Category: Endangered Worlds

The Wood Wide Web – Fruitful Collaboration

Artists Michael Gresalfi and Eva Strautmann‘s collaboration responds to our emerging understanding of the Wood Wide Web that connects trees, fungi and soil: networked communities threatened by our ‘competitive’ view of life and by our industrial forestry practices.

1,580 words: estimated reading time = 6.5 minutes

Eva ‘found’ Michael on ClimateCultures following one of his Creative Showcase pieces and his invitation to foster dialogue and collaborations with fellow members, which we shared in our monthly Re:Culture newsletter. We would like to encourage further sharing of ideas and new collaborations between members.

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An interspecies symbiosis driving biological innovation

Below, Michael discusses the role of the Wood Wide Web. First, he
picks up the story of his and Eva’s collaboration:

When Eva and I began to discuss the continuing degradation and disruption of Earth’s regulating systems, we talked about the loss of habitat, and the largely unseen yet growing damage to co-evolved symbiotic relationships between different species. This discussion, and our shared love of forests, led us to our decision to focus both our attention and our art on the so-called ‘Wood Wide Web’.

We both independently created art that represents our artistic visualisation of this incredible symbiotic relationship between fungus, plants and trees.

The scientific community has confirmed many examples in nature of symbiotic relationships between animals, plants, insects, bacteria and fungi. In fact, we can look inside ourselves and find somewhere between one and three pounds of bacteria within our own large intestine: a relationship that scientists have termed a ‘mutualistic symbiosis’.

The surprise to me, when thinking about the so-called Wood Wide Web is both the complexity and the elegance of this mutualistic symbiosis between such a wide range of disparate species. Over the past 500 million years, fungi have co-evolved, along with plants and trees, to the benefit of all in this mutually supportive network.

I would contend that interspecies symbiosis is not just a common evolutionary path; that it is arguably the dominant engine of biological innovation on Earth. Today, roughly 80% to 90% of all land plants rely on fungal symbioses to survive. Without this cross-kingdom partnership, our forests and agricultural systems would collapse and the web of life itself might not exist.

Unfortunately, humans continue to cause such cross-kingdom partnerships to collapse, including the wood wide web. In fact, we have caused many such interspecies relationships to become ‘dysbiotic’.

Showing a painting 'Wood-Wide Web' by MIchael Gresalfi © 2025: 24" x 30”, mixed media on used, repurposed canvas - oils, acrylics and melted wax.
‘Wood-Wide Web’: 24″ x 30”, mixed media on used, repurposed canvas – oils, acrylics and melted wax. Artist: Michael Gresalfi © 2025

Conversation with trees

Eva shares her reflections on producing her series as part of the collaboration with Michael:

‘Conversation With Trees’ is a very personal and, at the same time, professional way of viewing my surroundings.

Living in the city, in the mountains of stone, is loud, noisy, exhausting and painful. I can not hear any Voice, just ‘Trash’ and ‘Crash!’

Outside, in the countryside, on the sea, and in the forest, you can listen to the silence, to the movement of water, of ice, of the wind and you can listen to the trees.

This is what I have been doing for years and years, this is actually my home and my inner garden.

The movement of one tree or two or three … is telling me about the day, about friends, who are coming or not, the trees tell me about myself. What I wish, why and why not.

And there is one favourite tree right here, next door to my house, he is a bit nervous about my work: Eva, you are working too much. He keeps on telling me what is better for me. Some more coloured trees tell me about my next steps, what I should do.

I do not want to say here and now what I am telling them, but I am always polite and friendly.

Soon my friend Jacob Strautmann from Boston (USA) will write poems to my paintings, maybe he can describe my works.

These three paintings are the beginning of a series ‘Conversation With Trees’, which started in the dialogue with Michael. Our Zoom session and emails were very inspiring and helpful. I am very thankful to Michael and Mark: Thank you!

Showing 'Conversation With Trees 2', (Series) 2025 - 2026 (50 x 100 cm}: Oil on Canvas. Paining by Eva Strautmann © 2025
‘Conversation With Trees 1’, (Series) 2025 – 2026 (50 x 100 cm}: Oil on Canvas. Artist Eva Strautmann © 2025
Showing a pinting, 'Conversation With Trees 2', (Series) 2025 - 2026 by Eva Strautmann © 2025: (50 x 100 cm}: Oil on Canvas.
‘Conversation With Trees 2’, (Series) 2025 – 2026 (50 x 100 cm}: Oil on Canvas. Artist Eva Strautmann © 2025
Showing a painting, 'Conversation With Trees 3', (Series) 2025 - 2026, by Eva Strautmann © 2025 (50 x 100 cm}: Oil on Canvas.
‘Conversation With Trees 3’, (Series) 2025 – 2026 (50 x 100 cm}: Oil on Canvas. Artist Eva Strautmann © 2025

Mutualism & communication: life as an interconnected community

The Wood Wide Web portrays a forest not merely as a collection of competing individuals, but as an interconnected community where cooperation, sharing, and communication play a significant role in the health and resilience of the entire ecosystem. Science has revealed that trees in a forest are linked to neighboring trees by an underground network of fungi that resembles the neural networks in the brain.

These fungi form a symbiotic relationship with plant roots. They extend tiny, thread-like filaments far into the soil, acting as an extension of both tree and plant roots and can link the root systems of multiple trees and plants, often across different species.

The network between fungi and trees acts as a conduit for transferring resources like carbon, water, and nitrogen between neighboring trees. Trees, through photosynthesis, produce sugars (carbohydrates) and transfer some of this essential carbon to the fungi. Plants and other producers convert carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and water into carbohydrates (like glucose) using light energy. This process fixes atmospheric carbon into an organic, usable form.

The core of the Wood Wide Web is a biological partnership called mycorrhiza, which means ‘fungus-root’. Mycorrhizal fungi form a symbiotic relationship with plant roots. They extend tiny, thread-like filaments called hyphae (collectively known as mycelium) far into the soil, acting as an extension of the tree’s root system.

These fungal filaments can link the root systems of multiple trees and plants, often across different species, creating what is known as a Common Mycorrhizal Network (CMN).

