Bad at Goodbyes

Rough Transcript

Intro 00:05

Welcome to Bad at Goodbyes.

On today’s show we consider the Caroline’s Pink.

Species Information 02:05

The Caroline’s Pink is a critically endangered flowering herbaceous perennial plant native to North Caicos and Middle Caicos, islands in the Turks and Caicos archipelago, a British Overseas Territory in the Caribbean region, though in the Atlantic Ocean. Its scientific name is Stenandrium carolinae and it was first described in 1960.

 

Description

Caroline’s Pink is small and low-growing; they are acaulescent. Meaning that they have an extremely short stem, not visible above the soil, so the leaves often lay flat against the ground. The leaves are elliptic, oval shaped, tapering at the tip and at the base where the leaf emerges from the soil. The leaves are roughly 1 inch long and half an inch wide with entire margins, that is smooth edges. Both the upper and lower surface of the leaves are covered in a dense pubescence, tiny hairs, trichomes, an adaptation to prevent water loss, in their hot windy Caribbean habitat.

 

Water loss, that is transpiration, is the evaporation of water from like the above ground parts of a plant, generally the leaves and stem. This is a key mechanism in the plant’s internal nutrient transport system, kind of like its circulatory system. So, the plant’s leaves release water vapor from tiny pores called stomata. That release creates an internal suction pressure which draws water and nutrients up through the plant, from the roots, to the leaves.

 

This process, the transpiration rate, is partially regulated by the humidity at the leaves’ surface. Humidity describes how dense the atmosphere is with water, how much water vapor is in the air. So, the leaves release water vapor, from the stomata, the tiny pores, some evaporates and some accumulates in what’s called a boundary layer, a thin layer of high humidity at the leaf’s surface. Water vapor evaporating vs accumulating affects the plants transpiration rate.

 

So, on a hot windy day, the heat will increase evaporation, and the wind will interrupt the leaves’ boundary layer, dissipating the humid air on its surface, both of which significantly increase the rate of transpiration. The rate of water loss.

 

And so the Caroline’s Pink leaves are covered in these tiny hairs, these trichomes that serve to help block the wind and sun. The hairs help to hold in water vapor, trapping it against the leaves’ surface and they also reflect sunlight, reducing evaporation, decreasing the rate of the transpiration, preventing water loss.

 

So Caroline’s Pink is adapted to its dry tropical habitat, the low-growing form, the tricomes. But when they flower they grow a relatively tall flower stalk, up to 5 inches in height to rise above the undergrowth, to be conspicuous to potential pollinators. At the top of the stalk grows an inflorescence, a flower cluster of violetty-pink 5 petaled blooms.

 

Reproduction

The Caroline’s Pink is a perennial, meaning they live for multiple years, flowering and reproducing multiple times. They generally bloom in the spring. And are likely pollinated by bee and butterfly.

 

Once pollinated, they produce small dry dehiscent capsular fruit. So, a hardened dry fruit, less than a half inch in diameter, a capsule that contains the seeds, which later splits open to release them. The seeds are dispersed by ballochory, expelled by force, like “shot” away from the plant. So the capsule fruit splits open and the seeds are flung away from the parent plant, distributed so the new seedlings are not in direct competition with the parent for soil nutrients.

 

Habitat

This is a vital adaptation to the Caroline’s Pink’s relatively resource poor native habitat. The Caroline’s Pink is native to two islands in the Turks and Caicos archipelago, North Caicos and Middle Caicos. Located in the Caribbean region, in the Atlantic Ocean, roughly equidistant from both mainland North and South America, roughly 600 miles from each.

 

These islands are small, together only about 100 sq miles. The Caroline’s Pink is found just inland from the coast in a pine rockland ecosystem, a rocky landscape of weathered, crevassed, and jagged limestone, with thin soils, and an open canopy dominated by Caicos Pine with an understory of sparse low growth fire-adapted vegetation. 

 

Historically, this area would see wildfire, ignited by lightning, every 3-10 years. These low-intensity burns clear out undergrowth and consume fallen pine needles returning nutrients to the soil. Fire adapted conifers, like the Caicos Pine would survive. As would low-growing acaulescent perennials, like our Caroline’s Pink, whose root systems survive underground, regrowing in newly resourced soils, in a landscape cleared of competition for light and nutrients.

