A picture is worth a thousand words, they say. That may be true! Today we’re swamped with information. Images can say a lot with a little. That said, we’re in the digital revolution. So now we’re flooded with zillions of photos and memes. We like and tag images on social media. News websites have photos of current events. We share our own lives with selfies, food or pet pictures.

In today’s firehose of images are powerful stories about nature. Facts and figures are vital. But to connect with the widest audience we must nature’s story. Visual media are the most effective way to do that. Images transcend language. They evoke emotions in ways that words and data cannot. Human devastation, and our natural world’s fragility and beauty are best shown through biodiversity images like the ones you see here. Together they show human impacts on biodiversity, wildlife, the environment, and natural resources. Threats include global warming, deforestation, pollution and wildlife exploitation.

Help to tell the story of biodiversity

To help you share these stories, we’ve put together ten amazing images and graphics. We encourage you to share these images as widely as possible (including appropriate credit). It’s vital now more than ever to tell the story of biodiversity. It’s the only way we’re truly going to make a difference.

In all cases, we have strived to provide appropriate credit to the creators and copyright holders. Please contact us if you recognize an image and additional or alternative attribution is required.

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Stephen Thompson, 2018 Conservation Greenkeeper of the Year and member of Biodiversity Professionals

John o’ Gaunt Golf Club has two 18-hole courses. John o’ Gaunt course is a parkland style course with lots of trees, a brook running through and a newly installed pond. The Carthagena course is on part of the sandstone ridge. It’s much more free draining and has a more heathland feel to it, with gorse in various places, an oak woodland down one side and elm down another.

I have recorded about 100 species of birds including barn owl (Tyto alba), kestrel (Falco tinnunculus), oystercatcher (Haematopus ostralegus), waxwing (Bombycilla garrulus and even a nightjar, as well as more common species such as great spotted woodpecker (Dendrocopos major) and blue tit (Cyanistes caeruleus).

Golf course conservation outreach

Over the last two years I have been running a moth trap regularly by the tractor sheds and held several moth evenings with the local moth group. To date, I have now recorded 354 species at the club including the rare white spotted pinion moth (Cosmia diffinis) on the Carthagena course.

A marbled white butterfly (Melanargia galathea).

Mating pair of large red-tailed damselflies (Pyrrhosoma nymphula).

Golf course conservation outreach

Helping wildlife on the golf course

There are several ways I help the wildlife on the course: I have made and installed over 100 bird boxes which I check every spring mostly in my own time and with a ringing permit, ring any chicks I find. I check boxes in the winter and repair and replace where necessary. I have also helped create many wildflower areas providing much needed habitats for bees and other pollinating insects.

Recognized for golf course conservation

I have helped bring much media attention to the club, appearing on BBC TV and local radio. I have helped the club win awards both locally and nationally, and written many articles in national magazines. I have been a finalist four times in a row in the Golf Environments Awards in the category of Conservation Greenkeeper of the Year. This year, I was recognized as Conservation Greenkeeper of the Year. Some golf course owners are less aware of the benefits these green spaces can provide. However, as my work shows, a golf course does not have to be just a golf course. It can also be a conservation boon for wildlife and wildlife advocates.

Resources
Steve on LinkedIn
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Steve Thompson, Greenkeeper John O’Gaunt Golf Club – Badger Trust Conference 2016

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Introduced mallard ducks (left) regularly mate with native grey ducks (right) in New Zealand. Males of either species often opt to mate with females of the other species. Is this mutual appreciation for the exotic wayward, or do they have something to teach us? (Images courtesy of Wikipedia Creative Commons)

Many of us have built entire careers out of identifying which introduced species inconvenience natives. We explore and quantify their effects, and then crow about how important it is to rid ourselves of these ‘invasive’ nuisances.

So, for some, it is with considerable trepidation that they witness this complacent formula starting to unravel in recent years. Study after study, across discipline after discipline, is showing that introduced species are not, and never were, as bad as we thought.

An aging rear guard has devoted itself to the defense of old-school nativism, with all its irregularities, quirks and eccentricities. But many of us can now see that that ship was flawed all along and is now best abandoned.

Let’s learn to live with introduced species, not because it’s a novel or contrarian view, but because it has become the most compelling and sane thing to do.

Reasons to appreciate introduced species

Here are five good reasons why:

1. More diversity. In general, introduced species increase local and regional species richness. Most islands, for example, have doubled their lists of plant species through introductions. Longstanding nightmares of ecosystems dominated by single species, while common in agricultural landscapes, are the exception in the wild. Let’s stop talking about species like kudzu as if they were representative.
2. More uniqueness. A fixation on species-level biodiversity has fostered the impression that we are losing uniqueness. This assumption is flawed. While species have gone extinct (sometimes due, in part, to introduced species), our ecosystems are every bit as unique as they always were. Native ecosystems are unique, but so too are novel ecosystems, comprising biota that have never lived in the same configurations in history.
3. More evolution. Change is continuous and countless recent studies investigating rates of evolution show that it happens a lot faster than we used to think. Both native and introduced species don’t care about our historical baselines and are actively breeding and (de)selecting themselves away from them. Much like technological innovation in times of crisis, evolution seems to be speeding up in response to the environmental changes we have wrought. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that this is a good thing and that trying to stop it might actually be damaging to the vitality of future ecosystems.
4. More nature. We ask people to explore and cherish nature, but so much of the nature they experience around them is the ‘wrong’ kind. Introduced genes, species, and ecosystems are everywhere, permeating everything.
   The search for purity is more than an embarrassment now. We risk disenfranchising a whole generation of people by constantly pointing to the belief that real nature is always somewhere else.
5. More compassion. Over the last few decades, people have blamed introduced species for just about every environmental malady you could think of. We have been told (and told ourselves) that they are the perpetrators of undesirable processes and states again and again.

The truth is that introduced species are as much the victims of globalisation as native species, having little choice over their location, and no choice over their valuation, but having to suffer the consequences all the same. Scapegoating introduced species is a tired, unethical pastime.

For a more detailed examination of the arguments raised in this article consider reading my recently completed PhD thesis: The Reconciliation of Introduced Species in New Zealand.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author alone.

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