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A total of £1million funding has been secured for the largest study of local pollinators – which hopes to "showcase the Channel Islands for the first time as a world leader in this research area".
The Pollinator Project in Guernsey is collaborating with the University of Bristol to undertake a pan-island comparison of pollinators in Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney, and Sark.
The Guernsey-based charity was founded in 2017 and aims to protect the pollinators across all the Channel Islands.
A pollinator is an animal that moves pollen from the male anther of a flower to the female stigma of a flower, resulting in fertilisation.
The most common pollinators are insects – such as bees, butterflies, flies, and wasps – but animals including birds, bats, and other creatures can also be pollinators.
The Pollinator Project is described as "the first of its kind, with a unique opportunity to study the real-time implications of pesticide reduction, in a real-world setting at island scale".
The project also hopes to "showcase the Channel Islands for the first time as a world leader in this research area".
The work will be led by Dr Miranda Bane, who grew up in Guernsey. She said it has take four years to secure the funding for this project.
Pictured: A malaise trap will be used to capture pollinating insects.
The £1m funding will enable another four years of research on pollinating insects in Guernsey, Jersey, Alderney, and Sark.
With the States of Guernsey's restriction of the sale of glyphosate products last year and the Pollinator Project’s Pesticide Free Guernsey campaign, the project will provide evidence of the impact of reducing pesticides has on pollinator populations.
The funding will allow the full fieldwork programme to be undertaken; pollinator DNA analysis and testing for the presence of pesticides in pollinators in a world-class Canadian laboratory.
The programme also plans to leave a legacy of a Channel Island pollinator DNA library and a reference collection of hundreds of species to "help to inform best practice conservation to help recover our local pollinator populations".
The funding has been provided by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) in the UK.
Pictured top: The project will be led by Guernsey-born Dr Miranda Bane.
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