Citizen science initiatives increase pollinator activity in private gardens and green spaces
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Loading... - Kendra Cox
- 27 Jan 2023
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Have you made adjustments to your garden to make it more welcoming for pollinators? If so, you have probably made a valuable contribution, according to a new study from Lund University. The researchers evaluated the national "Operation: Save the Bees" campaign, and their results indicate that what private individuals do in their gardens really can make a positive difference.
The fact that pollinating insects are crucial for the functioning of ecosystems and food supply is well known. However, many pollinating species are endangered or in decline.
In 2018, The Swedish Society for Nature Conservation launched a campaign to save bees and other pollinators, aiming to get the public involved by creating more favorable environments in private gardens. The actions that were encouraged were to create a meadow, plant flowers or set up a bee hotel. Around 11,000 Swedes responded to the call, and now researchers from Lund University have evaluated the measures.
"We wanted to investigate measures that the public themselves chose to implement in their garden, and how these can be the most efficient," says Anna Persson, researcher at Lund University and one of the people behind the study.
Older and species-rich environments best
The result show that the greatest positive effect on the number of pollinating insects was if you had a meadow with a higher number of flowering species in your garden. As for flower plantings, it was favorable if they were older and also covered a larger area. Bee hotels, in turn, were more often inhabited if they were located in flower-rich gardens, if they were older, and if the nest holes were a maximum of one centimeter in diameter. Read More…
