Reducing the loss of biodiversity

Biodiversity and conservation research needs to contribute effectively towards improving the everyday decisions and planning in relation to local and international agreements on sustainable development and biodiversity conservation.

Conservation biologist Adriana Vella was invited to participate in the recent meeting in Finland organised by the EPBRS (European Platform for Biodiversity Research Strategies).

The meeting was entitled 'Actions for the 2010 biodiversity target in Europe - how does research contribute to halting the biodiversity loss?'

Biodiversity provides benefits for humans through ecosystem services and goods. Biodiversity is directly used as a source for food and other extractable resources. Furthermore, biodiversity plays an important role in maintaining, regulating or supporting ecosystem services, including regulation of air, water, climate, floods, disease and wastes.

Biodiversity is also important for the fulfilment of people's cultural and spiritual needs. It is difficult to put a monetary value on the services, but recent estimates suggest that worldwide they are in the order of hundreds of billions of euros every year.

The aim of the EPBRS meeting, held under the Finnish EU presidency, was to provide material that would help the EU and the international policy processes to accelerate the implementation of measures to halt the biodiversity loss by formulating more precise expectations on biodiversity research and policy.

One workshop at the meeting also focused on the role of youths and lifelong education towards biodiversity research and education. The immediate need to have biodiversity and conservation integrated in syllabi at all levels of education and seeing more biodiversity conservation related topics featuring in both formal and informal education was stressed.

Examples of such useful and necessary local research undertaken at University level are research projects run by the Conservation Biology Research group led by Dr Vella, senior lecturer and researcher at our University. Some interesting recent conservation research projects include: the bat (Myotis punicus) population was studied in various ways including the use of molecular genetics tools, without having to sacrifice the animal, which was undertaken by Byron Baron.

This species has been noted to be data deficient by the IUCN Red list of threatened species and this highlights the need to find more about this species before it may go extinct. Unfortunately the local results indicate that the population is indeed small with moderate genetic diversity, both indicators of urgent action needed if this species is to be effectively conserved.