The mycorrhizal network is believed to enable several vital functions. Resource exchange (mutualism) is the foundation of the relationship:

    • From tree to fungi: Trees, through photosynthesis, produce sugars (carbohydrates) and transfer some of this essential carbon to the fungi.
    • From fungi to tree: The fungi, in return, use their extensive network of hyphae to scavenge for water and crucial soil nutrients (like phosphorus and nitrogen) that are often inaccessible to the tree’s main roots, and transfer them back to the tree.
    • From tree to tree: The network can act as a conduit for transferring resources like carbon, water, and nitrogen between neighboring trees. For instance, a large, well-lit ‘mother tree’ might transfer nutrients to shaded seedlings or stressed neighbors, including its own kin.

Communication is another feature of the web. Some research suggests that trees can send chemical or electrical distress signals as warnings through the network — for example, when under attack by insects or disease — prompting neighboring plants to increase their own defensive enzyme production.

In essence, the Wood Wide Web portrays a forest not merely as a collection of competing individuals, but as an interconnected community where cooperation, sharing, and communication play a significant role in the health and resilience of the entire ecosystem.

Wood Wide Web research — diversity & resilience

The Mother Tree Project is a large-scale, long-term research and outreach initiative led by Dr. Suzanne Simard at the University of British Columbia. It is essentially a real-world experiment in regenerative forestry, building directly upon her decades of research into the Wood Wide Web.

The project’s goal is to find new, sustainable forest management practices that maintain forest health and resilience in the face of accelerating climate change, wildfires, and other disturbances.

Dr. Simard’s research on the Wood Wide Web and Mother Trees has been one of the most significant forces challenging conventional, industrial forestry practices that were largely based on a Darwinian view of tree competition.

Her field studies revealed that trees are linked to neighboring trees by the underground network of fungi described above, which resembles the neural networks in the brain. In one study, Simard watched as a Douglas fir that had been injured by insects appeared to send chemical warning signals to a ponderosa pine growing nearby. The pine tree then produced defense enzymes to protect against the insect.

Simard’s work proved that our aggressive removal of ‘competitors’ actually harmed the desired trees, as the clearcut seedlings were disconnected from the vital mycorrhizal network and the resources provided by the Mother Trees and neighboring species.

Both plants and fungi associate with multiple symbiotic partners at once, and both plants and fungi are capable of preferentially allocating resources to one partner over another.

Her findings advocate for promoting diversity, keeping a mixed-species forest and protecting the oldest, most-connected trees to ensure the entire ecosystem remains resilient.

Mycorrhizal associations have profoundly impacted the evolution of plant life on Earth ever since the initial adaptation of plant life to land. In evolutionary biology, mycorrhizal symbiosis has prompted inquiries into the possibility that symbiosis, not competition, is the main driver of evolution.

Find more

To inform his and Eva’s collaboration, Michael compiled information on the Wood Wide Web from data extracted using AI (Genesis).

The Mother Tree Project was established in 2015 by internationally acclaimed author and University of British Columbia ecologist Dr. Suzanne Simard, to address the urgent need to steward and safeguard British Columbia’s forests amid intensifying climate threats.

Michael also highlights this paper by Lucette Flandroy & colleagues: The impact of human activities and lifestyles on the interlinked microbiota and health of humans and of ecosystems (Science of The Total Environment, Volume 627, 15 June 2018, pages 1018-1038).

Michael Gresalfi
Michael Gresalfi
An artist who seeks to incorporate art with climate change data, and whose work in encaustic medium, glass paint, oils and acrylics includes 'Our Changing Planet'.
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Eva Strautmann
Eva Strautmann
An artist, author and lecturer exploring the question of ecological relationships through themes of nature and animals, physicality and abstraction, with recent exhibitions on climate change.
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Hurricane Katrina and the Human — No ‘Natural Disaster’?

Researcher Anna Hartnell marks the twentieth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, highlighting the human causes of New Orleans’ crisis (“There is no such thing as a natural disaster”) while questioning ‘Anthropocene’ labellings of human nature as hard-wired for destruction.

2,530 words: estimated reading time = 10 minutes

The hurricane that hit the US Gulf Coast in the late summer of 2005 was undoubtedly a ‘natural’ phenomenon — even if the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, that had whipped up what was initially a category 5 storm, were unusually warm as a result of changes in the climate engendered by human activity. But as the terrible toll of the storm and the subsequent collapse of the New Orleans levees became clear, so too did the role of human decision-making. Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time, a documentary directed by Traci A. Curry to mark the twentieth anniversary of the storm this August, repeatedly emphasizes that human error is what turned ‘disaster’ into ‘tragedy’ in New Orleans in 2005. Just minutes into the first episode of this mini-series, presented by National Geographic, Malik Rahim — a former Black Panther who founded the Common Ground Collective after Katrina and whose commentary constitutes one of the film’s moral touchstones — tells us that “the tragedy of Katrina was man-made”.

Natural Disaster? Showing: National Geographic's documentary, Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time (2025)
National Geographic’s documentary, Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time (2025)

This is a message that has now been sounding for twenty years. Almost as soon as the storm hit, the idea that “there is no such thing as a natural disaster” became an important organizing slogan forcefully articulated in the face of those seeking to deny the facts around the criminally inept response to Katrina. When the floodwaters began to recede and analysis of the causes of the disaster began, it remained an important response to anybody unwilling to recognize the lurid portrait of America that Katrina painted: a toxic brew of racialized poverty, ever-widening social inequality, corporate irresponsibility and a rapidly retreating social safety net.

Katrina was a stark warning of the consequences of decades of neoliberal deregulation and neglect that allowed oil and gas infrastructure to destroy large parts of the Louisiana wetlands — that provided natural flood barriers and protection against hurricanes –- while the system of human-made levees surrounding the city was allowed to go into a state of managed decline. The spectacle of some of America’s poorest communities stranded in the flooded city with no food, sanitation or medical supplies was a sharp reminder of what ‘rugged individualism’ looks like in the context of an economic system that has privatized the commons and redistributed wealth upwards. This story unfolded as the grotesquely unjust ‘recovery’ that began in subsequent months revealed plans for a whiter, wealthier New Orleans. The crisis created by Katrina was used as an excuse to demolish public housing blocks that had withstood the storm remarkably well. The city’s Charity Hospital was shuttered in the midst of a public health emergency. A sizeable diaspora of displaced storm survivors, disproportionately and overwhelmingly African American, were not supported to return home.

