Bad at Goodbyes

Rough Transcript

Intro 00:05

Welcome to Bad at Goodbyes.

On today’s show we consider the Arabian Leopard.

Species Information 02:05

The Arabian Leopard is a critically endangered big cat, a carnivorous feline native to Oman and Yemen. Its scientific name is Panthera pardus nimr and it was first described in 1833.

 

Description

The Arabian Leopard is the smallest of all leopard subspecies, weighing roughly 40-70 pounds, measuring roughly 4 feet in body length. They are about half the size of the African Leopard, and about twice the size of distant kin in the feline family, the bobcat. 

 

Their fur is short, coarse and dense, colored pale, creamy yellow to golden-tan, and is, of course, covered in spots. These spots are called rosettes, round, somewhat flower-shaped, rose-shaped black markings, distributed all across their body; a camouflage in their native habitat. In the bright sharp light of their desert mountain home, the spots blend into the rough, shadowed textures of rock faces, and because the pattern is irregular, and lacks straight lines, it breaks up the leopard’s physical outline in more open spaces.

Like say human fingerprints, every leopard has a totally unique pattern of rosettes.

 

The Arabian Leopard has a broad muzzle and powerful jaws. They have two large fur covered ears with complex musculature that can independently rotate roughly 180 degrees to help pinpoint sound, able to hear both low frequency (infrasonic) and high frequency (ultrasonic) sounds from hundreds of feet away.

 

Their two eyes are large and forward-facing, with golden, greenish irises and deep black pupils. Like all cats, each of the Arabian Leopard’s eyes have a tapetum lucidum, this is a kind-of reflective layer behind the retina that bounces light back through the photoreceptors, increasing light sensitivity; helping the leopard see in low-light. Sidenote: the tapetum lucidum is why cat’s eyes, and the eyes of many mammals, deer, dogs, etc. seem to kind of glow in the dark – we see light reflected back from their eyes, from that tapetum lucidum.

 

Arabian Leopard have a dark nose and a muzzle covered in long black and white whiskers. These whiskers, called Vibrissae are a tactile sense organ, touch sensitive, able to detect changes in air currents as winds shift, and sense contact with physical objects, used, for example, to help navigate darkened caves.

 

Their bodies are lean, and muscular, with a long slender torso and four relatively short strong limbs, with large, padded paws and claws that can extend and retract. 

 

They have a long tail that can measure up to 3 feet, which aids in balance and as a kind counterweight when making quick turns.

 

Behavior

Arabian Leopard are solitary and elusive, a behavioral lifestyle adapted to avoiding detection by potential prey, and more recently avoiding exposure to humans. They are generally crepuscular, meaning they’re active at dawn and dusk, when it is cool enough to avoid overheating, but with enough light to navigate terrain and hunt prey. During the peak heat of the daytime, the leopard seeks refuge in caves, rock fissures, or under the canopy of Buttontrees. That said, parts of their range are often covered in dense fog, and we have camera trap evidence of Arabian Leopard active throughout the day. The fog keeps the landscape cool and hazy, they can traverse and hunt in the daytime without being seen.

 

Their range is enormous. A solitary male will have a home territory of about 75 square miles; female roughly 30 square miles. Their territories will have some overlap, but leopard use pheromonal scent signals, vocalizations, urine and feces droppings, and scrape-marks made with their hind claws, to mark trails and boulders and caves in order to avoid one another, to avoid conflict with one another. They also employ temporal avoidance. So they may use some of the same trails but at different times, using short-lasting chemical signals to ensure they do not meet one another unexpectedly. Outside of mating, Arabian Leopard have very minimal contact with one another, maintaining social spacing without direct conflict.

 

Reproduction

Mating occurs year-round, though research suggests it peaks with some correlation to prey reproductive patterns; when there is an abundance of young (easier to capture) prey, the Leopard is more likely to mate. Females have a roughly month-a-half fertility cycle, during about a week of which they are able to get pregnant. During that time they will vocalize and scent mark more frequently in an effort to attract a mate.

