Dr Nikki Gammans, conservation projects manager for South East England at the Bumblebee Conservation Trust is the inaugural winner of the LEAF Caroline Drummond Scholarship for Innovation in Sustainability.
Nikki will lead a pioneering project – ‘Farming For Bumblebees’ – to investigate forming the first bumblebee focused farmer cluster groups in the UK. Initially, these will be established in the South East of England specifically looking at protecting and enhancing bumblebee-friendly floral rich habitat on a landscape scale to the proven benefit of both biodiversity and farm productivity outcomes.
Working for the Bumblebee Conservation Trust for the last 16 years, Nikki has provided bespoke advice to over 70 farmers on creating, managing, and maintaining flower-rich habitats for bumblebees.
“I am incredibly excited to receive the first LEAF Caroline Drummond Scholarship to support our work to form four farm clusters in Kent and East Sussex,” she says. “These will be the first clusters to have bumblebees (pollinators) as the main area of focus, as so many of our farms rely on these charismatic insects for their pollination services.
“Kent has the greatest diversity of rare bumblebees in the UK, with five of the seven rarest species found here. This is due to the diversity of farming in the area, with our mixed farms providing a wide variety of habitats where bumblebees can forage, nest and hibernate. It is vital that our work with farmers to preserve and increase the land available to bumblebees and other pollinators continues for both the species themselves and for farm sustainability.
“The Scholarship will provide vital support to examine the feasibility of establishing collaborative working through the farmer clusters and will be the first important step in rolling the model out across the UK.”
Philip Wynn OBE, LEAF Chair adds: “We are delighted to support Nikki in this hugely significant project. We know that bumblebees pollinate many of our most important food crops across Europe, Asia and America and have also been shown to increase the yield, size and quality of our most economically important crops.
“Caroline was a pioneer of more nature-friendly farming driven by farmer-to-farmer learning. She dedicated her working life to marrying environmentally responsible farming with economically resilient methods of production. I can think of no better piece of work that embodies her vision for more sustainable and climate positive farming systems.”
