Do you ever feel like there’s no point because the world is so ruined? Does the continuing destruction despite scientific reports on climate change, land use and diet make you feel so incredibly insignificant that you sometimes just want to give up?
I do. All the time.
That’s why I’m writing this blog. I don’t want to lull myself into a stagnant pit of despair. I want to rise up and fight for climate justice and women’s empowerment and Indigenous rights and sustainable living.
By focusing on the wild of nature, or inspirational people, or ingenious technology, the kind of world I want to be living in doesn’t feel so far away. Be gone eco-anxiety.
Today's seed of hope is about the amazing plants I've been finding in my new home. Over the past few months, I've finished my masters in biodiversity and conservation and relocated to the other side of the world. I’ve traded in my London life for Albany, Western Australia, complete with incredible biodiversity, whale migrations and an awe-inspiring Aboriginal history that’s estimated to be at least fifty thousand years old.
My first thoughts on arrival: Australia is a pretty big place. Over the many, many kilometres of a road trip north to Karijini National Park, I watched the scrub at the side of the road get taller and shorter, greener and greyer, and sometimes disappear altogether, replaced by endless red dirt.
Taking a closer look at this scrub reveals much more than a grey-green blur. Splashes of yellow, violet, pink, red emerge as your eyes focus, hinting at the incredible plant diversity found throughout the state. The region I've ended up in is particularly rich. The South West has attained global recognition as a Global Biodiversity Hotspot, on account of its >7200 species, of which 80% are found nowhere else. Sadly, 'exceptional loss of habitat' is also required to gain this status.
Western Australia is home to huge plant diversity because it's fairly tricky to live there. Species have had to evolve clever coping mechanisms in order to survive the poor soil. Add in a very long time of geological and climatic stability and isolation from the rest of the world, and you get the weird and wonderful diversity that we see today.
Unfortunately, many of these species are under threat. A mixture of dieback (Phytophthora cinnamomi, an invasive and fatal fungal disease), large-scale land clearance and climate change is causing huge biodiversity losses across the state.
Ingenious efforts to save Western Australia's plant diversity are coming in from all angles. From Kings Park, which cultivates and stores the seed of thousands of species, to The Banksia Farm, where a hobby developed into the world's only complete collection of banksias. Trials to solve the huge problem of dieback are showing promising results, such as one project that is attempting to grow resistant scarlet banksias (Banksia coccinia). There is also increasing awareness of the importance of growing natives in gardens. In Albany in particular Morande Native Flower Nursery holds a wealth of knowledge of the local flora, selling hundreds of different species.
These flowers remind me how ingenious nature is. They are proof that given time, nature will find a way to overcome any problem, and its solution is often incredibly beautiful. Not to mention all the inspirational people and organisations dedicating their lives to conservation. That's certainly enough motivation to start my own native flower garden (more to follow on this) and see if I can get involved with some of these projects!
