I gave a keynote presentation at Carolinian Canada's Ecosystem Recovery Forum at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Hamilton, Ontario, asking, "Why Don't Ecologists Get More Respect?" https://caroliniancanada.ca/events/2014-ecosystem-recovery-forum

1. Why don’t ecologists get
more respect?
Dawn R. Bazely
Biology Department, York University,
Toronto
Wed 29 Oct 2014, Carolinian Canada Ecoystem Recovery
Forum, Royal Botanic Gardens, Hamilton, ON, Canada
http://bit.ly/13muPEZ

2. “If you want advice on how to save the
planet don’t walk into an ecology
department.”
Hugh Possingham (Ecologist & co-developer of MARXAN software)
March 2009, Fenner Conference on the Environment, Australia

3. The ecologists’ framework...

5. “Today the world’s major unsolved
challenges all revolve around
science. By the 2012 election
cycle, at a time when science is
influencing every aspect of modern
life, anti-science views from
climate-change denial to
creationism to vaccine refusal have
become mainstream.”
Shawn Otto in Fool Me Twice

6. Why don’t people listen to
ecologists?
• The science is too difficult?
• Ecologists are terrible communicators?
• We talk about depressing doom & gloom
scenarios?

7. Only 18% of Americans have
actually met a scientist

9. Council of Canadian Academies
report: Science Culture: Where
Canada Stands 2014
http://www.scienceadvice.ca/en/asse
ssments/completed/science-culture.
aspx

11. Ecologists need help with
• Understanding:
• How science feeds into policy…
• How policy is different from politics
• We need social scientists!

12. The policy ecosystem
Hoogensen et al. 2009 Journal of Human Security.

14. Policy Defined
“A policy is typically described as a
principle or rule to guide decisions and
achieve rational outcome(s). The term is
not normally used to denote what is
actually done, this is normally referred to
as either procedure or protocol”
Wikipedia

15. Human Security
“freedom from fear, freedom from
want”
United Nations 1994
CAUX Forum

16. International Polar Year GAPS project
Gas, Arctic Peoples & Security
Students: Nora, Paul & Milissa

17. Conceptualizing Human
Security

18. Movement corridors for species

19. Non-Indigenous Plants in the
Northwest Territories, Canada
• Non-indigenous species are already here
19

20. Non-Indigenous Plants in the
Northwest Territories, Canada
Their numbers decline as we go further
north 20

21. Making the case for the
concept

22. Interdisciplinary collaborations
• Are not all equal
• science academics + NGOs +
government bureaucrats (multiple
stakeholder groups)
• ≠
• collaborations between science
academics and different kinds of
academics from the social sciences and
humanities

23. Uncomfortable & not for
everyone!
• Not all academics share the same goals
• e.g. Political Ecologists offer a critique that
includes the “science agenda” and ecologists

24. Benefits of interdisciplinary
collaborations are still unclear
• Science of Team Science research asks IF
& HOW collaboration generates novel,
innovative, transdisciplinary solutions
• Previously, there’s been little rigorous
assessment

25. My world for 7 years!
Drolet, D. 2014. Meet 5 academics who have switched disciplines
mid-career. University Affairs, February 12. (that’s me…)

26. Bringing it back to Southern
Ontario Forests

27. Forests in Southern Ontario

29. Trillium
Tanentzap et al. 2010 Forest Ecology & Management

30. How deer alter forests

31. RONDEAU 2009
31
Rondeau Provincial Park post-years of deer
herd reductions: politically unpopular but
evidence-based management

32. Don’t hide from media

33. Ecology’s contribution…
• … to the broader collaborative,
interdisciplinary table?
• IMO, kick-ass flow charts

34. Knowledge as a nutrient

35. For increasing resilience
35

37. Dr. Carlos Nobre, Brazil IPCC

38. “get a meeting with the minister”
I explained to Donna
Cansfield (Minister of
Natural Resources) in
2009 that science was
being swept aside and
that forest health, as
assumed under various
acts (eg ORM) was
declining via lack of action

39. Participate beyond science eg.
Ontario’s Human-Wildlife Conflict
Advisory Group
• Provides advice and support to the
implementation of the “Strategy for
Preventing and Managing Human-
Wildlife Conflicts in Ontario” and
“Strategy for Preventing and Managing
Human-Deer Conflicts in Southern
Ontario””.
• notes from first meeting June 2009

40. Engage in the Science-Policy
Interface

41. Write text books!

42. Why get out of our comfort zone?

45. Acknowledgements
• Norwegian Research Council, for Leiv
Eiriksson Mobility Fund support.
• International Polar Year, Government of
Canada 2006-11.
• Harvard Forest, Harvard University, for a
Charles Bullard Fellowship 2011-12
• For opportunities to get outside of the
science box into the science-policy-politics
space