 

The Caroline’s Pink’s range in these pineyards, is very small, only about 5 square miles total.

 

This is a tropical savanna climate with summer high temperatures that can reach into the mid-90s°F; winter lows only dipping into the 60s°F. Annual rainfall is low, averaging roughly 30 inches per year and is highly seasonal, most of which falls between June and November.

 

The Caroline’s Pink shares its island home with:

Caicos Skink, Caicos Barking Gecko, Turks and Caicos Rock Iguana, West Indian Osprey, Turks and Caicos Curly-Tail Lizard, Bahama Woodstar Hummingbird, Buffy Flower Bat, Caicos Encyclia Orchid, Caicos Pygmy Boa, Turks Island Leaf Butterfly, North Caicos Milkweed Vine, Thick-Billed Vireo, Capillary Buttonbush, Hatpin Sedge, Britton’s Buttonbush, Greater Antillean Bullfinch, Drury’s Hairstreak Butterfly, Blue Land Crab, Turks and Caicos Heather, Caicos Pine, and many, many more.

In the Dream

————

In the dream,

 

To live on the outskirts of paradise,

In the wind-swept bits, in the forgotten bits,

In the parched cracks between glittering coasts,

 

Among the towering pines,

Aching for fire, aching for rain,

Peeking out from low cover

to blossom.

 

A tiny cluster of pink

On the dusty backroad to Elysium.

 

In the dream.

————

Threats

Historically, human activity has resulted in significant habitat destruction on North Caicos and Middle Caicos. Land cleared for construction, development, and infrastructure expansion, generally to cater to tourism, has profoundly reduced the available habitat for the Caroline’s Pink.

 

Human intervention has also disrupted the pineyards natural fire cycles, resulting in a buildup of overgrowth, which compete for light and nutrients.

 

But today, the most pressing threat to the Caroline’s Pink is in fact a threat to the Caicos Pine. The human introduced invasive Pine Tortoise Scale insect has devastated the Caicos Pine. First recorded in 2005, the scale insect has since wiped out 95 percent of the Caicos Pine population, a catastrophic loss in general, and a catastrophic loss of a keystone species in the Caroline’s Pink’s habitat. As the scale insect feeds on the pine it excretes a sticky substance that fosters the growth of black sooty mold. This mold covers the leaves of understory plants, including the Caroline’s Pink, blocking sunlight, impeding photosynthesis. Additionally, as the Caicos Pines die, the ecosystem is shifting from an open savannah to a more densely foliaged overstory, also shading out low growing vegetation. The conservation and protection of the Caicos Pine is likely critical to the longterm survival of the Caroline’s Pink.

 

Additionally human induced climate change, global warming due to persistent over-reliance on fossil fuel burning, is an oncoming threat. Areas of the Caroline’s Pink’s range are only a few feet above sea level. And so, as a warmer climate results in melting icecaps, our oceans rise. The coasts and immediate inland, of low lying islands, like North Caicos and Middle Caicos, are threatened by sea-level rise, initially by saltwater intrusion, which would kill freshwater vegetation.

 

Relatedly, the Caribbean region is seeing an increase in the frequency and severity of extreme weather, again the result of human-induced climate change, specifically hurricanes. More intense hurricanes means larger storm surges, which inundate the low elevation pineyards with saltwater, again causing mortality to both the pines and to understory vegetation like the Caroline’s Pink.

 

Conservation

Fortunately, the Caroline’s Pink is legally protected in Turks and Caicos, law which now requires consideration of the species prior to new construction and development. 

 

Their seeds have been collected and stored safely off-site at the Kew Royal Botanic Gardens’ Millennium Seed Bank.

 

And conservation interest in the Caicos Pine has brought attention to this habitat which will likely have positive repercussions for the Caroline’s Pink.

 

Nevertheless the Caroline’s Pink has been considered critically endangered on the IUCN Red List since 2012 and their population is currently in decline.

 

Our most recent counts estimate that less than 975 Caroline’s Pink remain in the wild.