Natural Disaster? Showing: Levee in Algiers, New Orleans. Photograph by Anna Hartnell
Levee in Algiers, New Orleans. Photograph: Anna Hartnell © 2009

“There is no such thing as a natural disaster.”

I spent about ten years researching the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and know well how the human costs of this catastrophe drown out other perspectives that might more fully account for a non-human ‘nature’. I met and interviewed people working at all levels of community organization, many of whom were justifiably angry about how badly New Orleans had been let down by the public officials who were meant to serve it. My own understanding of the storm’s unravelling was drawn inexorably towards the bad actors and corrupt systems that not only allowed this tragedy to happen, but which actively constructed the world that made it a likely occurrence.

Showing: the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina - a house still closed off by authorities after the storm. Photograph: Anna Hartnell
Hurricane Katrina aftermath: a house still closed off by authorities after the storm. Photograph: Anna Hartnell © 2009

I came to the topic with interests in the climate crisis but even that larger horizon — with its inarguably anthropogenic features — seemed too big and baggy and not respectful enough of the specific and extraordinary ways in which New Orleans’s geography and population were exposed to environmental harms quite literally engineered by human beings. Yes, it represented a flashpoint moment and seemed to be a sign of things to come in a warming world. But the human story and the facts on the ground felt far more urgent than the bigger environmental picture.

We have invented a host of terminological designations to ensure that we do not forget the human contribution to our own ecological predicaments. ‘Environmental racism’ is a long-standing and important concept that evolved in the context of US grassroots environmental justice campaigns to remind us that it is no accident that people of colour are routinely and systematically exposed to environmental harms at far higher rates than more privileged and generally whiter populations. That African Americans were far more likely to inhabit flood-prone neighbourhoods and live close to collapsed levees is an instance of environmental racism that Katrina vividly illuminated. The same insight about human agency, intentions and systems runs through the idea that “there’s no such thing as a natural disaster”, which was widely appropriated from its initial deployment by activists, becoming the title of an academic collection of the same name, published in 2006, and also claimed, if I remember correctly, by one of the Katrina bus tours that snaked through destroyed neighbourhoods very shortly after the storm — presumably to perform the tour company’s allegiance to social justice.

It turns out that #NoNaturalDisasters is an organized campaign that formed in the years since Katrina and which has been adopted by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, to reflect mounting climate awareness in the wake of the sobering and politically momentous 2021 IPCC report — which for the first time stated unequivocally that humans are warming the planet. As the UN campaign page explains:

“By shrugging off a catastrophic event as a ‘natural disaster’ one is refusing to take responsibility for the damage and destruction … Next time you hear that phrase – ‘natural disaster’ – step up to the mark and correct the speaker: ‘There is no such thing as a natural disaster.'”

But is this protesting too much? What does this insistence entail and what do we lose sight of by refusing to see anything but human causes, actions and consequences? I’ll return to the Katrina crisis — the terminology I have preferred in my work as a way of attempting to take in the myriad points of rupture introduced by the storm as well as its illuminating role and potential as a turning point. Now, I will briefly think about these issues through what is perhaps the ‘master’ term for emphasizing human agency when it comes to environmental change: Anthropocene.

Showing: Mississippi wetlands 2012. Photograph by Anna Hartnell
Mississippi wetlands. Photograph: Anna Hartnell © 2012

Anthropocene by human choice, not by human nature

When ‘Anthropocene’ was initially proposed in 2000 as the name for a new geological era in which human agency has become central, climate denial was ubiquitous. This denial was not aimed at climate change itself — which is usually broadly accepted as a real phenomenon — but rather the human role in the crisis was disputed. Mainstream media was complicit with this narrative by framing the very existence of human-induced climate change as a ‘debate’, despite widespread scientific consensus that it was an established fact. In this context, the idea that our current era might be named the Anthropocene was an important mobilization against this denial. It was a way of naming the larger nexus of environmental harms done to Earth by human hands, but the scale of climate change has dwarfed all other related issues. The insistence that Katrina was ‘man-made’ in 2005 echoes this claim about human centrality and derives from the same political context.

Twenty years on and these contexts are fundamentally different. As Michael Mann argued in The New Climate War published in 2021, the centre of gravity of climate denial has shifted, from directly disputing human contributions via carbon emissions, to the promotion of various forms of greenwashing as ‘solutions’ to distract from the crisis. And as Curry’s twentieth anniversary documentary on Katrina demonstrates, the idea that the disaster was largely ‘human-induced’ is now widely accepted, thanks principally to community organizers who have worked tirelessly to resist attempts to whitewash the tragedy as ‘natural’ and thus inevitable.

The International Union of Geological Sciences, a representative group of the world’s geologists, voted just over a year ago to reject ‘Anthropocene’ as the official name for a new era. The proposal they voted on did not reflect the original idea put forward by Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer to identify the Industrial Revolution and specifically the invention of the steam engine as the beginning of the Anthropocene. Instead, it brought the date even further forward, to 1952, to mark the first hydrogen bomb tests. Arguably it was this decision, to squeeze the timeframe of human impact, that led to the rejection of the term. While those who dissented from this decision did so vociferously and from an environmentalist standpoint — as The Guardian pithily summarises, “critics say it is a missed chance to recognise that the planet irrevocably left its natural state in the mid-20th century” — the possible reasons for not officially embracing the term are illuminating.

As one group of scientists from outside geology put it, quoted in a New York Times article, “our impacts have less to do with being human and more to do with ways of being human.” An obvious objection to the term Anthropocene which has been sounded by environmental justice campaigners for some time now is that the majority of humans on the planet are not the problem; it is those wielding enormous wealth and power who are responsible for climate and ecological breakdown and it is wrong and politically counter-productive to suggest that there is something inevitably destructive about human interaction with the planet. This objection to the term ‘Anthropocene’ thus refuses the suggestion that it is somehow ‘natural’ that humanity destroys the environment, that destructive environmental practices are a hard-wired part of ‘human nature’.

