Species & Habitats
Great Yellow Bumblebee
Activity 12 - Writing a news story about great yellow bumblebees and their machair habitat
Background for teachers
The great yellow bumblebee has undergone a drastic reduction in numbers and range. Within the UK it was known from scattered localities in flower-rich grasslands in the 1960s, but today it is mostly confined to the machair in north and west Scotland. Machair is a distinctive type of coastal grassland mainly found in Scotland, and the remainder in Ireland. It is a rare and threatened habitat, which supports a rich diversity of wildlife.
Curriculum
Science Standard Grade
A Study of Environments - Conservation: protecting endangered species
Biology Higher
Control and Regulation: the need to monitor wild populations; protection and conservation of endangered species
Managing Environmental Resources Intermediate 2
Impact of human activities on ecosystems – endangered species; conservation.
Managing Environmental Resources Higher
Investigating Ecosystems: human activities – their effect on ecosystems and strategies for improvement.
Curriculum for Excellence
This activity will help pupils achieve the four capacities of learning by:
- encouraging enthusiasm and motivation for learning;
- encouraging openness to new thinking and ideas;
- use of literacy skills;
- use of technology for learning;
- thinking creatively and independently;
- making reasoned evaluations;
- evaluating environmental issues;
- applying critical thinking in new contexts, and
- creating and developing.
Ages
14-18 years
Procedure
Invite pupils to write an article for a serious newspaper about the great yellow bumblebee in north-west Scotland. In their article they should describe:
- what the great yellow bumblebee looks like;
- the change in its distribution;
- description of its machair habitat, why this is important for wildlife;
- why the great yellow bumblebee is threatened;
- why population surveys are important for the species; and
- what can be done to help conserve the great yellow bumblebee and its habitat.
They should include distribution maps from the National Biodiversity Network gateway website. Recommended maps that show distribution changes are 1) all records 2) all post 1960 records 3) all post 1990 records.
They also need to consider which pictures they wish to use.
The websites given below will help pupils’ research.
Encourage pupils to look up machair on the Biodiversity Stories website (see below) which includes some particularly interesting information.
Remind pupils they need to think of an appropriate headline for their story.
Websites
- Great yellow bumblebee
www.snh.org.uk/scottish/species/invertebrates/bombus.asp
www.rspb.org.uk/ourwork/conservation/biodiversity/keyspecies/invertebrates/bumblebee/about.asp
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/highlands_and_islands/5072410.stm
www.snh.org.uk/speciesactionframework/saf-greatyellowbumblebee.asp (16-18 year olds)
- National Biodiversity Network gateway
- Machair
www.biodiversitystories.co.uk/
www.snh.org.uk/pdfs/news/nw-uwp02.pdf
www.snh.org.uk/publications/on-line/livinglandscapes/machair/default.asp
www.searchnbn.net