Pollinator Advocate Award!!!

I absolutely cried when I found out that I had won the Pollinator Advocate Award, given out annually by the North American Pollinator Protection Campaign. Along with their parent organization, Pollinator Partnership, the NAPPC publish scientific reports, draft policy, award grants, created Pollinator Week, distribute public guides, and even made postage stamps! So it was such an honor to be recognized by them.

I do this work compulsively. I both love it and believe it is so important. But I don’t think any of us like… expects an award. So this was pretty overwhelming. I wasn’t able to attend the award ceremony, but I wrote a short speech that sums up why pollinator people are the absolute best:

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I feel incredibly fortunate to be among the people who have discovered something more beautiful than flowers. And that is of course the gorgeous dance between flowers and their pollinators.

If there is anything lovelier than an eastern red columbine, it is only the knowledge that the flower is using the color red to communicate to hummingbirds, who can see red far better than bees. And that, while some flowers trick their partners, this one offers a generous reward specifically tailored for their guests, with the amino acids the birds require suspended in a nectar of just the viscosity for hummingbird tongues to lap up.

It's the dynamics between organisms that are so much more precious, more delicate and marvelous, than any individual flower or animal alone. It’s symbiosis, but it’s also the trickery of orchids and the nefarious fate of the fungus gnats lured to their death on the inside of a female Jack in the Pulpit.

This knowledge has always felt magical to me. I’ve collected it the way I imagine witches gather spells. And I share it with the hope that it is more than strictly educational. These are stories that can weave people together with the creatures we share this planet with.

It’s critical work that we are all doing for pollinators and their plant partners, but it’s also absolutely necessary for people. Even just since my own childhood, the shifting baselines of an environment bereft of the biodiversity I grew up with, a landscape with less butterflies and less birdsong, encourages more alienation from the natural world. Now, when it’s so important that people pay attention, it’s far easier to ignore the plants and animals around us. This makes sharing these stories all the more necessary.

We will continue to work like hell to assure that stories are not all we have left. But it’s the efforts and successes of good people like you, changing stewardship practices, facing down pesticide manufactures, drafting regulations, and encouraging people to revel in the wonders of the land they live in, that brings me hope for the future.

Thank you all sincerely. Godspeed!