Wood, Fruits and Flowers; the Precious Things of Others

In the mid-1980s, as the world became aware of the spreading knowledge of human-induced species extinction and ecosystem destruction, conservationists began to expand the tactics of their environmental campaigns. Debates on which species to prioritise in ecosystem conservation saw the emergence of charismatic ecological icons—better known as flagship species—heralded as furry poster children to lead conservation campaigns.

Evocative and devastating images of gaunt polar bears floating on broken ice sheets or orangutans picking through the remains of a bulldozed rainforest have haunted our screens since. The emotions induced by these images are ones of distress, anxiety and grief, all of which can be important emotions to incite action. These images are rooted in fear, an emotion that can spur action but simultaneously can be paralysing and disempowering. By the nature of the image, the issues that these species became emblems of are divorced from their larger, messier contexts.

Actual definitions of flagship species vary, though they have been described as “species that have the ability to capture the imagination of the public and induce people to support conservation action and/or to donate funds”¹ , with most definitions consistently emphasising a species’ marketing value. Flagship species are often mammals with evocative attributes that inspire human advocacy like pandas, koalas, polar bears or orangutans.

The approach has been successful in some aspects of conservation but relies on the emotional resonance that humans feel towards certain species, which can be fickle or even arbitrary.  Evolutionarily, our empathy is tailored to behaviour and traits we are familiar with² , often to mammals like ourselves, with fur and big eyes. Our ability as humans to empathise with other species is correlated with our evolutionary history, and our sympathy towards a species declines as the divergence of time separating them from us increases³ . Historically, we have tended to devalue the smaller creatures, those such as insects who operate on different physical and temporal scales to humans. In relation to our own, their lives are perceived as insignificant and fleeting. This behaviour also extends to plants: we chain ourselves to the mighty sequoia to prevent logging but ignore important (but diminutive) keystone species like grass, kelp and moss.

In more recent times, as scientists became aware of the threat of global insect population collapse, the European honey bee has become an ambassador for the pollinators of the world. Its iconic yellow and black coat, its crucial links to agriculture and our affection for its honey have ignited the ‘save the bees’ campaign. The core concern of the campaign is honey bee population numbers, but behind this are larger threats to pollination (a process that underpins global biodiversity and our food systems) as a result of the widespread use of pesticides and herbicides, along with habitat destruction causing insect populations to collapse. With this example, a complex ecological issue is communicated through a message that emphasises just one recognisable species. 

Today the campaign, fuelled by social media, has transformed into a global clarion call. ‘Save the bees’ initially took hold in the United States but has rapidly spread across the globe to wherever the bees are found, often implying the same attitude and concern should be taken everywhere without consideration of the specificities of local ecological conditions or nuances. In Australia, honey bees—though important—can dominate Australian environments, leaving less nectar for their native counterparts such as native bees, flies, bats, birds, wasps, butterflies and beetles who also act as essential pollinators for both food crops and the many other plant species that rely on them for reproduction. The crisis of insect population collapse is a phenomenon that is both global and simultaneously local and specific, therefore requiring responses of the same nature.

The harsh, narrow spotlight of one flagship species is antithetical to the very meanings of biodiversity and ecology. While ‘save the bees’ highlights a rare non-mammalian icon, as a society we largely still fall short in our ability to look beyond a simplified narrative emphasising a single species. “Evolving complex systems cannot be comprehensively [understood] while focusing on only one particular aspect in isolation”⁴ . Furthermore, reducing an ecosystem to just one species encourages ignorance of the broad intelligence and cognitive diversity of the more-than-human world. The packaging of these problems into digestible narratives can be argued as a reasonable method of marketing; while this may be true, it speaks to a broader fragmentation of our daily lives from the local landscapes we live nestled within, a fragmentation that leaves us worse off.

There is much to be learned from the quiet yet complex lives of insects. What’s more, there is deep joy to be found in doing so. Hoverflies (Eristalis tenax) prefer and are able to discern the colour yellow better from others, and flowers across mainland Australia have adapted in response to this preference⁵ . Honey bees (Apis spp.) and native blue-banded bees (Amegilla spp.) gravitate towards blue and purple-toned flowers⁶ . Native stingless bees (Tetragonula carbonaria) will only fly once temperatures reach 18 degrees Celsius and the demisocial leafcutter bees (Megachile spp.) carve out perfect circles from leaves to stuff their nests with as room dividers and insulation. There is nuance to the preferences and roles of each distinct insect, resulting in complex interspecies relationships that cause flow-on effects throughout a whole ecosystem. Networks of soils, fungi, microbes, plants and insects are interlocked together, each occupying their own niche but functioning with the support of or at the expense of others.

The continued use of flagship species might trigger a call to action within the current ecological crisis, however the energy will inevitably fade if we are not able to foster a deeper understanding of the ecological systems from which we come from. “Knowing plants' names [and all non-human kin] and their gifts, opens the door to reciprocity”⁷ . In this quote, Kimmerer outlines that knowing and naming is the first step towards advocacy and reciprocal interspecies relationships. Naming, not in an attempt to categorise, but in recognition of existence and distinction from a homogeneous grouping of plant or insect. Giving space to these relationships allows us to better understand how we can nurture ecosystems as a whole.

Natasha Myers talks of taking ‘root’ in the places local to us, a term she coined that involves forming a “deep accountability of the local” and emphasises a recentering of the plant and animal life that we live amongst in order to “break the frame of Anthropocene logics”⁸ .

With this in mind, we meditate on a handful of species and their relationships that exist alongside us across the Sydney area (lands of the D’harawal, Dharug, Eora, Gai-maraigal, Gundugurra, and Guringai Peoples). These species are not chosen because their value is greater than others, but because they might form the outset to trace the abundance and diversity of all ecological webs we live within. Learning what they need to thrive can help us to integrate these into the way we build, care, garden, wander and wonder in an attempt to move towards a greater reciprocity with our more-than-human worlds.