Citations 20:16

Information for today’s show about the Caroline’s Pink was compiled from:

 

Earle-Mundil, H., Manco, B., Hamilton, M. & Clubbe, C. 2012. Stenandrium carolinae. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2012: e.T16726348A16727210. –  https://dx.doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.2012-1.RLTS.T16726348A16727210.en

 

Franck, Alan R., and Thomas F. Daniel. 2015. “Taxonomic and Nomenclatural Notes on Six Genera of Acanthaceae in the West Indies.” Proceedings of the California Academy of Sciences, Series 4, 62 (10): 309–29. – https://www.researchgate.net/publication/285235613_Taxonomic_and_Nomenclatural_Notes_on_Six_Genera_of_Acanthaceae_in_the_West_Indies

 

Institute for Regional Conservation. n.d. “Stenandrium carolinae.” Plants of the Bahama Archipelago. – https://regionalconservation.org/ircs/database/plants/PlantPageBAH.asp?TXCODE=Stencaro

 

Leonard, Emery C. 1960. “Acanthaceae Americanae Novae vel Criticae.” Wrightia 2: 75–82. – https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/766031

 

Long,  Robert W. 1970. “The Genera of Acanthaceae in the Southeastern United States.” Journal of the Arnold Arboretum 51 (3): 257—309. – https://doi.org/10.5962/bhl.part.7043.

 

May, Christopher, Samuel Pike, Katie Medcalf, B. Naqqi Manco, Dodly Prosper, and Junel Blaise. 2024. “Conservation and Resilience.” Times of the Islands, Spring 2024. – https://www.timespub.tc/2024/03/conservation-and-resilience/

 

Pelembe, T., and G. Cooper, eds. UK Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies: 2011 Biodiversity Snapshot. Peterborough, UK: Joint Nature Conservation Committee, 2011. – https://jncc.gov.uk/resources/e5d8c245-e94d-4043-b1b8-f353c27cd9b4#ot-biodiversity2011-turks-caicos-appendices.pdf 

 

Pienkowski, Mike, ed. 2002. Plan for Biodiversity Management and Sustainable Development around Turks & Caicos Ramsar Site. Version 1.00. Turks & Caicos National Trust and UK Overseas Territories Conservation Forum. – https://www.ukotcf.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/TCIRamsarSiteManPlan.pdf

 

UK Overseas Territories Conservation Forum. n.d. “Turks and Caicos Islands.” – https://www.ukotcf.org.uk/wider-caribbean/turks-and-caicos-islands/

 

Sanchez, Michele Dani, Bryan Naqqi Manco, Junel Blaise, Marcella Corcoran, Martin Allen Hamilton. 2019. “Conserving and Restoring the Caicos Pine Forests: The First Decade.” Plant Diversity 41 (2): 75–83. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pld.2018.05.002

 

For more information about conservation on the Turks and Caicos islands please see the UK Overseas Territories Conservation Forum at https://www.ukotcf.org.

Music 22:18

Pledge 28:28

I honor the lifeforce of the Caroline’s Pink. I will commit its name to my record. I am grateful to have shared time on our planet with this being. I lament the ways in which I and my species have harmed and diminished this species. I grieve.

 

And so, in the name of the Caroline’s Pink I pledge to reduce my consumption. And my carbon footprint. And curb my wastefulness. I pledge to acknowledge and attempt to address the costs of my actions and inactions. And I pledge to resist the harm of plant and animal kin and their habitat, by individuals, corporations, and governments.

 

I forever pledge my song to the witness and memory of all life, to a broad celebration of biodiversity, and to the total liberation of all beings.

Rough Transcript

Intro 00:05

Welcome to Bad at Goodbyes.

On today’s show we consider the Macedonian Grayling.

Species Information 02:05

The Macedonian Grayling is a critically endangered butterfly native to the white marble mountains of North Macedonia in southeastern Europe. Its scientific name is Pseudochazara cingovskii and it was first described in 1973.

 

Description

The Macedonian Grayling is a small butterfly with a roughly two inch wingspan. The bottomside of their wings, the ventral side, the sides we see when the wings are closed, are light grey, and pale yellow, with light brown patches, and soft slightly darker lines. This coloration and patterning is a camouflage adapted to their habitat; they convincingly blend into the stoney marble landscape of their range.

 

The topside of the Macedonian Grayling’s wings, the dorsal side, the side we see when the wings are open, are a greyish brown, with stripes of pale yellow that darken into a reddish yellow, and with two large dark black ocelli per wing. Ocelli are eyespots, these are circular patterns on the wings of many butterfly and moth, that mimic eyes; this is an adaptation to confuse and startle potential predators, like birds, spiders, and dragonflies.

