disciplines it is easy to assume (wrongly) is free to BES members. The There’s a strong thread of articles on the theme that our jargon means as much to them as it Society also supports research of agricultural ecology (p13, 24, 26) that show does to us (p44). Haseeb Irfanulla writes from and ecological education with how ecologists can contribute to the multi- Bangladesh on the contrasting approaches of the grant aid. Further details about the Society and membership disciplinary teams needed to get the right ‘academic’ and ‘practitioner’ and the difficulties can be obtained from the balance of productivity and sustainability for in moving between the two communities Executive Director (address inside feeding a growing population. Good legislative (p45). Haseeb has the particular perspective back cover). frameworks are essential and in this issue we have of an ecologist working in development, but the fourth in our annual scans of forthcoming I’m thinking there’s a similar gulf in, say, UK The Bulletin circulates exclusively legislation of relevance to ecologists (p32). freshwater biology, where an ecologist based to members of the British Katherine Maltby reports on the progress of an in a university will usually speak about issues in Ecological Society. It carries example of Europe-wide legislation: the Marine relation to previous knowledge and the published information on meetings and Strategy Framework Directive (p11). literature, while a Environment Agency ecologist other activities, comment will constantly refer to the Water Framework and other topical items. Unsigned commentaries are the With all this urging for collaborative and Directive. We want BES members in both camps. multi-disciplinary work, does it make sense responsibility of the Editor and for the BES to be supporting a set of ‘Special do not necessarily represent the Interest’ Groups? Isn’t that the antithesis of views of the Society.
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