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This is Discovery from the BBC. broadcasts. their life scientific. I'm determined to prove botany isn't the Cinderella of science.

That's what my guest today, Professor Kathy Willis, Director of Science at the Royal Botanic

Garden in Kew, told the independence in 2014. In the two years since she took on this job,

she has been faced with the reduction in government funding, so Kathy Willis has been

rethinking the science that's to be done by the staff of the gardens, and has been

criticized for her decisions.

But as well as leading this transformation,

Kathy has a distinguished academic career

in biodiversity.

She is currently a professor at Oxford University

and during her research career she studied plants and their environments all over the

world. She's interested in understanding how places have changed over the long term.

Kathy says that you can't decide what to preserve unless you understand the history of the area.

Kathy Willis, welcome to the Life Scientific.

Thank you.

Now, given the world's economic, political, even environmental problems and concerns, do you

think that the issue of biodiversity is being taken seriously enough. I think probably not right now. I think

what's happening still is that we tend to think of protected areas and that's where

biodiversity sort of is carrying on and outside of there is in effect the

...