Tag Archives: damage

Dag Hessen: Advancing the Teaching of Ecology

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Dag Hessen (second from right) believes that the teaching of ecology needs to move forward, better integrating our impact on the planet (Image Credit: paal @flickr, Image cropped, CC BY 2.0)

Teaching ecology has taken up a large chunk of my year. I love doing it, and I thoroughly enjoy seeing students becoming engaged in new concepts. But the way we teach ecology can often be quite static, with too little emphasis on how our ecosystems are changing, and how we can communicate this to a world thoroughly in need of more scientific understanding.

One person working to change how we teach ecology is Dag Hessen. I spoke to Dag earlier this year about communicating science to children through literature, which you can read more on here. But during the discussion we got sidetracked and went in-depth on how the teaching of ecology needs to change.

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In Defense of Aliens

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It's important to remember that not all alien species are harmful, and we shouldn't treat them all as such

Building on last week’s article on defining invasive and alien species as well as the work of Professor Mark Davis, I am going to do the unimaginable for an ecologist and argue that maybe alien species aren’t always a bad thing. I want to emphasize that maintaining biodiversity is essential, but maybe we should focus on the role of species in their environment rather than their place of origin.

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The Wild Boar

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The wild boar, originally native to Norway, is now making a return after being wiped out. So how do the locals feel? (Image Credit: Valentin Panzirsch, CC BY-SA 3.0 AT)

In this series we’ll be mainly dealing with alien species invading new parts of the world. However it’s important to recognise that not all invasive species are alien to the territories they invade, and not all invasive species are unanimously unwelcome. Today, we look at a species that is now returning to its former native territory, and which is being welcomed back by some.

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