Please join Dartmouth Natural Resources Trust and Dr. Robert J. Gegear at Helfand Farm for a discussion on what you can do to help protect and restore our native pollination systems, and the biodiversity that they support, in your own backyard.

Pollinators are declining in abundance, diversity, and geographic distribution at an unprecedented rate worldwide due to human activity. These declines pose a threat to global food security due to the important role that pollinators play in crop production. Consequently, pollinator conservation efforts have mostly focused on increasing abundance of crop pollinators in agricultural areas. However, pollinators also play a critical role in maintaining the function and diversity of natural ecosystems through their unique relationship with native flowering plant species – the products of native plant pollination, for example, provide food, shelter, and nesting habitat for birds and other wildlife. The continued degradation of native pollination systems therefore poses a significant threat to life on our planet, a fact often ignored in agriculturally-focused pollinator conservation strategies.

Dr. Robert J. Gegear is a Professor in the Department of Biology at University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Dr. Gegear’s research focuses on the neuroecology and conservation of plant-pollinator interactions, with particular focus on bumblebees pollination systems. He is also the Director of the Beecology Project, a citizen science effort to rapidly collect ecological data on pollination systems in New England in order to increase the effectiveness of conservation strategies for threatened species. For his community outreach activities related to the Beecology Project, Dr. Gegear was awarded the 2018 Regional Impact Award by the Native Plant Trust (formerly New England Wildflower Society).

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Category: Dartmouth Natural Resources Trust
Hosted By: Dartmouth Natural Resources Trust