 

After mating, the male and female separate, no long-term pair bonds are formed, and the female is entirely responsible for rearing. Pregnancy lasts about three-and-a-half months, and the mothers birth in deep caves, secluded, secure dens, safe from wolves and hyenas. Litters are typically 1 to 3 cubs and the young are born altricial, helpless, requiring significant parental care. Arabian Leopard cubs are born blind and weigh less than a pound, and only after about 10 days do they develop eyesight. During this time the mother is constantly with the cubs; the young nurse and the mother relies on fat reserves or stored food.

 

Cubs are dependent on their mother for 1-2 years, learning communication, survival strategies and hunting skills. Then the family unit disperses, the juveniles seeking out their own new individual solitary territories.

 

Wild Arabian Leopard live between roughly 10-20 years.

In The Dream

————

In the dream,

 

to live as though listening was vital to life.

To hear a leaf fall across the chasm, sand shifting on the plain,

a water drop slipping from the buttontree.

To slow the breath, to hold stillness in patient silence.

For sound to mean sustenance 

To listen is to live.

 

In the dream.

————

Diet

The Arabian Leopard is carnivorous, they hunt and eat meat. They rely on stealth to hunt prey. Patiently, quietly stalking and ambushing large mammal herbivores like the Nubian Ibex and Arabian Gazelle, and smaller mammals like Rock Hyrax, Arabian Hare, Ethiopian Hedgehog, and occasionally birds like the Arabian Partridge. They use the landforms of their habitat to their advantage, ambushing prey in narrow rock crevices to prevent their escape, or chasing prey off cliffs. Even their attack is stealth-adapted. They will direct a strong bite to the prey’s throat, preventing it from vocalizing an alarm call.

 

After a successful hunt, Arabian Leopard will drag their kill into deep caves, protecting the meat from scavengers and keeping it cool to slow decomposition, maintaining a kind of stockpiled food larder in this relatively inhospitable landscape where prey can be scarce.

 

Habitat

The Arabian Leopard is native to the Dhofar Mountains in southern Oman and the Sarawat Mountains in western Yemen. These are arid rocky high-altitude cliffs, peaks, and plateaus that can reach over 2 miles above sea level, stone landmasses rising sharply from nearby coastal plains. This “resource-poor” landscape is dominated by steep, jagged limestone, granite, and sandstone slopes of sandy loose rock, with narrow ledges, crevices, cave networks, and deep valleys. 

 

Vegetation is sparse, water is rare, and prey density is low. This is a Southwestern Arabian coastal xeric scrub ecoregion, with extreme temperature fluctuations and minimal precipitation. In summer, high temps on the lower slopes can exceed 110°F, in winter, and at higher elevations, temperatures can drop to lows below 40°F. So a 70+ degree swing across the Leopard’s range. Annual rainfall here is less than 4 inches. Though higher elevations in the Dhofar Mountains, are a kind of fog desert where annual monsoons from June to September blanket the highlands in mist and fog, bringing up to 12 inches of precipitation, in the form of fog drip. This is moisture that condenses on vegetation and drips down to the soil, recharging groundwater aquifers, and supporting a microhabitat understory of shrubs and grasses; Plant life that is grazed by the Leopard’s prey: Ibex, Hyrax, Gazelle.

 

The Arabian Leopard shares its arid mountain home with:

Arabian Woodpecker, Arabian Wolf, Arabian Partridge, Phoenician Juniper, Umbrella Thorn Acacia, Oman Toad, Desert Rose, White-tailed Mongoose, Spiny-tailed Lizard, Arabian Gazelle, Asir Magpie, Wild Pistachio, Globe Thistle, Frankincense, Arabian Hare, Striped Hyena, Arabian Red Fox, Myrrh Tree, Dhofari Buttontree, Rock Hyrax, Desert Tawny Owl, Nubian Ibex, Large-leafed Fig, Arabian Spiny Mouse, Asir Catmint, Wild Olive, Desert Wallflower, Arabian Aloe, and many many more.