This objection is important for understanding post-Katrina New Orleans. The claim that ‘humans’ are to blame for the disaster — not ‘nature’ — overlooks the fact that humans were from the outset blamed for the tragedy, and this was a large part of the problem. The world’s media and political commentary were complicit in constructing the storm’s victims as somehow to blame for their own need, for their lack of transportation to heed the mandatory evacuation order, for their lack of food, medication, sanitation. The appalling humanitarian crisis that overtook the New Orleans Convention Center and the Louisiana Superdome — the so-called ‘places of last resort’ — were met with revulsion and disgust, with racist stereotypes about chaos and criminality abounding. ‘Nature’ was nowhere identified, and humans were certainly in the frame — just the wrong ones. This was a striking case of what Edward Said described years before as ‘blaming the victims’. 

Natural Disaster? Showing: Vacant lots, New Orleans 2011. Photograph by Anna Hartnell
Vacant lots, New Orleans. Photograph: Anna Hartnell © 2011

If we return to planetary time scales, human history is no more than the blink of an eye. It seems that the key reason that the world’s geologists declined to embrace ‘Anthropocene’ was that the period is just too short — perhaps even if it was backdated to the Industrial Revolution, the colonization of the Americas or even the beginnings of agriculture. Writing in The New York Times, Stephen Lezak picks up on the paradoxical consequences of placing humans at the centre of geological time:

By placing Homo sapiens center stage, the Anthropocene also deepens a stark and inaccurate distinction between humanity and the planet that sustains us. The idea of ‘nature’ as something separate from humankind is a figment of the Western imagination. We should be wary of language that further separates us from the broader constellation of life to which we belong.

While the obvious rebuttal to this is that the very term Anthropocene signifies humanity’s entanglement with the planet, it does inevitably seem to put humans at the centre. It seems to usher in the very anthropocentrism it was meant to name and critique. In our rush to point the finger at ourselves we can only see ourselves. This seems unnecessarily pessimistic about human behaviour — which is not generalizable in this way — and blind to any agency which is not human.

Undoubtedly the term Anthropocene and the critique of the notion of ‘natural disasters’ have represented important stages in our conversations about environmental destruction, particularly the climate crisis, and responses to disasters. But what happens when we banish ‘nature’ as a meaningful force? What happens when we suggest, inadvertently perhaps, that humans are in full control of the ship?

Even within the context of human-made systems, this seems unrealistic. Naomi Klein’s otherwise excellent book The Shock Doctrine (2006), which explores various sites of disaster capitalism, including post-Katrina New Orlean, is sometimes limited by its reliance on ‘Chicago School’ and corporate villains. Gently pushing back on this tendency in relation to Katrina’s aftermath, my friend Cedric Johnson wrote in 2011, “inasmuch as she focuses primarily on the corporate skulduggery and White House patronage streams of the Bush era, Klein’s arguments neglect the more pervasive and equally consequential phenomenon of do-good capitalism where altruism, good will, and even social antagonisms are harnessed to the profit motive.” In our present age of conspiracy theories it is perhaps important to acknowledge and reject the seductive simplicity of the fully intending villain. The reality is more frightening.

The outcomes and long-term consequences of human choices and decisions are not fully knowable. Let alone when they are interacting with non-human ecosystems as dynamic as weather and climate. What strikes me as especially poignant on this twenty-year anniversary of one of America’s most destructive storms is not that anybody was conspiring against Katrina’s victims but rather the opposite: elites were indifferent, they did not care. There was no plan, and there certainly should have been — so much knowledge was already in place that might have averted some of the worst outcomes — but even the best laid plans can be defeated. We are not fully in control of our environments, and the fiction that we might be is surely part of the problem. New Orleans should not have been abandoned in 2005, and we should not underestimate the forces of nature that human activity has helped to unleash.

Find more

Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time, directed by Traci A. Curry, premiered on National Geographic in July 2025 and is available to watch on many streaming platforms.

The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction’s #NoNaturalDisasters campaign page explains that “Hazards may be natural. Disasters are not . … A natural hazard, such as a hurricane, earthquake, or flood, only becomes a disaster when it impacts a community that is not adequately protected, and whose population is vulnerable as a result of poverty, exclusion or socially-disadvantage.”

The Guardian article quoted is Geologists reject declaration of Anthropocene epoch, by Damian Carrington (22/3/24).

The New York Times opinion piece quoted is Scientists Just Gave Humanity an Overdue Reality Check. The World Will Be Better for It, by Stephen Lezak (22/3/24).

The Neoliberal Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, Late Capitalism, and the Remaking of New Orleans (2011), edited by Cedric Johnson, is published by University of Minnesota Press/

Anna Hartnell
Anna Hartnell
A senior lecturer in contemporary literature researching environmental justice and responses to the climate crisis, currently exploring the history of population narratives within the environmental movement ...
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“Where Have All The Birds Gone?”

Artist Michael Gresalfi shares an artwork that uses repurposed materials dating from before our mass communications ‘information age’ to witness the extensive decline of bird species and populations in his local area and the loss of natural spectacle.

820 words: estimated reading time = 3 minutes

My wife and I have lived here in our home, located in Boyds, Maryland, USA for more than 32 years. Our backyard is adjacent to a 2,500-acre regional park. Black Hill Regional Park is comprised of fields, forests, streams, ponds, and a large lake.

Over the past decade, we have noticed the precipitous loss of so many species that we previously observed, including native bees, butterflies, beetles, salamanders, frogs, toads, turtles, and birds.

Not only have we lost a number of bird species, the quantity of remaining bird populations has drastically diminished. In the past, during both the Spring and Fall migratory seasons, we would watch in awe as deep and dark ribbons of migrating birds flew overhead, oftentimes extending for many miles and for half an hour or more.

Over the past years, this substantial loss of both species diversity and populations has influenced the direction my art has taken. I find myself responding to this human-induced global environmental onslaught with an increasing focus on creating climate change focused art, and where possible relying upon recycled and repurposed materials when making my art.

If you have not watched my narrated art and science integrated slide show ‘Our Changing Planet’ please do so. My large installation “What Man Has Wrought” likewise is also available here on the ClimateCultures website.

