Standing in the cold fresh morning, having a cigarette I shouldn't be having (“Quitting is easy. I’ve done it hundreds of times.” - Mark Twain), I inspect, to my left, the new growth of a Gum tree.
The leaves nearest me have small pockmark scars. These are the homes and eggs of Psyllids, known as Lerp. Just behind these leaves are the empty branches where the leaves have fallen off, consumed in the insects life cycle.
But I noticed something recently. Robins and Finches swing by this tree, gather at these branches and eat the Lerps.
Now this is just one lower branch of the towering gum and, looking up, there are indeed other bald branches, but for the most part the tree is surviving.
And I wonder if it's a parasitic relationship that the Psyllids have with the tree or if it's a symbiotic one, as the tree-lopper had suggested and as my housemate had spoken to. This symbiotic relationship, as I suggest it is, is a communal one. Involving more than the Psyllids and the Gum. It includes the Finches and the Robins and any other birds that might be partaking in the delicacy of the Lerp. It also includes the homes of those birds, shrubs and bushes they feel safe enough to nest in.
If there's food for the birds and there's only a few leaves taken from the gum, and the Psyllids themselves get to live their lives, is it a parasitic situation?
If there are low populations of the birds that eat the Lerp, then it is not the Psyllid that needs to be tended to but the birds. I call this a Probiotic approach, it is not the approach of conservation, land management or most Gardeners. The dishevelling habits of the Psyllids are lionised and condemned. They are propagandised to sell services of pest removal and weapons to defeat them.
Pest. Another name for the parasite.
In our endearing desire to be rid of challenges that take patience, humility and dedication, we make enemies of the world and Her children.
Part of the attack on them is their aesthetics, we don’t like the look of the pockmarked leaf. We also don’t like the look of a forest floor with sticks and logs and leaves strewn about. We don’t like verdant roadsides. We don’t like different species of trees growing right next to each other, one of them (Our favourite one) will win out.
Another part is that it is easier to kill a plant, or prune them, than it is to encourage the arrival of the predator. Now the predator, they’re our competition. If the pest is the enemy, the predator is the hero.
We want to be the hero. In the war for a pest-free world, the rule of 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend’ only exists if that enemy of my enemy happens to do everything of their own accord to arrive at the battlefield. We won’t parley in wait for their arrival, we won’t cease-fire and devote resources to their ends. We will spray the enemy and if our shared-goal friend shows up, well we might adjust the direction of our spray.
To speak to the obvious thing, this isn’t a war. Every veteran of conservation and land management will have their flashback episode before your eyes if you begin to suggest that another way is possible. It is tantamount to suggesting that peaceful dialogue should take precedent over armed conflict in [INSERT WARZONE HERE].
If you get them to break it down however, the issues are economic. Budgeting, quotas and time constraints are the problem - which is to say that the war on nature must be fought because the community building work is too expensive, the progress is less trackable and it all takes too long. Yet it is this notion of a Probiotic approach, an incentivising of community, that is the antidote to our continued framing of the undesirable as parasitic.
Ryan Dickinson
Lovely
JordZ