On 9 October 2026, Prof. Dr. Josef Settele passed away unexpectedly. The news has left all of us at Pensoft shaken and deeply saddened. To the wider scientific world, he was considered one of Europe’s most influential biodiversity researchers. But to us, he was “Sepp”: a good friend, a colleague and a collaborator of many years.
A scientist who built bridges
Prof. Dr. Josef Settele trained as an agroecologist at the University of Hohenheim and later joined the newly founded Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) in Leipzig in 1993. There he headed the Department of Conservation Biology. Over the following decades he became a leading voice on insect conservation, and on how climate change and land use affect biodiversity.
He coordinated large international teams, and his work reached from the lab and the field to the halls where policy is made. He served as a Coordinating Lead Author for the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report. He was a Co-Chair of the IPBES Global Assessment on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, and had been a member of the IPBES Multidisciplinary Expert Panel since 2022. He was also a regular on the “Highly Cited Researchers” list.
His great expertise in the ecology of insects in cultural landscapes, in biodiversity, land use and social-ecological systems, and at the science-society-policy interface made him an invaluable voice in the global conversation on biodiversity, one that scientists, policymakers and the public alike trusted and listened to.
A partner from the very start
Our collaboration with Sepp began with a milestone in Pensoft’s own history. When Pensoft was still an emerging publisher and partner in the early years of EU-funded research, Sepp played an essential role in our journey.
Remembering the long friendship between Sepp and Pensoft, the company’s founder and CEO Prof. Lyubomir Penev, said:
It is hard to believe that my beloved friend Sepp is no longer with us! He has been with Pensoft since the very early days of our company, starting as a keen lover of our butterfly books in the late 1990s. His attitude to Pensoft since then has always been encouraging, supportive and inspirational!
Reflecting on Pensoft’s early days working on EU-funded research projects, Prof. Penev adds:
Sepp was also the first to invite us to join an EU consortium, that of the famous EU’s Sixth Framework Programme project ALARM (Assessing LArge-scale environmental Risks for biodiversity with tested Methods), running 2004-2009. In ALARM Sepp not only foresaw but also prototyped the concept of the European Research Area (ERA) in the field of ecology by bringing together 67 partners from 35 countries, producing more than 1,000 scientific publications.
ALARM was so brilliantly coordinated by Sepp, with such a passion, tolerance and love, that it still motivates and excites its partners to continue working together, keeping the ALARM spirit of collaboration and friendship!
Thank you my friend, for all your love and courage! We miss you!
says Prof. Lyubomir Penev.
One stark example for his legacy is the book “Atlas of Biodiversity Risk”, published by Pensoft in 2010, which was entirely the result of Josef’s efforts as a coordinator of ALARM. Together with R. Grabaum, V. Grobelnick, V. Hammen, S. Klotz, L. Penev, and I. Kühn (Eds.), he succeeded in synthesizing a vast amount of information to present in a comprehensive, easy-to-read, and richly illustrated format the major pressures, impacts, and risks associated with biodiversity loss on a global scale.
The book immediately attracted the attention of the scientific community and policymakers, who required such an analysis to formulate and develop relevant policies within the European Commission. A case in point is the interest shown in the book by EU Commissioner Janez Potočnik during Green Week in Brussels on June 1, 2010.
Shortly after ALARM, Sepp went on to initiate two further EU-funded projects and once again invited Pensoft to join. MACIS examined how climate change, and our responses to it, affect biodiversity across Europe, and what policies could limit the damage. COCONUT which examined how historic and current land use change drives biodiversity loss, and used that knowledge to model future scenarios and develop policy options for land use management.
Reminiscing about his relationship with Sepp, Pensoft’s Chief Operating Officer, Prof. Pavel Stoev, says:
I must have met Sepp sometime around 2009–2010, when our more intensive correspondence regarding the SCALES (Securing the Conservation of biodiversity across Administrative Levels and spatial, temporal, and Ecological Scales) project in which he was involved began. However, we became truly close during the LEGATO project (“Land-use Intensity and Ecological Engineering – Assessment Tools for Risks and Opportunities in Irrigated Rice-Based Production Systems”), which he coordinated. Throughout the project, we held numerous scientific meetings and conducted fieldwork in Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines, spending a great deal of time together discussing various scientific issues and planning publications.
The friendship we forged during that project endured for many years across a series of subsequent scientific initiatives; the last of these collaborations was the MAMBO project (“Modern Approaches to the Monitoring of Biodiversity”), where we co-led Work Package 7, focusing on communication and policy.
Reflecting on his character, he adds:
Sepp was always a smiling, deeply spirited man with a wonderful sense of humour. He pursued his scientific path with immense enthusiasm and the composure of someone truly in his element. Yet, for him, practical application was just as important as fundamental research. This is clearly evident from the many leadership roles he held in international nature conservation initiatives, such as IPBES.
One of the conservation efforts to which he dedicated significant energy was securing support for the Nature Restoration Law, an endeavour that ultimately succeeded. We actively participated in this campaign by writing letters to Bulgarian Members of the European Parliament.
Sepp was a trusted partner in further collaborative projects over the years. He was part of the ongoing project BioAgora, which his team at UFZ co-coordinates, contributing to the effort for the development of the EU Science Service for Biodiversity.
Alexandra Korcheva, a science-policy communications officer working on BioAgora adds:
Rarely does one meet people that are so free, so wise, and yet so down-to-Earth. Prof. Settele was easy to talk to, and at the same time he was so experienced and knowledgeable. From my interactions with him, I have been inspired both as a biodiversity science-policy communicator, and as an early-career researcher. He left a bright trail in his field of work, and has inspired many to follow in his steps. May he rest in peace, and sincere condolences to all his family and friends!
Sepp was one of the founders of our BioRisk – Biodiversity & Ecosystem Risk Assessment journal, which grew out of the ALARM community and gave risk-focused biodiversity research a home of its own. He remained its Editor-in-Chief until the very end. One of its early landmark works was the Climatic Risk Atlas of European Butterflies, co-authored by Sepp and colleagues.
Books soon followed, and over the years Sepp became one of our most prolific authors, with 97 works published with us. Several of them became some of the most influential book titles in our portfolio:
- Ökologie einer aussterbenden Population des Segelfalters Iphiclides podalirius (2006), with Roland Steiner and Gabriel Hermann
- Climatic Risk Atlas of European Butterflies (2008), with Otakar Kudrna, Elisabeth Kühn and others, published as BioRisk volume 2
- Scaling in Ecology and Biodiversity Conservation (2014), co-edited with Klaus Henle, Simon G. Potts and others
Beyond the lab
Sepp never saw science as something that should stay inside academia. Thus, in 2005 he launched the German Butterfly Monitoring Scheme, which became one of the country’s best-known citizen science projects and invited ordinary people to help track the state of nature.
Communicating science effectively became a large part of his life’s work. He explained why biodiversity matters, how ecosystems are faring, what drives their decline and what can be done to protect them for the long term. He took that message to politicians and journalists, and he was just as willing to sit down with groups whose political or economic goals, and views, differed from his own.
Our farewell
Pensoft has lost a dear friend, and the biodiversity community has lost a great champion. We are deeply grateful for everything he gave us: his trust, his ideas, his energy and his friendship. His work lives on in the journals, the books, the projects and the many researchers he inspired.
Our thoughts are with his family, his colleagues at UFZ and all who knew him.