Post-it board – sixteen reasons for bird species losses

Bird species in decline. Showing "Where Have All The Birds Gone?" Artwork by Michael Gresalfi
“Where Have All The Birds Gone?” Artwork by Michael Gresalfi © 2023

This repurposed work originated with my purchase of a 1970s-era post-it board, which I then transformed into a climate change focused work of art.

I began with a 19.5″ x 27.5″ canvas framed and unpainted machine-stamped post-it board that included the outlines of birds sitting along attached twine, along with one-inch-sized clothes pins.

Prior to the introduction of the ‘Information Age’ and the advent of personal computers and particularly smartphones, people kept track of upcoming events on paper calendars and notepads and through the use in their homes of post-it boards.

I found this post-it board, equipped with the eight intact strings and a few miniature wooden clothes pins at my local Goodwill store. The canvas was untouched, no gesso, no paint. The birds were simple outlines, and not colored. The price tag on the back indicates it was sold in the ‘pre-barcode era’.

I purchased it for US $5.00 and proceeded to paint both the background and the birds with various acrylic paints. I then used vintage filing folder plastic file tabs and associated cardboard name tags, along with purchased colorful one-inch clothes pins to create this climate change focused work.

The twenty short post-it notes posted on this repurposed board (in order) are as follows:

*Where Have All The Birds Gone?

*In the past 50 years 30% lost in N. America

*2.4 Billion have disappeared since 1970

*MANY CAUSES MAN INDUCED

*CLIMATE CHANGE

*HABITAT LOSS

*CO2 INCREASING

*SEED BEARING PLANTS DISAPPEAR

*INSECT LOSS

*PESTICIDES

*HERBICIDES

*FERTILIZERS

*MONOCULTURES

*DEFORESTATION

*POLLUTION

*CATS

*TOO DRY

*TOO WET

*TOO HOT

*TOO MUCH!

My future goal is to broaden my focus on the many other diminishing and lost species that I have observed here in my backyard and within the adjacent regional park.

I haven’t seen a salamander egg mass in the ponds in more than a decade. The mating songs of the Spring Peepers, a tiny chorus frog found in the pond directly behind our yard, is nowadays a mere whisper.

Along with Box Turtles, Bull Frogs, Possums, and Monarch Butterflies, all are prime candidates for my future works.

Find out more

You can see Michael’s video ‘Our Changing Planet’ and his large installation “What Man Has Wrought” in our Creative Showcase feature — along with more than 25 examples of other ClimateCultures members’ work.

“If you were alive in the year 1970, more than one in four birds in the U.S. and Canada has disappeared within your lifetime” — so begins Vanishing: More Than 1 In 4 Birds Has Disappeared In The Last 50 Years, an article by Gustave Axelson
(September 19, 2019) for All About Birds. The article summarises recent research led by Cornell Lab of Ornithology, which quantified for the first time the total decline in bird populations in the continental U.S. and Canada, a loss of 2.9 billion breeding adult birds. Conservation scientist Ken Rosenberg, who led the study, is quoted: “These bird losses are a strong signal that our human-altered landscapes are losing their ability to support birdlife. And that is an indicator of a coming collapse of the overall environment.”

Globally, the 2022 edition of State of the World’s Birds from BirdLife International “paints the most concerning picture for nature yet. Nearly half of the world’s bird species are now in decline, with only six percent having increasing populations. One in eight species (or 1,409 species in total) are now threatened with extinction.”

Michael Gresalfi
Michael Gresalfi
An artist who seeks to incorporate art with climate change data, and whose work in encaustic medium, glass paint, oils and acrylics includes 'Our Changing Planet'.
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Mosses and Marshes: Creative Engagement with Wetlands

Artists Andrew Howe and Kim V Goldsmith share the story of their collaborative Mosses and Marshes project, which investigates connections between fragile wetlands and their communities in England and Australia, seeking new interpretations, multiple perspectives and less-heard voices.

2,900 words: estimated reading time = 11.5 minutes

Reimagining the future of fragile wetlands through new contexts and fresh perspectives, while still allowing site specificities and shared commonalities to assert themselves, was the challenge we set ourselves as artists on opposite sides of the globe.

The connection between these landscapes — a lowland peat bog on the border between Wales and North Shropshire in the UK and a seasonally inundated marshland at the tail end of the Macquarie River in central north-west New South Wales, Australia — was made through our collaboration that began when we were paired together in 2018 under the Arts Territory Exchange remote exchange programme initiated by artist/curator Gudrun Filipska in the UK.

We had both worked outside our practices in natural resources and environment sectors for decades, and quickly identified a shared interest in how water and land are managed, in particular in our local but internationally significant wetlands, the Fenns, Whixall and Bettisfield Mosses National Nature Reserve (UK) and Macquarie Marshes (Australia). Both sites are rare habitats vital for combating climate change and supporting biodiversity.

Mosses and Marshes - showing Macquarie Marshes landscape: Lagoon on Burrima, covered in Azolla
Macquarie Marshes landscape: Lagoon on Burrima, covered in Azolla.
Photograph: Kim V. Goldsmith © 2021

The two photos below were taken in 2020 before water arrived in the Marshes after drought (click on images for full size).

Over the next three years, we conducted research and field visits at each site while maintaining an ongoing dialogue, almost entirely by email and digital file-sharing. This informed a series of individual and collaborative artworks. The initial question of what is it that connects us formed an ongoing theme throughout the project, from which sprang many other questions. Taking a holistic approach, we sought new interpretations, multiple perspectives, and less-heard voices in our investigation of these landscapes and how they are valued.

Partnerships and consultation

As the Mosses and Marshes project took shape, we developed partnerships with land managers, environmental scientists, other artists, and local communities. We each secured funding from various sources in Australia and the UK, including a project grant from Arts Council England in 2021 that allowed us to develop a series of arts events, site interventions, community engagement, talks and discussions.

Our aims were to use art to encourage people to build connections with the natural environment, think about human relationships with wetlands, and take part in conversations about the values of wetlands in addressing climate change, biodiversity, water management, as well as some of the less tangible ways, such as cultural and aesthetic values.

