Hello and welcome to the podcast of the Life Scientific.

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4.

I'm Jim Alleili and my mission is to interview

the most fascinating and important scientists alive today and to find out what makes them tick.

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 Q, told the independence in 2014.

In the two years since she took on this job, she's 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.

From the New Forest, where she was a student in Southampton, to the Galapagos Islands, where she

studied the impact of the removal of the giant tortoises on the vegetation there.

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

...