 

Threats

Historically, the Arabian Leopard population has been affected by anthropogenic persecution. That is the intentional hunting, trapping, killing of the species by humans. This is an ancient practice with archaeological record of petroglyphs depicting leopard hunts and stone leopard traps unearthed dating from 3-4 thousand BCE. That said, the severity of this human impact dramatically accelerated in the 20th century with the increased availability of automatic weapons and four-wheel-drive vehicles in the 1950s and 1960s leading to extinction across the Leopard’s former range in Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Palestine, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia.

 

Today, the main threat to surviving populations in Yemen and Oman is habitat loss and degradation caused by human encroachment, like road and residential construction, mining, agriculture, and by increased overgrazing by domesticated livestock. That encroachment means that the Leopard’s prey like Ibex and Gazelle are now in a forced resource competition with domestic livestock for the region’s sparse vegetation. And so when wild prey becomes scarce, the Leopard will hunt the domesticated livestock, goats, cattle, camels to survive. Which then leads to retaliatory killings, livestock owners shooting leopards to quote-unquote protect their flock.

 

So direct persecution of the Arabian Leopard remains a threat: these retaliatory killings as well as trophy hunting, and slaughter for the illegal sale of leopard skins. Capture of live individuals for the illegal pet trade or exotic private collections also continues to deplete wild numbers.

 

Conservation

Fortunately, much of the Arabian Leopard’s range now falls on protected lands like the Hawf Nature Reserve in Yemen and the Jabal Samhan Nature Reserve in Oman. In Oman, the hunting, capture, or killing of leopards has been strictly prohibited since 1976, and since 1997 the government’s Arabian Leopard Program has built a locally recruited ranger force and has facilitated public awareness programs. To help address leopard persecution, Oman runs  a compensation program for locals whose livestock was lost to leopards.

 

In Yemen, the government declared the Arabian Leopard the national animal in 2008 and the Yemeni Foundation for Endangered Wildlife is running presence/absence surveys, camera-trapping studies, and community awareness programs. That said, ongoing civil war in Yemen is hindering conservation efforts.

 

Offsite, there are successful captive breeding programs in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Oman, and Saudi Arabia exploring re-introduction programs: returning both prey species and the Arabian Leopard to their original range.

 

Nevertheless the Arabian Leopard has been considered critically endangered on the IUCN Red List since 1996 and their population is currently in decline.

 

Our most recent counts estimate that less than 85 Arabian Leopard remain in the wild.

Citations 26:13

Information for today’s show about the Arabian Leopard was compiled from:

 

Al Hikmani, H., Aboalfotooh, A.A.H., Alghafis, S., Almubarak, Z., Baeshen, O., Budd, J., Dunford, C., Ferreira, J.D., Gallacher, E., Mann, G., Shobrak, M. & Spalton, A. 2025. Panthera pardus ssp. nimr (Green Status assessment). The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2025: e.T15958A1595820252. – https://iucnredlist.org/species/15958/274968998

 

Al Hikmani, Hadi, and Khalid Al Hikmani. “Northward Expansion of the Critically Endangered Arabian Leopard in Dhofar, Oman.” Oryx 58, no. 6 (2024): 710–14. – https://doi.org/10.1017/S0030605324001662

 

Al Hikmani, H., Spalton, A., Zafar-ul Islam, M., al-Johany, A., Sulayem, M., Al-Duais, M. & Almalki, A. 2025. Panthera pardus ssp. nimr (amended version of 2024 assessment). The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2025: e.T15958A274968998. – https://dx.doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.2025-1.RLTS.T15958A274968998.en

 

