Marielle Anzelone, botanist and founder of NYC Wildflower Week, talks about biodiversity and why it matters to the health and future of the planet, even in urban areas.
A great memory of nature and NYC : on top of the World Trade Center on the observation deck - a dragonfly zipping around us and then off into the sky.
— Robin Middleman Filepp (@FileppRobin) May 24, 2021
Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Remote learning 10:00 AM to noon on Friday. It was economics class with Paul Krugman. Did you hear that? Today biology. Why biology? Well, in case you missed it, Saturday was the International Day for Biological Diversity as designated by the United Nations.
While it might seem like New York City's biodiversity consists mainly of pigeons, cockroaches, squirrels, rats, with maybe an occasional snowy owl or two, take a closer look around and you might be surprised. To talk about biodiversity in the city and suburbs and why preserving it warrants our attention, I'm joined once again by botanist, Marielle Anzelone, founder of New York City Wildflower Week.
Marielle, welcome back to WNYC. Thanks so much for coming on again.
Marielle Anzelone: Hi, Brian. Thanks for having me. It's great to be on.
Brian Lehrer: When we talk about biodiversity, what's the breadth of what we're referring to exactly?
Marielle Anzelone: Yes. Biodiversity sounds like a clunky word, but it's actually just the living world around us, biological diversity, biodiversity smush together. It's every living thing that you see in your walk, in the world around you. We have soil arthropods, wildflowers, birds, butterflies, and lichen, fungi, ferns, and they live wild all around us. We're not talking about things that are like pests. We're not talking about planted gardens, but we're talking about all those wild pieces that grow and live on their own.
Brian Lehrer: Wildflowers, soil anthropods. Maybe I should say birds, butterflies, ants, lichen, fungi, ferns. Your focus is primarily New York City. What are some of the most interesting or important types of biodiversity in New York City and vicinity?
Marielle Anzelone: We have so much in New York City. It's remarkable. I think one of the plants I'd like to give a little shout-out to is common blue violet. It is very common as its name and furs, and it's just a cute little violet coat colored violet. True to its name. Some violets are different colors. This one is a really pretty purpley blue color, and it's in everybody's lawn. It's an every tree pit, and I think people just think, "Oh, it's a weed," but it's actually a little native plant. It does grow weaselly, but it also feeds the caterpillars of fritillary butterflies. If we didn't have common blue violet in the landscape, we would not have fritillary butterflies, and that is part of what makes these violets so special.
Brian Lehrer: That's a good one. You want to shout out another one? That was so interesting. Another cool species we could find around here of any kind?
Marielle Anzelone: Oh my gosh. Well, we just have so many. We have pink lady's slipper orchid. We have native sunflowers, a giant sunflower. We have amphibians, there's a fowler's toad, a two-line salamanders. Salamanders, you can find on under rocks and woody places. We have so many insects; green darners, seaside dragonlets, which are little dragonflies, [inaudible 00:03:33].
We have solitary bees, one of which is the Audrina species, and it pollinates or spring wildflowers. There's ebony jewelweed, which is a gorgeous kind of dragonfly as well. It's a beautiful black with a jewel tone blue. We have fungi, we have dead man's fingers, which is butter, crazy names. We have Atlantic sturgeon in our oceans and our rivers, and we have horseshoe crab. It's just all the living things that are all around us.
Brian Lehrer: Why does biodiversity matter to people other than to look at the adorable butterflies or ferns or anything else that we might single out for our visual pleasure? Why does biodiversity matter to people who have chosen to live in the built environment of a place like New York City?
Marielle Anzelone: Right. People think, "Oh, I live in a city. I don't need nature," but that's completely false. One of the issues that I have with how we define New York City is that I think we define it badly because we only define it as hardscapes and humans, leave the nature part out, but you could go to Times Square, and if you pay attention, you would see some living nature around you. I've been there and I've seen dragonflies, and I've seen different kinds of birds and butterflies. It's not because I'm Snow White, it's all around us.
This nature is so critical. First of all, food. Pollination comes from all the insects that we have in our area. People think of pollination primarily as coming from honeybees, but these are actually more of like an agricultural domesticated animal, like a cow. They're not native to hear, they were important to hear, but we have lots of native species of bees that do an excellent job of pollinating that don't get any credit. We rely on them in surplus to pollinate our food crops.
Also, New York City water. People love to talk about how great our water is. Well, it's the watershed upstate in the Catskills that provides us clean delicious water. Thanks to the forests, because the rainwater that falls in those areas, percolates through the soil and into our aquifers, and we end up drinking that. We would have less available water if these forests were cut.
