CCI Conservation Seminar - Dr Paul Donald

CCI Conservation Seminar, TUESDAY 12th December 2023 4pm-5pm

Dr Paul Donald, Birdlife International

Traffication: how the car wiped out our wildlife (and nobody noticed)

In seeking to identify and remedy all the planet’s many environmental woes, conservationists have a blind spot. A great big blind spot. In fact, a blind spot big enough to hide around one and a half billion cars. Our cars and other motor vehicles cover astonishing distances each year - Britain’s motorists alone drive to the Sun and back every four hours. The relatively new science of road ecology is starting to show that our love of the car causes immense damage to our planet’s wildlife, and does so in many different ways. Cars and roads might be every bit as important a cause of biodiversity loss as agricultural intensification or climate change, yet we are so blind to the problem that we don’t even have a word for it. Dr Paul Donald discusses his new book Traffication, which argues that we need to recognise the immense damage our driving causes to the environment, and that the entire conservation agenda will need to change.

Paul is Senior Scientist with BirdLife International and an Honorary Research Fellow on the University. Before that he worked for many years for the RSPB, and before that the BTO.

Refreshments will be served in the DAB Common Room after the seminar - please join us.