 

So there’s two protective strategies at play here, an initial reliance on stealth, camouflage, avoiding detection, and then simply by opening their wings, the butterfly can use fear and surprise to deter their predators.

 

Behavior

These are vital adaptations as the Macedonian Grayling is considered generally sedentary: they are infrequent flyers, they fly in small short bursts, rarely rising more than a few feet off the ground. Most of their days are spent basking or resting, and throughout their lives they’ll remain within a very small area, roughly less than half a square mile.

 

Macedonian Grayling are coldblooded, ectothermic, and so early mornings are spent basking on south-facing slopes of marble rock to raise their body temperature. Then they’ll forage, feeding nearby on the flower’s nectar of Knapweed and Prickly Thrift plants. As temperatures peak in the afternoon, they rest in the shade: in rock crevices or under overhangs or in shrub foliage, to survive the midday heat. They’ll briefly rouse again before dusk and then with sunset as temps cool, the butterfly goes dormant for the night.

 

Lifecycle

The Macedonian Grayling has an annual univoltine lifecycle, meaning they live for roughly a year, and produce one brood of offspring per year. They have four stages in their lives. First, the larval stage: emerging from their eggs in July or August, as tiny caterpillars; feeding on Meadow-grass and Fescue, and growing through summer and autumn in a series of molts. The caterpillar have a hard protective exoskeleton, and so as they consume plant matter and grow in size this exoskeleton becomes like a physical constraint. They get like too big for their armor. In order to continue growing, the caterpillar must shed this constrictive casing and replace it with a larger one. So, they produce hormones to begin to detach from their old exoskeleton and release a molting fluid that dissolves the inner parts of the old skin, recycling these “digested” nutrients to grow a new, larger exoskeleton underneath. To then shed the old outer part, the caterpillar swallows air or water swelling its body, splitting open the old exoskeleton, which it crawls out of. Then after emerging, the caterpillar must expand its new exoskeleton before it hardens. It continues to swell itself up, while a chemical reaction occurs in its skin cells strengthening and stiffening the new exoskeleton; a new larger suit of armor, to grow into, until they need to molt again.

 

In the Macedonian Grayling, this process repeats through the autumn, until the weather cools and the caterpillar goes dormant for the winter, slowing life functions, pausing feeding, growth, and development. This state is called diapause.

 

When the weather warms, and the landscape greens in the springtime, the Macedonian Grayling returns to feeding and molting until roughly May, after which they pupate and undergo metamorphosis. So, before their final molt, the last shedding of exoskeleton, they burrow into the soil, creating a tiny underground chrysalis in which to transform. Pedantic Note: moths metamorphose in cocoons, butterflies metamorphose in chrysalises.

 

Metamorphosis inside the chrysalis. Our caterpillar becomes a butterfly. Safely underground, the Macedonian Grayling caterpillar sheds its final exoskeleton and then releases digestive fluids, specialized chemicals that breakdown its own muscles, digestive tract, and much of its nervous system, into a nutrient-rich swirl of proteins, fats, and carbohydrates; this is the fuel for its forthcoming transformation.

 

And while most of the caterpillar’s tissues are broken down, its respiratory system and its heart continue to function and the imaginal discs remain intact. Imaginal discs are cell clusters, think like stem cells, that will differentiate into adult butterfly body structures. There’s an imaginal disc for the head, for the thorax, two for the forewings, two for the hindwings, six for the legs, etc. And so these cell clusters absorb the surrounding broken down liquid nutrients and grow, expanding into more complex structures and then connecting to one another. The wing discs grow to meet the thorax disc, the legs to the thorax, the thorax to the head. Cells continuing to specialize and differentiate; structures connecting, until we have a butterfly.

 

The butterfly then emerges from its underground pupal shell, through the soil to the surface. Their wings, at this point, are soft and tiny but they quickly harden and our new adult takes their first flight.

 

The adult Macedonian Grayling, lives for only about two weeks. Basking, resting, avoiding predators, and seeking a mate. The wings of the adult male Grayling have specialized androconial scales (scent scales), that produce pheromones to attract females, a form of sexual communication, received via antennae, that help female butterfly locate and assess potential mates.

 

Reproduction

Butterfly mate tail-to-tail and after mating the female seeks potential egg laying sites. Unlike many butterfly who lay eggs on the plants on which their larvae feed, Macedonian Grayling’s oviposit, that’s lay their eggs, in tiny cracks in the marble rock of their habitat.

