Josef Settele

Josef Settele, born in 1961, is a biologist and holds a doctorate in agricultural science. He worked as a scientist at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ), where he headed the Department of Conservation Biology. He also taught at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg. His research focused, among other areas, on nature conservation, biodiversity, land use and insect evolution. Settele was active in the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) and served on Germany’s Advisory Council on the Environment. A passionate insect researcher, he published numerous scientific papers as well as a book on butterflies and co-founded the German Butterfly Monitoring scheme.