Alqahtani, Fahad H., Ion I. Măndoiu, Badr M. Al-Shomrani, Sulaiman Al-Hashmi, Fatemeh Jamshidi-Adegani, Juhaina Al-Kindi, Andrzej Golachowski, Barbara Golachowska, Abdulaziz K. Al-Jabri, and Manee M. Manee. 2025. “First Mitogenome of the Critically Endangered Arabian Leopard (Panthera pardus nimr)” Animals 15, no. 11: 1562. – https://doi.org/10.3390/ani15111562

 

A.M.H. Al-Johany. “Distribution and conservation of the Arabian Leopard Panthera pardus nimr in Saudi Arabia.” Journal of Arid Environments. Volume 68, Issue 1, Pages 20-30. 2007. – https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaridenv.2006.04.002

 

Dunford, Carolyn E., J. Philip B. Faure, Michael D. Ross, J. Andrew Spalton, Marine Drouilly, Kai J.P. Pryce-Fitchen, Ross De Bruin, et al. “Searching for Spots: A Comprehensive Survey for the Arabian Leopard Panthera Pardus Nimr in Saudi Arabia.” Oryx 58, no. 3 (2024): 351–62. – https://doi.org/10.1017/S0030605323000807

 

Panthera – https://panthera.org/blog-post/qa-arabian-leopards, https://panthera.org/arabian-leopard-initiative

 

Spalton, James Andrew, Hadi Musalam al Hikmani, David Willis, and Ali Salim Bait Said. “Critically Endangered Arabian Leopards Panthera Pardus Nimr Persist in the Jabal Samhan Nature Reserve, Oman.” Oryx 40, no. 3 (2006): 287–94. – https://doi.org/10.1017/S0030605306000743

 

Species Survival Commission Cat Specialist Group. Arabian Leopard. 2024. – https://www.catsg.org/arabianleopard

 

Timna, Yotam, and Reuven Yosef. “A historic perspective 1: The diet of the Arabian Leopard (Panthera pardus nimr) in Israel”, Israel Journal of Ecology and Evolution 71, 4 (2025): 171-183. – https://doi.org/10.1163/22244662-bja10112

 

Timna, Yotam, and Reuven Yosef. “A historic perspective 2: Scent, Sound, and Space in the extinct Arabian Leopard (Panthera pardus nimr) in Israel”, Israel Journal of Ecology and Evolution 71, 4 (2025): 184-196. –  https://doi.org/10.1163/22244662-bja10111

 

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

For more information about Arabian Leopard conservation and big cat conservation in general, please see Panthera at https://panthera.org

Music 28:01

Pledge 32:06

I honor the lifeforce of the Arabian Leopard. 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 Arabian Leopard 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 Madagascar Banana.

Species Information 02:05

The Madagascar Banana is a critically endangered flowering plant native to the island nation of Madagascar roughly 250 miles off the southeastern coast of the African mainland. Its scientific name is Ensete perrieri and it was first described in 1909.

 

Description

The Madagascar Banana, is a very large flowering herbaceous plant, that can reach heights up to twenty feet. Like other banana species, the Madagascar Banana is technically not a tree, as they do not produce a woody trunk or branches, they are in fact a really big herb.

 

So what looks like their trunk is actually a “pseudostem,” a thick central pillar formed not by wood, but by layers of leaf sheaths packed tightly together. So their leaves have two main parts, the leaf blade, large broad waxy green fronds with a bright yellow central vein (the mid-rib), and the sheath, the long one inch thick base of the leaf, that wraps around the stem. So new leaves grow from the top, wrapping their sheaths tightly around the ones already there, building up layers around the stem.

 

The Madagascar Banana is drought-deciduous, meaning that they shed their leaf blades during the dry season. This is to prevent water loss. So the green blades die back and fall away, but the thick, moisture-rich sheaths persist. So at the base, we’ll see dried, brown sheaths from previous growth cycles, then just above those are newer short, green sheaths without leaf blades, and then at top, the newest green sheaths of the current growing year emerge with actively photosynthetic leaf blades.

