A few months ago, Sharon Baruch-Mordo posted a provocative challenge (http://bit.ly/12mfSPs) on BioDiverse Perspectives (www.BioDV.com), a student run blog that writes about biodiversity research. She called it the biodiversity challenge and offered it as an opportunity to engage the public - an opportunity to speak to non-scientists about our work and to convince them that they should care about it.
Heres the challenge (posted in full here: http://bit.ly/1ae9UBG): Write a 500-word essay for a newspaper or magazine about the importance of your research in the context of biodiversity and conservation. Your target audience is the general public and your goal is to be educational and convincing. Next week, well be posting submissions to the biodiversity challenge at BioDiverse Perspectives, and we challenge you to join in. You can upload it on the website at www.biodiverseperspectives.com/contribute or email it to us at i...@biodiverseperspectives.com. We will publish them all next week, in full, as we receive them, unedited in all their glory. Thanks, and I look forward to reading your contributions! Fletcher Halliday Editor-in-chief: BioDiverse Perspectives PhD Student: UNC Chapel Hill www.BioDV.com
