Innovation Anthology #669:
At a recent conference held by the Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute, Dr. Stan Boutin posed a question about biodiversity.
His question – Is society ready to embrace the broader meaning of biodiversity?
As this professor of biological sciences explains, there’s more to assessing biodiversity than counting charismatic megafauna.
STAN BOUTIN: Some of the species we monitor in ABMI are things like mites and lichens and mosses. And so many people might be saying why would we ever want to monitor there? What use are they to society? And it’s a tough question to answer. So I’m not sure if society is understanding that this broader assessment probably gives us a better barometer of our performance than the traditional species everyone has latched onto. How many moose do we have in the system? What’s the number of rare and endangered species in the area? Those are good indicators, too, but by themselves they may not be the best. Particularly when we’re dealing in a system like Alberta is where many of the issues that have been created are ones that revolve around this word called cumulative effects.
You can hear the full interview with Dr. Stan Boutin at InnovationAnthology.com
I’M CHERYL CROUCHER
Guest
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Sponsor
Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute
Program Date: 2015-03-03