Dave Goulson Silent Earth: Saving our insects

A lecture given by Dave Goulson at the 2022 National Honey Show entitled "Silent Earth: Saving our insects". The National Honey Show gratefully acknowledge the Worshipful Company of Wax Chandlers for their support and Sussex BKA for their sponsorship.

Insects are vital, fascinating, weird and wonderful. They are food, pollinators, recyclers, pest controllers, and much more, so we should be deeply concerned that they are in rapid decline. Dave Goulson will explain the many causes of insect decline, and then turn to the solutions of this crisis. We can all help in many ways, first by turning our gardens and urban greenspaces into oases for life, and second by fundamentally changing the way we grow food, and the food we buy.

Dave Goulson is Professor of Biology at University of Sussex, specializing in bee ecology. He has published more than 400 scientific articles on the ecology and conservation of bumblebees and other insects, plus seven books, including the Sunday Times bestsellers A Sting in the Tale (2013), the Garden Jungle (2019), and Silent Earth (2021). Goulson founded the Bumblebee Conservation Trust in 2006, a charity which has grown to 12,000 members. In 2015 he was named number 8 in BBC Wildlife Magazine’s list of the top 50 most influential people in conservation. For each of the last 4 years he was named as a “Highly Cited Researcher” by Thompson ISI. He is a trustee of Pesticide Action Network, an “Ambassador” for the UK Wildlife Trusts, and president of Pesticide Free Scotland.