Walk with me. This time there’ll be the bonus of learning some choice German curse words, if you listen closely enough. Muttered under my breath when I realized after a 40 minute drive to the wetlands that I had brought the camera but forgotten the memory card. My iPhone had to suffice, so you’ll get some December landscape impressions, but no close up of the birds I had come to see: the first mergansers of the season.

Less preoccupation with photography meant more time for contemplating the good news I had come across in various sources this week while thinking about the World Biodiversity Summit in Montreal. The UN’s COP 15 conference is trying to set worldwide new goals to halt and reverse nature’s diversity loss. A lot has been written in this context about the potentially catastrophic outlook for nature and humans alike, given climate change and human destruction of natural habitats. I thought I’ll pick something positive to demonstrate there’s stuff we can do. And certainly reason to stick with hope, our daily exercise, remember? (More positive examples can also be found down on the UN’s website.)

1. What I learned about bees:

European Honeybees have taken over much of the American landscapes at the expensive of native species (there used to be 1500 to 1700 native species in California alone.) Biotic homogenization, as ecologists call it, is happening across the world. Variety disappears and the same dominant species are found everywhere. This is a problem, among other things, because vulnerabilities to disease or temperature change might be tolerated differently by a more diverse population. If something threatens the honeybees and they happen to be the only pollinators around, we’re screwed. (I guess you learn some English curse words as well…) Invasive species like honeybees (now found everywhere in the world other than arctic regions) outcompete local species for food and share their own parasites they actively contribute to the demise of native pollinators.

It is also an economic question. Honeybee hives are trucked around the agricultural industry to pollinate crops ($15 billion of them!) that blossom at different times. The pollination industry itself scores about $250 million annually, with weekly rent costs for hives reaching stratospheric heights. All not so much needed if you had your native pollinators who live in your region and do the work for free. The solution: plant pollinator habitats, also know as “hedgerows!” There are now Bee-Better Certification programs that “lure investors away from extractive industries like fossil fuels and towards regenerative approaches to farming—practices that rebuild soil, store carbon, and support biodiversity—can be good for the planet while also healthy for the bottom line.”(Ref.) It will take a long time for these programs to work, but it is a start. Building corridors of mixed plants among the monocultures of blueberries or almonds or grapes might give native bee species a shot at survival.

2. And here come the drones:

Scientists have developed drones that spy nearly extinct plants in hard-to reach places like mountain sides and cliffs. Many local plants that have no defensive mechanisms like bitter taste, or thorns or the like against grazing by imported animals, now exist entirely in nooks and crannies that protect them up high, in Hawaii, for example. The drones can spot them and they have scissor equipped arms that allow them to snip small clippings of the plants. Biologist use those to propagate and thus enlarge the population of the endangered species.

3. What about clams?

Some parts of the scientific community have woken up to the fact that much indigenous wisdom can be used to protect species that are vulnerable to certain environmental conditions. Clams, for example, do not well when conditions become too acidic, a problem that is steadily growing with the increasing acidification of our oceans due to our burning of fossil fuels. Their shells become less resilient and that fragility opens clams up to predation and disease. Researchers have looked at Indigenous Sea-Gardening practices across the Pacific Northwest, where Native tribes cultivated clam beds for millennia. Caretakers crushed the shells of harvested clams and strew the fragments back into the sand. Apparently these crushed shells release carbonate into the water, neutralizing some of the acidity. Lab experiments are now done to concern and expand the possibilities of lowering pH levels this way.

The scientists are also looking at another Indigenous practices: regularly tilling of clam beds, which loosens the sediment and mixing in shell fragments. “This repeated digging could bring oxygen to burrowed clams, open more space in the sediments, and alter seawater chemistry.” (Ref.)

***

Much diversity where I walked, due to bird migration. Besides mergansers there were swans, tons of varieties of ducks unknown to me, hawks, herons and egrets. The rain paused just long enough to get a good hour of walking in, useless camera heavy in the backpack, soul light in my chest, geese above me. What privilege to be by their side, as described in today’s music.