Join us on Wednesday March 16th at 7pm from the comfort of your home for a presentation by Ecologist Andrew Simon.

Photo by Andrew Simon

Bumble bees are among the earliest pollinators to emerge in the springtime. In this presentation, Andrew will discuss the importance of conserving diverse landscapes for bumble bees in the context of the southern Gulf Islands, where ongoing landscape modification and seasonal drought have important implications for their survival. This presentation will focus on the bumble bees of Galiano Island: the focus of Andrew’s 2018 Master’s research at the University of Victoria. We’ll explore the dramatic changes that have historically taken place in Galiano Island’s bumble bee community, and discuss some of the things we can all do to support bumble bee conservation in the Gulf Islands.

An ecologist with over a decade of experience studying British Columbia’s biodiversity, Andrew’s passions lie at the intersection of natural history, community-based research, and biodiversity data science. Beginning with an apprenticeship to lichenologist Trevor Goward, his studies have since progressed through a dynamic career in the environmental sciences, working with NGOs, First Nations, academe, industry and government. In 2020 he completed a MSc in Environmental Studies at the University of Victoria, with a focus on the implications of seasonal drought for plant and pollinator communities in the southern Gulf Islands. Beyond, Andrew continues to pursue his interests exploring the multidisciplinary, cross-cultural, and transboundary dimensions of biodiversity research in the Salish Sea. Andrew is most well recognized for his commitments to community-based biodiversity research as the curator of the Biodiversity Galiano project, for which he was recently recognized with an Islands Trust Community Stewardship Award. Andrew is a co-founder of the Institute for Multidisciplinary Ecological Research in the Salish Sea  (www.imerss.org) and may be familiar to you: he worked as stewardship coordinator with the Mayne Island Conservancy in 2019.