Professor Will Cresswell
“I am a Professor of Biology working in the Centre of Biological Diversity. I do a lot of teaching in the University – the most of anyone in Biology apparently – but it doesn’t seem that much.
“It is a joy to engage with St Andrews students every day, particularly in my field of trying to understand and conserve biodiversity, where our students present the opportunity to help tackle the biodiversity crisis.
“I also do a lot of research trying to understand how animals fit into the landscape, and how changing populations, habitats and climate change their distribution and density.
“I have worked on predator-prey interactions, how animals compete for resources, how migrant birds connect and use the landscape on a global scale, and now how local engagement with the animals and plants can lead to positive effects on biodiversity.
“It’s this role now within the University that is my main focus, as I try to combine the science of studying how humans affect animal populations, with creating engagement of people with biodiversity.
“Only through getting people to notice and care about wildlife as part of their local sense of place and quality of life, can we change people’s behaviour to conserve biodiversity for the future.
“In short – conservation is a conversation – although conservation needs a scientific base, it is a process that requires engaging with people and stimulating their relationship with the natural world.
“I now work mainly with undergraduates and Masters students, as the quickest and most efficient way to communicate biodiversity knowledge and practical experience of conservation.
“I have trained a lot of PhD students at St Andrews and they are the engine of future science, but the world needs conservation practitioners, and our undergraduates – with the right training and experience – mostly leave us to go out into the non-academic world, where biodiversity positive thinking is most needed.
“I now do my biodiversity work in St Andrews and a 200 square kilometer area between my home in Crail, St Andrews and more or less Elie. Here I do research on a farmland bird of conservation concern – the corn bunting – that is a good species to use to engage farmers and my other neighbours with balancing the immediate needs of humans with the need to conserve biodiversity in the long term.
“Corn buntings are doing well in East Fife after a decline in their populations, that is still ongoing in many other areas of the UK. This is a consequence of engagement by farmers over the last 20 years, and so provides a positive start to introducing other issues with respect to sharing our developed landscapes with biodiversity.
“Previously I worked on a global scale, looking at migrant birds that breed in Scotland and how they use farmland in Africa. But as I have gone on in my research career I have realised that the real meaning of sustainability – which is the ultimate route to biodiversity conservation – is to carry out your actions in your own environment (but hopefully in accordance with and inspiring action within a global framework).
“So I have gone very local in my research: I can now carry out my science on my bicycle from my home and University, with the added advantage that I can involve any student at St Andrews, at any stage or experience, as well as my neighbours, getting them to look at and look after the environment in which I live and the local wildlife that makes me happy every day.
“My biodiversity obsession (mostly a birding obsession that permeates my real life as well as my academic research and teaching) has led me to get involved with conserving biodiversity at the University.
“I have been the chair of the Biodiversity Working Group for the last few years, with the brief to develop and maintain our University Biodiversity Strategy and our Biodiversity Action Plan, where we have over 110 actions – from creating habitats such as meadows and woodland on University grounds, to looking after the red squirrels that we find in St Andrews.
“There is a lot to do, and new actions appear as others get carried out. We need a lot of student and staff engagement for the University to hit its targets of being biodiversity positive and for 60% of University land to be managed with biodiversity as a priority.
“But it is the engagement that is really what I want to achieve. We don’t have any pandas to save on the North Haugh, but the butterflies we do have there, can allow people to engage with biodiversity, and change people’s behaviour so that we can, hopefully, save the pandas elsewhere.
“The potential to change how students and staff think about the wildlife around them and so how we do business at the University of St Andrews – to become biodiversity positive – not just here, but in the wider world is the most exciting thing about my role at St Andrews at the moment.
“A practical and fun way of combining my research, teaching and service roles at the University. All of us at the University now think about our carbon footprint (at least a bit): I hope that in ten years’ time, the awareness and actions that we are all manifesting for climate change, are the same for biodiversity. That’s an exciting and inspiring target to aim for, I think.
“I have now been at St Andrews for 21 years. I was fortunate enough to get a Royal Society University Research Fellowship in 2000 which independently supports you and your research for a decade.
“This, of course, makes you very employable and I was able to choose the university I work in from first principles, rather than getting lucky. I chose St Andrews for its outstanding ratio of quality of university to quality of life. I moved here from Oxford, where the standard of university definitely did not compensate for living in a shoe box beside a motorway.
“Coming to live in Crail and working in St Andrews, being able to raise my children in a community where people – literally – don’t lock their doors, was the best decision I have ever made.
“And the wildlife isn’t bad either. I have seen 246 bird species within 10 km of my house in the last 21 years – I am aiming for 300 (if you don’t know about birding in the UK then you may not realise this is very, very good!).
“So I had better stop writing and get back out there.”
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