In some places like in the tropics, you can stand and watch on the edge where an area has been clear cut, and it's still forested in the tropical rain forest, and watch it rain only over the forest. The water that we have primarily comes through plants. Plants take in 99% of the water and-- Sorry, of the 100% of the water plants take in, they transpire 99%. That's part of the water cycle, and it's facilitated by vegetation. Also just air-breathing. We all like to breathe. Oxygen comes from plants. Given all these different examples, humans would not survive without nature, but we just don't ever really think about it in that way.
Brian Lehrer: At the policy level, and my guest is New York City botanist and founder of New York City Wildflower Week, Marielle Anzelone. At the policy level, I see you organized a mayoral candidate forum last week on Nature and Equity moderated by environmentalist, Majora Carter, all about nature in the city. What kinds of mayoral policy issues did you raise relevant to biodiversity?
Marielle Anzelone: Believe it or not, there are a lot of them. In some ways, New York City is sadly the biodiversity, Dark Ages. We don't talk about biodiversity. I think it's because, again, we see ourselves as being post-nature. The people everywhere, even in cities, even in New York City, need nature.
Some of the things that we talked about, we had a really great group of organizations supporting our work. I co-organized it with my colleague, Georgia Silvera Seamans, and we were thrilled to have Kathryn Garcia come on. She talked about American eels that were native to Staten Island. That was really exciting to hear her speak so knowledgeably about that. It would have been nice to have Shaun Donovan and some of the other leading mayoral candidates on too, but I think they feel like biodiversity isn't that important, but if we're not thinking about this locally, then we're going to lose what we have.
Some of the issues that came up were, believe it or not, a lot of the equity issues do also fall around nature, and an environmental justice perspective. There's a neighborhood in Graniteville, that's on the North Shore of Staten Island that's an environmental justice community. They are fighting to preserve a wetland that saves their homes from superstorm sandy. It's coastal forests and marshes that worked as a buffer and acts like a sponge to absorb the water that came through during the storm.
New York City Council voted in 2017 to have the site be built for a big box store, even though right next door there's a giant empty lot with nothing in it currently. City Council also is pushing towards a climate agenda. Climate gets a lot of focus, but the fact that this natural buffer that costs us nothing save these people's homes and now they're fighting to have their voices heard, it just shows the disconnect between talking about big oil and the environment or wind power and solar panels, and the environment and not talking about also nature and the environment.
Brian Lehrer: There's a city council resolution I see asking president Biden to have the US ratify a UN convention on biodiversity?
Marielle Anzelone: Yes. This is something that comes from a member, someone Rosenthal introduced just this spring, and it's resolution number 1567. It does just that it calls on the US to be part of the United Nations convention on biological diversity. Everyone knows the Paris climate accord, and that is a really important global treaty asking all countries to make a commitment to address the climate emergency. This is a sister policy that is organized by a comparable UN division, but the United States, unlike the Paris accord, the United States has never been party to this treaty. It's been read by every single United Nations party. I think it's 195 different countries [crosstalk]
Brian Lehrer: But not the United States. What are the politics of that? Do you know?
Marielle Anzelone: I think what happened, in 1992, this was in Rio, and in 1992, I think at the time, president Clinton had signed it and the Republican Congress punted on it, and it's just never come back up into, it's just never been, I guess, considered important enough to be readdressed. Despite the Obama administration being in, no one's really taking a second look at this. There's studies that show that this has caused a lot of, but the topic has really suffered, that there are-- the United States is the richest country in the world. We've never paid dues to the CBD. The president of the United States has never led a discussion with global leaders on what the United States role is going to be, and just all the muscle that the US can bring to bear to a topic.
In that regard, biodiversity has suffered. There's a peer reviewed journal paper that shows that compared to climate, biodiversity gets less funding. There are fewer people studying it, and there's less policy around it. It's something that's trailing climate. Of course, everyone wants climate to be so important, but we have, unfortunately, we have two global emergencies, and bio-diversity is the other one.
Brian Lehrer: As we come to the end of this segment, we knew this was going to be remote learning 10:00 AM to noon on biology. I didn't realize it was going to be remote learning 10:00 AM to noon on bio politics. I had no idea that the United States is the only member, out of 190 plus of the United Nations, not to sign that biodiversity treaty. News as well as science with Marielle Anzalone, founder of New York City Wildflower Week and a New York City botanist. Thank you so much for coming on with us again.
Marielle Anzelone: Thank you so much, Brian. It's been great.
Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC, and much more to come.
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