On Keystone Species and Biodiversity

The way I think about biodiversity is as an intricate webbing of life. It is the direction that Mother Earth wants to take things, the highest way of being, the default in most cases. Keystone Species play a huge role in that. I’ll preface by saying that the mere notion of Keystone species is a fundamentally Western way of thinking of the natural world; this idea of separateness – this is a Keystone species, that is not. This is not to say that Indigenous peoples and Earth-based cultures do not have names for beings and revere certain ones of great importance, it is just that ecology gets a little tricky when only looking at a bunch of individuals. 

My mentor, Kendall Dunnigan, says that when you really look at the whole, all beings are Keystone Species. Along the same lines, John Muir has this quote: “When we try to pick out anything by itself we find it is hitched to everything else in the universe”. 

Let me give an example: Oaks are host to hundreds of species, including butterflies, moths, bees, birds and many mammals. Clearly, Life is dependent on the Oak for survival. However, they would not be so numerous and expansive had the squirrel and scrub jay not laboriously planted the acorns everywhere they wanted to cache their food for the cold season and left them behind to then become a sapling. Interdependence becomes complex and interwoven very quickly. That is the exciting part. Who then, is the “most important” to the ecosystem?

A second example is the Salmon, who is such an important being valued economically as food and yet so incredibly undervalued as a member of an ecosystem community. They give so much to the ecosystem; as they die, they become food to other animals. Not only to humans, but to the bear, who then messily eats while roaming around and drops the carcass upstream. The tree upstream then benefits from where their bodies decompose. They are nutrient cycling in action. This is what it means to be a Keystone Species, one who is so important to the ecology, that without them, the rest would begin to fall. 

Perhaps the bear will find another food source? Most likely nothing will come close to the rich protein and deliciousness of the Salmon. The trees near and far will not grow nearly as big and will not make as many mycelial webs with the fungi nor as many networks with other plants. The whole of the community suffers. A Native man I met from Klamath said in their language, the Salmon’s name translates to “that who gives itself”. The Salmon literally swims upstream to die and gives themself to the rest in the form of nourishment. 

Our role as humans in this arch is aspiring. I believe it is our highest form of communing with the rest of the Natural world. How can we regeneratively disturb things? We can increase health by growing food and medicine, expanding windows of biodiversity and beauty through experimental and dense plantings, all while definitely planting more trees and acorns. Consuming meat from farmers that have good animal husbandry practices. Support Land Back to Native peoples.

The possibilities are endless for us. We know the solutions. We can begin by marrying ourselves to Nature again. The divorce has been ugly, messy and harmful to all. It has caused us spiritual bankruptcy and induced one ecological crisis after another. Start a garden. Be the Keystone in the arch.