In the UK, Andrew partnered with Natural England and Shropshire Wildlife Trust (SWT). Natural England leads the BogLIFE project with Natural Resources Wales and SWT. This six-year project, funded by grants from the EU and The National Lottery Heritage Fund, ends in 2022 with the aim to restore 660 ha of degraded peatland and surrounding peat edge (‘lagg’) back to a functioning, healthy ecosystem. As a separately funded exercise, a derelict former scrapyard on Whixall Moss was purchased by SWT to be cleared and remediated. Over 100 truckloads of waste metals and hazardous materials and around 50,000 tyres were removed from the site.

Mosses and Marshes - showing Whixall Moss, Shropshire UK
Whixall Moss, Shropshire UK
Photograph: Andrew Howe © 2021

On first visit, it can appear that the Mosses are a natural wilderness with few obvious signs of human activity, yet it is the long history of underlying human impact that resonated with both artists as one of the key themes of enquiry in our respective landscapes.

Recognising the importance of past economic and industrial practices, both negatively and positively, needs to sit uncomfortably with our modern aspiration to live in accommodation with Earth’s systems. Providing visual clues of what went on in these wetland places before their reconfigurement is critical in order to remind us of what the Global North is responsible for, what humanity has gained and lost and what more we could lose without more entrenched responses in support of sustainability. 


English Wetlands: Spaces of Nature, Culture, Imagination, Mary Geary et al.

Kim’s partnerships took place in less formal ways, engaging local landholders and community members with connections to the Marshes through gathering and mapping audio stories about those connections, contacting scientists and academics to provide background information to issues she was exploring, and more generally connected other artists and communities in the Macquarie-Castlereagh catchment through meetings about the project and formal presentations.

Creative engagement with the mosses and marshes

Mosses and Marshes has resulted in the creation of new artworks and documentation in a range of formats for local, national, and international audiences — online and in physical exhibitions within each site’s catchment. The artworks have included sound and video installation, prints, and paintings using dyes and paper made with natural materials gathered from the landscape.

Mosses and Marshes - showing 'Territory' art by Andrew Howe (handmade paper made with bracken, reeds, purple moor grass, silver birch and heather)
‘Territory’, Andrew Howe: handmade paper made with bracken, reeds, purple moor grass, silver birch and heather. Photograph: Andrew Howe © 2021

We sought to work closely with the landscape and reveal sounds and sensory experiences not ordinarily encountered by visitors. These included recordings made of sounds encountered at night time, underwater or from within trees.

At the Mosses, a new self-guided public art trail was created using locative media for an immersive sound trail with temporary sculptural waymarkers along the trail, created by artists Elizabeth Turner and Keith Ashford. The sound trail incorporates work by both of us as co-lead artists, including the collaborative I am Walking spoken soundscape, that places the participant in a walk alongside us in the Mosses, and then into the Marshes. This sound trail, and another created in the nearby town of Wem, include soundscapes based on a range of field recordings and contributions from poets and local community members.

In the UK, community engagement centred around a project with Wem Youth Club in partnership with local artists Sue Challis and Kate Johnston and Shropshire Wildlife Trust. Groups of young people took part in site visits and workshops to create new artworks including three seven-metre-long banners that have subsequently been shown in exhibitions at Wem Town Hall and Theatre Severn, Shrewsbury. This highly successful project developed a momentum of its own, with evident desire to create long-term impact by helping the young people involved continue to build confidence in, and a sense of ‘ownership’ of, the landscape.

Mosses and Marshes - showing 'Banners on the Moss', art by Wem Youth Club at the Moss
Wem Youth Club at the Moss – Banners on the Moss
Photograph: Andrew Howe © 2021

Sustainability, for example, is not a law of the universe – ecosystems change, species come and go. It is instead a human construct, based on value judgements – we want to conserve some biodiversity, but not the Coronavirus. The concept only has meaning when choices are made about what timescale to define and how wide a net of interdependencies to consider. It is consequently as much a cultural matter as it is a scientific one.

Science cannot help with decisions about what meaning to give to any experience in the environment, or how to be reconciled to aspects of the natural world that may be spiritually challenging. Some of the deepest truths are expressible only by poetry or metaphor.

– Dave Pritchard, writing in the Foreword to Mosses and Marshes

The project to date has been documented in the Mosses and Marshes project book, published in October 2021. This publication has allowed us to expand on the themes of research and express thoughts that may not otherwise be evident in the artworks.

Showing the Mosses and Marshes book
‘Mosses and Marshes’ book
Photograph: Andrew Howe © 2021

Edited by Dr Liz Charpleix, with a foreword by Dave Pritchard (Ramsar Culture Network, and fellow ClimateCultures member), the Mosses and Marshes book contains contributions from curators Gudrun Filipska (UK) and Jamie-Lea Trindall (Australia), ecological, environmental and cultural writings by Tim Hosking (NSW Department of Planning, Industry and Environment), First Nations educators and artists Fleur and Laurance Magick Denis of Milan Dhiiyaan and Sooty Welsh (Wayilwan Elder/artist), Cathie Sleigh (Shropshire Wildlife Trust), Robert Duff (Natural England), and many other project partners and people from the communities around the Mosses and Marshes. The book cover features an overlay by Sooty Welsh, titled Walking through Country.

This book is beautifully written and presented, with the clever use of QR codes, that allows the reader to experience through sound and vision this beauty. It encouraged me to further explore the effects of colonisation on this diverse landscape, to the present-day challenges of climate change. Positively thought-provoking and beautiful.

– Natalie Cutler, an interested reader with historical family connections to the Marshes, Sydney Australia

New voices, new stories

The cultural exchange came to a significant meeting point in November 2021, through an international online panel discussion on the topic of ‘Alternative ways of understanding and valuing special environments to help shape their future’. The event brought together a group of natural resource managers, scientists, academics, and cultural consultants from Australia and the UK, all with a wealth of experience in land and natural resource management issues. Facilitated by Jessica Moore of Dubbo Regional Council, the panellists included Tim Hosking, Kate Mildner, Fleur and Laurance Magick Dennis of Milan Dhiiyaan from Australia, and Dave Pritchard, Dr Tim Acott, and Robert Duff from the UK, who discussed six questions put to them as pre-recorded videos by provocateurs from both countries — all of whom had connections to the wetlands.

