Resurgence & Ecologist magazine Issue 350 • May/June 2025
Unexpected pollinators

issue cover 350

In this issue we celebrate pollinators – and not just the ones you would expect us to include. Bees and butterflies, of course, but slugs and snails and mice and bats and lizards and beetles are important pollinators too. As are wind and water.

We extend the idea of ‘Unexpected Pollinators’ to introduce people who are working to encourage others to champion the natural world and recognise what we stand to lose if we don’t all work to protect our planet.

You will meet Dax Dasilva, a Canadian Tech entrepreneur working with Jane Goodall to help protect Indigenous wisdom in the Amazon, and influencer Lydia Millen, who uses her high fashion platform to share her love of gardening and bees. Both unexpected pollinators and, perhaps, equally unexpected champions of the natural world.

In our Slow Read, psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist explains why we must strive to be worthy of trust – the single quality that he believes will steer us out of the mega-crises we face together, and in our Art & Culture section, writer Lucy Shrimpton visits Fenix, the new museum of human migration in Rotterdam.

Our special theme is a celebration of many facets of pollination – from Anisha Jaya Minocha’s reflection on her experience of bhramari (yoga’s calming bee breath) to an artist’s statement from Freddie Yauner who paints with pollen to highlight the plight of pollinators.

We offer a though-provoking issue with something for everyone and plenty to get you thinking about the way you too can be a pollinator and champion of right thinking and thus, of the natural world.

Highlights

  • We must strive to be worthy of trust: Iain McGilchrist
  • Nature’s Big Tech Champion: Susan Clark interviews Dax Dasilva
  • Introducing the Beetle Lady: Katie Dancey-Downs interviews M.G. Leonard
  • Pollinators and scent: Simon Constantine
  • Nerves of steel: J. P. O’Malley

Featured articles

Queering conservation

Freelance educator and conservation forester Kara Moses explores heteronormativity in conservation practice. “As queer ecology gains more traction and awareness … the list of species recognised as practising same-sex sexual behaviour is ever growing.”
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Nature's Big Tech Champion

Susan Clark interviews tech entrepreneur Dax Dasilva, who is using his credentials as an unexpected environmentalist to support those frontline Indigenous communities whose knowledge is key to understanding what we have lost and what we might still lose.
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In the breath of a bee

Anisha Jaya Minocha shares a very personal bee-related exploration of sound and scripture, and offers a deeply felt message about our living connection with creation. “Breathwork reverberates through noticing this subtle essence, where sound reveals the oneness in all.”
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Defining and renovating our forests

Lauren E. Oakes explores the history of our forests and discusses what their vital role in our future could look like. She explains that repairing Nature need not come at the expense of other land users but does require a shift in mindset.
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Tuning in to the Earth

Evolutionary guide, Padma Aon Prakasha uses his knowledge of ancient wisdom to explore the power of Earth frequency, and explains how to find it within us. “Earth within and Earth without is full of compassion, kindness, generosity and love.”
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Learning from how Nature shares harvests

Holly Rose reviews The Serviceberry: An Economy of Gifts and Abundance by Robin Wall Kimmerer, and asks whether the slow, people-led ethos of gift economies is radical enough. Could it be a balm for our times?
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Picture Credits

Cover image: Mangrove by Beatrice Forshall; Queering conservation: Queer Ecology by Mary Tremonte; Nature’s Big Tech Champion: Dax Dasilva in the Pitt River Watershed, BC © Alan Katowitz; In the breath of a bee: Bee 27 (Drone Comb), 2011 by Rebecca Clark; Defining and renovating our forests: Wistman's Wood by Andrew Gifford; Tuning in to the Earth: Nature's assurance by Rachel Grant; Learning from how Nature shares harvests: Detail from A museum of Bohemian waxwings by Jane Tomlinson

Images from Resurgence and Ecologist Magazine issue 350

Inside this issue

Article is free for all to view

Welcome

Unsung heroes

Bats, mice, lizards, slugs, snails, fish, beetles, spiders, frogs, crabs, ants, moths, woodlice, tortoises, snakes, earwigs, wind, water and… humans

Regulars

Noticeboard

Highlighting stories for change

Ecologist

Queering conservation

On the downsides of heteronormativity

The return of the red kite

Reporting on a conservation success story

Connected life

Nature's Big Tech Champion

An interview with entrepreneur and environmentalist Dax Dasilva

Rooted innovation

Meeting changemaker Joycelyn Longdon

It all starts with seeds

A short extract from The Accidental Seed Heroes

The slow read

We must strive to be worthy of trust

Making the case for the right-brain quality that could help us out of the 'metacrisis' together

Unexpected pollinators

Bees: a guide for the curious

Introducing a new Nature series of books

Introducing… the Beetle Lady

Katie Dancey-Downs interviews M.G. Leonard

In the breath of a bee

A personal reflection

Pollinators and scent

Investigating the role of scent in communication

Wisdom and wellbeing

Acknowledging abundance

Summer is all about trust in the bounty of the natural world

Defining and renovating our forests

Exploring the history of our woodlands

Tuning in to the Earth

On the power of Earth's frequency

Wild enchantments

Remembering how a plant first 'pollinated' him

Art and culture

Stories of human movement

Reflecting on a visit to Fenix, Rotterdam's new museum of migration

How language shapes our relationship with the natural world &

Sharing the work of poet Isabel Galleymore

Nerves of steel

Meeting the documentarians behind a film about one of Europe's most polluted cities

Art for your oceans &

The curators of Artwise explain their latest project with WWF

Reviews

Nature writing that allows Nature to speak

Review of Is A River Alive?

Learning from how Nature shares harvests

Review of The Serviceberry: An Economy of Gifts and Abundance

Choosing stewardship of our food system

Review of The Nature of Nature: The Metabolic Disorder of Climate Change

It’s a question of equity and better balance

Review of Just Earth: How a Fairer World Will Save the Planet

Where should we direct our action?

Review of Climate Radicals: Why Our Environmental Politics Isn’t Working

The case for coexistence

Review of The Wolf Within

Reimagining a flourishing future

Review of Transformative Adaptation: Another World Is Still Just Possible