Alongside Dan Danahar’s job as environmental science teacher at Dorothy Stringer in Brighton, he is also the school’s biodiversity coordinator. The work encompasses three main areas: promoting awareness of biodiversity, working on projects that physically increase biodiversity, and outreach work to the wider community outside of the school grounds.

Dan says: “We’ve got massive environmental change going on all over the planet. We’re looking at habitat fragmentation and loss, urban sprawl, climate change. My role is about raising bioliteracy and bionumeracy skills.”

It’s a role he is amply qualified for, with a degree in environmental biology from Oxford, an environmental science PGCE from Bath, an MSc in ecology from Durham university, time spent in the zoology department at Cambridge, and a PhD from our own University of Sussex.

In order to increase the bioliteracy – simply the understanding of the natural world – of his students, Dan has set up projects whereby each year group is involved in the monitoring of various flora and fauna around the school grounds. Year 7 monitor birds, year 8 are in charge of checking the species in the pond, year 9 look at plant species in the school fields. He says: “We look at changes in species number and abundance and relate that to environmental change. The students get to know species and become more familiar with them.”

His outreach work has been extensive. This year will see the fourth Big Biodiversity Count, which encourages people all over the city to count and record various species of plant and animal life. The Big Butterfly Count is a similar project focusing exclusively on butterflies, and what started life at Dorothy Stringer school has now been picked up by Marks & Spencer and Butterfly Conservation to become a national event.

Last year, Dan also played a huge role in Brighton and Hove Big Nature, the city’s response to the International Year of Biodiversity, which saw a number of awareness raising events happen throughout the entire year.

Despite all this, Dan says he is most proud of his habitat restoration work at Stringer. Over the past 12 years, he has overseen the management of a 400-year-old piece of urban woodland, installed a richly diverse pond and created the butterfly haven.

He says: “They’re all primarily educational resources but also make a contribution to local wildlife conservation.”

The butterfly haven is particularly impressive. Along with students, teachers and governors, a piece of bog- standard amenity grassland has been engineered to adopt elements of ancient chalk grassland. Over the four years they have been working on it, the wild flower content of the area shot up from just 12 species to 107 and the butterfly count from none to 20, ten of which are breeding and many of which are rare or endangered. Dan says: “Butterflies are just a flagship species. We’ve had an entomologist recording all kinds of rare species. It shows we can raise biodiversity, it’s not rocket science.”

The success of the butterfly haven has been so great that both Brighton and Hove City Council and Lewes District Council are now considering implementing similar ideas into the planning of their green spaces and parks.

Dan says: “The greatest successes I have are in raising bioempathy, that is, an emotional connection with the natural world.”