 

The eggs develop for about three weeks, the larvae emerge and we begin again that four part lifecycle: a few weeks as an egg, about tens months as a caterpillar, about a month as a pupa metamorphosing underground, and then just a few weeks as an adult butterfly.

In The Dream

————

In the dream,

 

The dream of all earthbound, hungry things:

To change.

To become beautiful.

To fly.

 

To shed the stiff constrictions that can no longer hold me.

To breakdown the bits that no longer serve me.

To reorganize my longings into something brighter, something lighter.

 

To bask, to flutter, to sip a flower’s nectar

Howsoever briefly,

In the dream.

————

Habitat

The Macedonian Grayling is native to central North Macedonia, in southeastern Europe, specifically to the Pletvar Pass, a mountainous region in the Prilep Municipality. This is a landscape of steep, white marble and limestone slopes, with minimal soil and sparse vegetation; an arid high-altitude rocky shrubland, where the white stone reflects sunlight, creating a microclimate significantly warmer than the surrounding regions.

 

Blocks of white and light-gray marble protrude from the mountain slopes in outcrops marked by fissures and crevasses, a rough, textured landscape of gorges and rock fragments, small stones and large boulders, with sparse vegetation in pockets of low-lying shrubs and grasses.

 

Here, the Macedonian Grayling is found in seven small subpopulations across two hillsides, at altitudes of one half to one mile above sea level, a total area of less than four square miles. Though all concentrated in a small region, tracking studies have shown that the sedentary lifestyle of the Grayling means these subpopulation populations rarely interbreed.

 

The climate here is very seasonal. Summer months are hot and dry with high temperatures reaching into the 90s°F. But the winters are cold and sometimes snowy, with temperatures dropping into the 20s°F. The area receives roughly 25 inches per year of precipitation, with the majority falling during spring and autumn.

 

The Macedonian Grayling shares it marbled mountain with:

Prickly Thrift, Balkan Crocus, Macedonian Cicada, Bug Orchid, Balkan Fir, European Field Cricket, Juniper, Orchard Grass, Meadow Grass, Golden Eagle, Wall Lizard, Hungarian Oak, Scarce Swallowtail, Marble Rock-rose, Sheep’s Fescue, Rock Thrush, Knapweed, Wild Boar, Gray Wolf, Nose-horned Viper, Macedonian Mouse, Egyptian Vulture, Biting Stonecrop, Rock Partridge, and many many more.

 

Threats

In the 20th and into the 21st century, the primary threat to the Macedonian Grayling is industrial mining, commercial marble extraction. Currently, active quarries mine at five of the seven subpopulation sites, with wide-ranging impact on the butterfly’s habitat. There’s of course direct habitat destruction, the landscape marred by industrial equipment and marble extraction itself. Mining processes also produce a fine particulate matter, marble dust, that settles on surrounding vegetation, rendering it inedible to a Grayling caterpillar. And mining results in runoff toxic with heavy metals like zinc or lead that pollutes nearby groundwater, which is absorbed by the grasses the caterpillar feeds on and by the flowering shrubs the adult sips from, harmful to both.

 

Poaching is an additional contemporary threat. The Macedonian Grayling’s rarity means it is a sought after specimen in the blackmarket exotic insect species trade. An October 2025 article in the Brussels Times reports that Macedonian Graying individuals are poached, killed, pinned in displayed cases, and legally sold for 18-50 euros, like 35 bucks. A loophole in EU conservation law means that: “there are no penalties for selling or possessing [Macedonian Grayling specimen] once they have entered the EU market.”

 

And lastly anthropogenic, human-induced, climate change is an approaching threat. Climate models indicate that global warming, resulting from persistent over-reliance on fossil fuels, threaten over half of Europe’s endangered butterflies, including the Macedonian Grayling, whose already arid habitat will see increasing drought and extreme temperatures and weather in a warmer future.

 

Conservation

Fortunately, the North Macedonia government enacted legal protection of the Macedonian Grayling in 2011. These are laws which banned poaching and required consideration of the species by the commercial marble mining industry.

 

Public awareness campaigns, highlighting the rarity and the need to protect the species, have been implemented in the Prilep, Pletvar area.

