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The study argues that while "advances in pollinator conservation in rural landscapes are proliferating across governance scales," but urban spaces must not be overlooked.Whether we focus on the town or the country, one thing's for sure: the pollinators need us. Seventy percent of the UK's crops are dependent on a rapidly declining bee population.MUNCHIES reached out to Dr. Mick Hanley, ecologist at Plymouth University and one of the study's co-authors, to find out more about why making our cities more bee-friendly is crucial for crop production.MUNCHIES: Hi Mick, what's the focus of your work? Dr. Mick Hanley: A lot of the work that I've been doing recently is looking at ways that we can better synergise the need to produce food with maintaining the pollinator communities that will also help us keep producing food.As most people know, there's a decline in pollinators [like bees and butterflies] of all sorts over the last 70 years or more. We've gone from a position which Darwin talks about—spotting bumblebees and butterflies which now we consider to be quite rare floating around his back garden—to the point we're at now with a depauperate pollinator community.READ MORE: Future of Food on MUNCHIES
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The answer is a little bit complex because you get certain general pollinators that by their very nature will feed on anything but the species that are declining generally across Britain and Europe are declining specifically because they have very close associations with plants that they co-evolved with.We need to go beyond the sticky plaster of "We need to feel better so we're putting a bit of grass in that corner to make up for the fact that we just built a Tesco here."
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One of the great fears within conservation in Britain as a consequence of Brexit is that we've had European legislation that has increasingly targeted encouraging farmers to farm for conservation. It's not at all clear how, post-Brexit, the British Government will subsidise farming in this country. If we go back to this whole situation of paying farmers to grow certain stuff, they're not going to manage the environment in the most ecologically sympathetic way.It'll take more research to understand exactly what the problems are and what the solutions could be. But it's that, plus bothering to ask ecologists and experts how we can better integrate ecosystem services and biodiversity into town planning.Thanks for talking with me, Mick.Every day this week, MUNCHIES is exploring the future of food on planet Earth, from lab-grown meat and biohacking to GMOs and the precarious state of our oceans. Find out more here.READ MORE: This Man Is Making Honey That Tastes Like Well-Seasoned Italian Food