From the panel event, it was evident the Mosses and Marshes may be separated by over 10 thousand miles, but many of the issues impacting them are not so different. Land ownership, access to land, and the legacy of Enclosure Acts and colonialism have been lenses through which we’ve been able to look at how the sites have been used for extracting financial value from agriculture and or peat.

Mosses and Marshes - showing artist Kim V. Goldsmith recording underwater video on “Burrima” near the North Marsh, Macquarie Marshes.
Kim V. Goldsmith recording underwater video on “Burrima” near the North Marsh, Macquarie Marshes, May 2020.

It also created an opportunity for under-represented voices to be heard. The stories of Aboriginal access to the wetlands, shared by Fleur and Laurance Magick Dennis of Milan Dhiiyaan, were so important. Speaking powerfully, with an emotional depth that could only come from an intimate, authentic connection with the land and its people, Fleur and Laurance referenced missing sounds in the landscape, the urgent need for resources to gather legitimate community representation, and a fundamental lack of access to Country. It was uncomfortable, but necessary, listening.

What they had to say aligned with other indigenous cultures across the globe around honouring what the Earth provides, taking only what is needed and acknowledging that we are all custodians and not owners of the land.

These basic sustainable principles are in direct opposition to prevailing systems for exploiting land and resources in most parts of the world. It seems like an impossible seismic shift is needed to change attitudes towards these basic principles in a river system with so many competing interests like the Marshes. Maybe in the interim, it’s about accepting that scientific and evidence-based languages aren’t the only way of knowing and doing, particularly if we accept that language often shapes behaviours.

Mosses and Marshes - showing art by Andrew Howe, 'Fenns Old Works' (former peat processing works at Fenn’s Moss).
‘Fenns Old Works’ (former peat processing works at Fenn’s Moss),
Andrew Howe: linocut peat ink © 2021

Complex issues require long-term thinking

The environmental issues of each site do not always present clear-cut solutions, with issues being more nuanced than they first appear. It is also questionable as to whether pragmatic solutions, allowing for as many concerns as possible to be considered, is ultimately best.

On the regulated Macquarie River of New South Wales, there are many competing interests impacting the Macquarie Marshes further downstream. River water supports towns, livestock and domestic users, industry, irrigated agriculture, the environment and recreational users. Taking a pragmatic, top-down approach using one set of established values could result in some wetland areas of the wider Marsh landscape being allowed to become too degraded to conserve. But as Laurance Magick Dennis said during the panel event: “If you’re a family and you’re walking in the bush and some of the family can’t make the walk and it’s up to you to look after those individuals, what are you going to do? Are you going to leave them behind to suffer, to starve, to die of thirst? That’s exactly what will happen to our river systems and the ecosystems around our wetlands. If we don’t look after those, they’ll be gone forever.” His point was that the parts form a whole – a family. Like a functional family or community, we’re all needed in the decision-making.

Through our work on the project, we came to understand that wilding is not necessarily a solution on its own without careful human guidance and management, and for that it is vital that local communities have an awareness of the issues, to understand where compromise might be acceptable, in addition to having access and opportunities to develop or regain a sense of ‘ownership’ in the landscape.

At the Mosses, for example, as part of their ongoing work towards restoring the peat bog, Natural England and partners are re-establishing the waterlogged, low nutrient conditions necessary for Sphagnum moss to flourish. However, it is acknowledged that some means of site management may need to continue beyond the BogLIFE project to control the growth of purple moor-grass which rapidly covers the bog surface and inhibits the Sphagnum moss. This is occurring more vigorously due to the increase in air-borne ammoniacal nutrients arising from nearby farms.

From several perspectives, we have identified how the landscapes must be considered in relation to deep time — both in terms of their prehistory and from the viewpoint of future generations. The video developed by Kim for the project’s exhibitions, An Ancient Land: a history of the wetland in chapters, references how Australia’s landscape formed over millions of years came to be explored, surveyed, staked, mapped, named, carved up and farmed by those with the sense and sensibilities of strangers in a foreign land.

Natural England knows that the work they are doing today may not come fully into effect for many centuries to come. So, how can people be encouraged to consider these timescales when the issues of today seem so urgent?

Unfinished work

The Mosses and Marshes project has broadened local, national and international recognition of these wetlands and their cultural and environmental importance. It has provided a platform from which to develop further artist residencies and projects involving the arts linked to the wetlands. We strongly believe our international exchange has created new contexts for each site that considers some of those intangible values previously overlooked, and it has started to bring fresh perspectives to the fore while recognising localised differences between our two wetlands.

New presentations of our creative work open in the Australian capital at M16 Artspace in Canberra, in April 2022, and at Outback Arts in Coonamble, New South Wales, in May. A programme of public events will continue in both the UK and Australia. The project is also entering a new phase we’ve called Values. Voices. Action., which follows up some of the key issues raised in the discussion panel. Those first tentative questions we asked ourselves back in 2018 have led to a range of actions that have given agency to a multitude of voices now invigorating this evolving project.

Find more

The Mosses and Marshes book is available at both artists’ websites, with northern hemisphere sales handled by Andrew and southern hemisphere by Kim: Of the Mosses – Andrew Howe & EcoPULSE – Kim V. Goldsmith

The exhibition at M16 Artspace in Canberra, Australia ran to 1st May, and then at Outback Arts in Coonamble, New South Wales, until 3rd June.

Kim V. Goldsmith (in Australia) and Andrew Howe (in the UK) began working together in 2018, having been paired together through the Arts Territory Exchange remote collaboration programme. Both the artists conducted research and on-site work in their respective wetlands that informed the creation of a series of individual and collaborative artworks for exhibitions in the UK and Australia under the title Mosses and Marshes.

Kim is an environmental artist and content producer based in the Central West of NSW, Australia. She has 30 years’ experience working across rural and regional Australia in media and marketing communications. As an artist, Kim has a keen interest in the environment and sustainable regional futures that she explores through a range of digital media and writing.

Kim acknowledges and respects the Traditional Owners and Custodians of the lands on which she works and lives.