 

That said, mining persists in the region. And poaching persists. A 2025 push to close the loophole that allows for the technically legal sale of these butterfly specimen in the EU, is, as yet, unresolved.

 

The Macedonian Grayling has been considered critically endangered on the IUCN Red List since 2010 and their population is currently in decline.

 

Our most recent counts estimate that less than 2500 Macedonian Grayling remain in the wild.

Citations 24:52

Information for today’s show about the Macedonian Grayling was compiled from:

 

Apelblat, Mose. “How Legal Loopholes Make EU a Destination for Illegal Wildlife Trade.” The Brussels Times, October 7, 2025 – https://www.brusselstimes.com/1781595/animal-welfare-how-legal-loopholes-make-eu-a-destination-for-illegal-wildlife-trade

 

Brown, J. 1976. “A Review of the Genus Pseudochazara de Lesse, 1951 (Lep., Satyridae) in Greece.” Entomologist’s Gazette 27: 85–90. – https://biodiversity.unitir.edu.al/Documenten/Brown_1976_Pseudochazara_tisiphone_amymone.pdf

 

Gullan, P. J., and P. S. Cranston. The Insects: An Outline of Entomology. 5th ed. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2014. – https://archive.org/details/TheInsectsAnOutlineOfEntomology_201902

 

Institute of Communication Studies. “Nature for Sale.” YouTube video, 25:38. Posted by “Дома / Doma,” May 7, 2024. – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wNzxEW1w3w 

 

International Fund for Animal Welfare. “Legal Loopholes Make EU a Prime Destination for Stolen Wildlife Trade.” Press release, November 22, 2022. – https://www.ifaw.org/press-releases/legal-loopholes-eu-prime-destination-stolen-wildlife-trade

 

Middleton-Welling, J., Dapporto, L., García-Barros, E. et al. A new comprehensive trait database of European and Maghreb butterflies, Papilionoidea. Scientific Data 7, 351 (2020). – https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-020-00697-7

 

Ministry of Environment and Physical Planning. Fifth National Report to the Convention on Biological Diversity of the Republic of Macedonia. Skopje: Ministry of Environment and Physical Planning, 2014. https://www.cbd.int/doc/world/mk/mk-nr-05-en.pdf

 

Takáts, Kornél, and Morten Mølgaard. “Partial mtCOI-sequences of Balkanic species of Pseudochazara (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae, Satyrinae) reveal three well-differentiated lineages.” Entomologica romanica 19 (2014): 21–40. – https://entomologica-romanica.reviste.ubbcluj.ro/19_2014_2015/ER1920141504_Takats_et_Molgaard.pdf

 

van Swaay, C., Ellis, S. & Warren, M. 2025. Pseudochazara cingovskii. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2025: e.T160595A841785. – https://dx.doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.2025-1.RLTS.T160595A841785.en

 

Verovnik, Rudi & Micevski, Branko & Maes, Dirk & Wynhoff, Irma & Swaay, Chris & Warren, Martin. (2013). Conserving Europe’s most endangered butterfly: The Macedonian Grayling (Pseudochazara cingovskii). Journal of Insect Conservation. 17. – https://doi.org/10.1007/s10841-013-9576-6

 

Verovnik R, Wiemers M (2016) Species delimitation in the Grayling genus Pseudochazara (Lepidoptera, Nymphalidae, Satyrinae) supported by DNA barcodes. ZooKeys 600: 131-154. – https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.600.7798

 

Wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudochazara_cingovskii

 

For more information about protecting species like the Macedonian Grayling from illegal trade please see the International Fund for Animal Welfare at https://www.ifaw.org/.

Music 26:43

Pledge 33:28

I honor the lifeforce of the Macedonian Grayling. I will commit its name to my record. I am grateful to have shared time on our planet with this being. I lament the ways in which I and my species have harmed and diminished this species. I grieve.

 

And so, in the name of the Macedonian Grayling I pledge to reduce my consumption. And my carbon footprint. And curb my wastefulness. I pledge to acknowledge and attempt to address the costs of my actions and inactions. And I pledge to resist the harm of plant and animal kin and their habitat, by individuals, corporations, and governments. I pledge to channel my rage at poachers and species traders into productive conservation.

 

I forever pledge my song to the witness and memory of all life, to a broad celebration of biodiversity, and to the total liberation of all beings.