Unsung heroes – as this latest and somewhat exuberant early summer issue will show – can come in many guises.
Some come with fur or feathers, some have wings, and some carry their homes on their backs. Some swim, some slide or slither, some creep and crawl. And for the most part, none will ever know they are unexpected pollinators.
Some, of course, come with two legs in a human body. Swap the word Influencer for Pollinator and you’ll see how humans, some perhaps quite surprisingly, can become accidental pollinators too. I am not talking about the names you are used to seeing contribute to this magazine and other campaigning platforms, but about people you might not expect to be overly concerned about the state of the planet or the wellbeing of the creatures we share it with.
Lydia Elise Millen struck me as just such a person. She is a high fashion influencer with a global reach of three million followers. Not someone, you might be tempted to assume, especially aligned with the values of other Nature champions.
But this is where you would be wrong. Lydia, as it turned out, is also the author of a charming book called Evergreen – written primarily for her fashion followers and thus for the mainstream – which celebrates Nature and shares her joy of gardening and honouring the seasons. What’s important here is that Lydia’s book does not preach to the converted and that’s what makes her an unexpected pollinator.
She and her husband, Ali Gordon, also keep bees! And you can read an extract from Evergreen on the topic of summer’s generous abundance on page 40.
Then we have the best-selling children’s author M.G. Leonard, who has become known as ‘the Beetle Lady’. Beetles, as it happens, are unexpected but important pollinators too. And in her interview in this issue, she tells our writer Katie Dancey-Downs how she went from being petrified of anything even remotely bug-like to making the golden scarab beetle the heroine of her new book.
The artwork on page 28 that opens this special theme shows a miniature paper sculpture of two brown-throated sunbirds created by two India-based artists, Nayan and watercolourist Venus Bird. This image is part of the duo’s Unexpected Pollinators project, which they say showcases the importance of all creatures, large and small, but especially the pollinators we might not always think of as being important in this way.
And finally, the lead story in our Ecologist section comes from the pen of another activist Pollinator but one whose name you may already know, queer freelance educator and conservation forester Kara Moses, who offers a thoughtful and timely exploration of heteronormativity – the assumption that everyone is ‘naturally’ heterosexual and that this is both ‘normal’ and superior to homosexuality or bisexuality – in conservation practice. Again, an assumption we need to be challenging, and Kara explains more about why this is important.
@susanresurgence.bsky.social
