Month: March 2020

Spot the difference!

/ forpeatsake / Leave a comment

On 7th March B.C., during those heady days of frollocking in the sun/rain-shine, wholesome hugs and re-usable coffee cups, the University of St Andrews held a Science Discovery Day.  I was unable to attend unfortunately, but put together a poster for my research group – the Tropical Wetlands Consortium  – to pop up as part of their peat paraphernalia.  Below are two copies of the poster: (a) the poster before our seven year old consultant checked it for readability by the society members he was representing; (b) the revised version, edited in response to his valuable feedback.  There are four major differences.  Can you spot them (click on images to enlarge)?  And understand why the items in (a) weren’t accessible to our next generation of budding scientists?  The feedback was eye-opening for me, and I shall now be using this consultant regularly to accessibility-check my primary school-level outreach work.

(a) Pre-accessibility assessment

(b) Post-check by our seven year old consultant

Advertisement

Making an impact….in UK environmental policy

/ forpeatsake / Leave a comment

On 6th March B.C. (just before lock-down), I organised an event at the snazzy, “gold-standard of sustainability” British Ecological Society Offices in London, to let ecologists know how they can Make an Impact: Understanding the ways they can engage with the UK Parliament and Policy.  The event was held jointly by the Conservation Ecology Special Interest Group and the BES Policy Team.  We had an excellent bunch of speakers and a room-full of engaged attendees.

I thought I’d post some of the resources from the day here:

Now over to you/me/us.  And perhaps now is the time to think about what changes are possible, what a different world could look like A.C. and how we can influence that.

Fare forward, women.

/ forpeatsake / 1 Comment

I’ve just been included in this article, written to celebrate International Women’s Day: Ten BES women you should know about. Probably a networking-related turn of events that meant I was on the author’s mind, but I thank her very much for including me. “They” always says this…but it really is an honour to be on this list with those other babes. I will endeavour to keep putting my energy into things that I believe are important – engaging people in ecology and conservation, building the confidence and vision of individuals and nurturing kind communities.

And here’s a poem for these times that a hugely inspiring female friend sent me:

Image