An Ode to Our Urban Pollinator Neighbors

In times of climate crisis, it’s important to reground ourselves in our surroundings. This means attending to our relationships with even the smallest of city creatures.

Nature is everywhere. It’s bursting from the sidewalk cracks you may bike over without a second glance; it’s roosting in the eaves of office buildings. It’s beating in the rhythms of your own heart, sending blood coursing throughout your body. The ground under your feet also pulses with life unseen. Thousands of insects burrow and threads of fungal mycorrhizae unfold upon each other endlessly.

“We are constantly in interspecies relationships, whether or not we are aware of it. The very moment that we are able to breathe oxygen, we are in an interspecies relationship with plants that help us filter the air” says Lisa Ausic, PhD researcher and lecturer at Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam who is embarking on new research exploring human-bee relationships. “We are not existing in this dichotomy of nature and society, we are always living in webs of relationships with other species, other things.”

Cities are a complex part of this web and one of the frontlines of the biodiversity crisis. Anna Persson, researcher at the Centre for Environmental and Climate Science at Lund University, has studied how warming temperatures have led to the rise of certain bumblebee populations that can adapt, but a decline in others.

However, Anna notes that “these shifts are seen primarily in landscapes that are very simplified, like where there is agricultural monoculture. But in sites that are more mixed landscapes — with some trees, woodlots, hedgerows, pastures and so on — we don’t see this clear shift. So it seems that landscape factors can buffer against the negative effects of climate change, probably because they can provide temperature regulation.”

This means that your yards, local parks and green strips can be critical spots to boost pollinators and other urban organisms with the right types of plantings and care. “There’s a lot of scope for benefiting both biodiversity and human-nature interaction by working more with our yards,” Anna says. Lawns can make up to 50% of green open spaces in cities, and many of these are found in private or shared yards.

The manicured lawn, a chemically-controlled “green desert,” does little to provide a true habitat for them, while its very existence is rooted in a history of colonialism, unequal class and racial dynamics, and capitalist expansion. The biodiversity of a wide range of organisms is directly affected by the ways in which both cities and individuals themselves structure and interact with their greenspaces. Focusing on growing more native plants, trees and flowers that bloom throughout the year, avoiding the use of pesticides and herbicides, as well as leaving the “litter” of leaves and fallen branches in yards can all help turn yards into more functional parts of our urban ecosystems.

It’s more than just honeybees, however. Pollinators include flies, beetles, wasps, moths, butterflies, wild bees, and even mosquitoes. A range of striped hoverflies pollinate enormous amounts of plants and are known to visit around 72% of global food crops. Thousands of species of wasps not only pollinate but also help with decomposition and spreading seeds, serve as food for other creatures, as well as predate insects and maintain balance in populations. Each organism makes up an important piece of the functioning of our ecosystem, no matter how small they may seem in comparison to us.

Don’t have a lawn? You can also connect to your surroundings simply through close observation. Stop and look at the patches of plants and trees that you may pass by every day. What do you see? Where do you observe beings and how do they interact with their surroundings? Respect even the smallest of creatures you encounter and know that you are not so separated from each buzzing insect.

“The human is not this confined entity in itself, but always exists in relations. Thereby one must also rethink one’s own position in ecology,” emphasizes Lisa Ausic.