Andrew is an interdisciplinary artist and project manager, based in Shrewsbury, working solo and in collaboration with other practitioners and community groups. He uses walking and mapping to explore how people interact with places, informed by over 30 years’ experience in engineering and environmental consulting. His practice includes painting, collage, photography, printmaking, books, and digital media.

You can read Andrew’s earlier post for ClimateCultures, A Personal History of the Anthropocene – Three Objects #13, where his objects include a bitumen spill from an old tanker on the former industrial land at the Fenn’s, Whixall & Bettisfield Mosses National Nature Reserve.

English Wetlands: Spaces of Nature, Culture, Imagination, edited by Mary Gearey, Andrew Church & Neil Ravenscroft (2020) is published by Palgrave Macmillan.

You can read about the Marches Mosses BogLIFE project at Fenn’s, Whixall & Bettisfield Mosses National Nature Reserves and Wem Moss Nature Reserve at the Marches Mosses BogLIFE website.

Andrew Howe
Andrew Howe
An interdisciplinary artist and project manager using walking and mapping to explore how people interact with places, drawing attention to human entanglements within a multi-species environment.
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Kim V. Goldsmith

Kim V. Goldsmith

An artist exploring layers of nuance, complexity and hidden elements to present rural, regional and remote landscapes and communities in ways that make the familiar, unfamiliar.
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Dead Kid’s Fingers & Living Soils

Fungus: Showing Dead Kids Fingers by Anthony BennettMultidisciplinary artist Anthony Bennett shares the inspiration behind sculptures on the crucial role of the usually disregarded fungus in returning life to soils following mass extinction events — and what this offers us in imagining possible human extinction.

840 words: estimated reading time = 3.5 minutes + 1 minute gallery

Dead Kids Fingers is a project I started some years ago now. I’ve always been a political animal. Over the years I’ve been involved in many kinds of political causes. Environmentalism, for the last ten years or so, has reinvigorated my passion for social justice.

Through the Festival of the Mind in Sheffield, which I co-conceived with Professor Vanessa Toulmin, I met a number of scientists at the University and through conversations with them, I started to learn about the tasks and the enormous issues which their research is focused upon, facing society now, and in the near future. Research concerning climate change, food security, all sorts of things, including depletion of global resources.

The fungus factor in our soils

I was particularly inspired by soil scientist/mycologist Professor Duncan Cameron. Our conversations have resulted in a number of artwork projects, and continue to do so. For one such project, I considered the worst-case scenario facing the human race; that if it doesn’t adapt and change its ways, then it could become extinct. The idea of human extinction really knocked me sideways. I suppose it fascinated me.

I learned that following the three last great Mass Extinctions on the planet, the organism that took a lead in restoring life on the planet was fungus. I learned that it originally created the soil itself, and that it has built the soil ever since by means of its mycelium rotting matter and repurposing it as soil. That we owe our entire existence to six inches of topsoil and the fact that it rains. The concept of ‘The Wood Wide Web’, coined by Duncan’s teacher and colleague Professor Sir David Read, the revelation of the hidden but active connectivity of mycelium, reinvigorated my lifelong yearning for active and purposeful collaboration, creative and open, with no proclivity to compromise or to dumbing down.

Through my research I came across the fungus Dead Man’s Fingers. Considering a post-extinction planet, and the fact that fungus is the thing which will restore some sort of life-forms, I employed the idea to use the device of a child’s finger, emerging from the earth, as a metaphor for post extinction life re-emerging, human or otherwise.

Fungus: Showing Dead Kids Fingers by Anthony Bennett
Dead Kids Fingers
Photograph: Anthony Bennett © 2020

Dead Kids Fingers

I started creating sculptures at my studio, and then created installations in woodland areas and forests nearby. I took photographs which I shared online, and exhibited some of them in group art shows, with the statement:

“Dead kids fingers address the fact that: With or without humans, fungus will revitalize the earth, as it has done following previous global extinctions. And that all life on earth is connected. In the hope that future generations will embrace the mycelial world, learn from it, and engage with it in mutualistic symbiosis.”

Maybe the lessons learned could then be put to use to actually fend off the next extinction? A purpose to life in the Anthropocene.

NB: click on image to enter slideshow and then view full size.

Dead Kids Fingers by Anthony Bennett © 2020
Dead Kids Fingers by Anthony Bennett © 2020
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(All images are © Anthony Bennett 2020 and are not to be reproduced or used without his written permission. Please contact him via his website at www.anthonybennettsculpture.co.uk)

Find more

Check out Anthony’s Instagram feed @absculpts for up to date and ongoing artworks. Anthony contributed Ace of Wands to Week 3 of our Quarantine Connection series in 2020.

You can explore the most recent Festival of the Mind schedule, for 2020, which includes a series of podcasts on various climate change, extinction and health topics — among them, Anthony’s Bittersweet Air exhibition and podcast on his work on soil in collaboration with Professor Tim Daniell.

You can find out about Professor Duncan Cameron’s work on resource fluxes and chemical signals in plant-microbe symbioses in agricultural and natural systems at his website.

The US Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service has a good introduction to the role of fungi in living soils. And How fungi’s knack for networking boosts ecological recovery after bushfires, published on The Conservation (19/3/20) discusses how fungal communities are impacted by forest fires such as the devastating ones that hit Australia in 2020 — and how the fungi help the land and its ecosystems recover.

This piece by Taylor Kubota of Stanford University (15/5/19) for Science X describes how scientists built on the pioneering work of Professor Sir David Read on fungal symbiosis to map the global Wood Wide Web. 

The world of fungi is the topic of Martin Sheldrake’s recent book, Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds and Shape Our Futures (Penguin, 2020). And in The secrets of the Wood Wide Web, (New Yorker, 7/8/16) Robert Macfarlane meets Merlin Sheldrake in London’s Epping Forest to discuss his work.

Finally, there is more at The Woodland Trust on the specific fungus that inspired Anthony’s work, Dead Man’s Fingers (Xylaria polymorpha). 

Anthony Bennett
Anthony Bennett
A multidisciplinary artist whose work, often collaborative, is inspired by difficult contemporary and future sociological concerns surrounding issues such as food security and migration.
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