Professor Ilkka Hanski, one of the world’s top ecologists and evolutionary biologists and holder of the honorary title of Academician of Science, passed away in May 2016. He began to plan a video lecture in late 2015 and wanted director Virpi Suutari to help him make the video. They had met while working on the documentary Garden Lovers (Eedenistä pohjoiseen, 2014).
In his English-language lecture, Hanski drafts the rough outlines of the issues he discusses in more detail in the book Messages from Islands: A Global Biodiversity Tour, which will be published in the autumn.
“This was a very important project for Ilkka. The idea was specifically to create a 45-minute lecture that would be freely available to all and which would summarise the main issues that were important to him as a person and researcher, in a way that was accessible to the general public," Virpi Suutari says.
The lecture “A Brief Biodiversity Tour”, recorded in February