 

This seasonal buildup of leaf sheaths can produce a pseudostem as large as 8 feet in diameter at the base that tapers to about 2 feet in diameter at the crown, a strong structure that allows for heights of nearly 20 feet without the plant having any “true” wood.

 

The Madagascar Banana is passively pyrophytic, meaning it is fire tolerant, able to resist the effects of fire. This pseudostem, which has high water content and is very thick, insulates and protects the plant’s main stem at its center. So fire may scorch or burn the outer layers of the pseudostem but the main stem, responsible for new growth, is preserved, allowing the plant to continue to flourish after wildfires.

 

Reproduction

The Madagascar Banana is monocarpic, meaning that it flowers and seeds, only once and then dies. In this kind of reproductive strategy, a plant grows and stores resources throughout its life for a singular and final blossoming. In the case of the Madagascar Banana, it takes between 5-15 years to reach maturity and then the plant shifts from producing new leaves to producing a massive flower cluster that can weigh up to 8 pounds. This inflorescence is a spiral of roughly 60 bracts, protective leaf-like structures that are green at the base then gradient through yellow, pink, lavender, to a deep violet at their tips. Tucked inside the bracts are roughly 20 flowers with pink-ish white petals. The flowers produce yellow, round pollen with a warty texture, a bumpy surface likely adapted to stick to fur.

 

Available literature speculates that the Madagascar Banana is possibly pollinated by fruit bats or lemurs, though I could not find direct observational confirmation of this.

 

Once pollinated the Madagascar Banana bears fruit, it makes bananas, producing a massive fruit cluster, an infructescence that can weigh up to 75lbs, containing 200 fruits. The fruit is cylindrical, 4-5 inches in length, with a yellow outer skin, looking like a kind of squat version of our common domesticated bananas.

 

But the fruit’s flesh is high in tannins, and incredibly bitter; totally inedible for humans, and as such, the species has never been cultivated.

 

The seeds are black, relatively large, like a quarter to a half inch in diameter, and encased in a hardened outer layer called a testa.

 

The seeds are distributed by endozoochory, so, transported via the digestion of animals. And again, though observationally unconfirmed, we think lemurs consume the fruit. Then the seeds move through the lemur’s acidic digestion system which wears down the testa, the seed coat, and then are deposited via the lemur’s excrement, prepped for germination.

In The Dream

————

In the dream,

 

I am hosting a dinner party for my neighbors, cooking all day, an elaborate, extravagant meal. This is of course a terrible idea, my apartment is tiny, my stove is tiny, my dinner table is tiny. But I’m putting my all into it. Chopping, stirring, baking, spicing, frantic to create a fabulous feast. The table is set, the food is plated, I am ready. And yet, when it is time, no one arrives.

 

In the dream.

————

The Madagascar Banana is native to three locations on the island of Madagascar, in the Indian Ocean off the African coast. Though once more widespread, today they are found mainly in the west in the Antsalova District, within the Tsingy de Bemaraha National Park.

 

Tsingy are geological formations: steep, sharp limestone pinnacles, stone needles, formed over roughly 200 million years, beginning with the accumulation of calcite minerals at the bottom of a Jurassic era lagoon. Tectonic activity over the following 150 million years lifted the region, while acidic rainwater eroded the softer calcite, leaving the limestone beneath, carving a severe and treacherous landscape of deep canyons, caves, fissures, and these towering spires that can reach heights over 300 feet. 

 

And we find the Madagascar Banana within these canyons, between these peaks, in a kind of microclimate where humidity is higher, soils are denser and more nutrient rich, and plant life is better protected from fire than in the surrounding savannas. 

 

This is Dry Deciduous Forest, with distinct wet and dry seasons. The rainy season is November to March and sees up to 60 inches of precipitation. The dry season is from April to October, during which many plants, like our Banana, shed their leaves to prevent transpiration, and conserve water and resources. Annual temperatures at the Tsingy average in the 80s°F and can peak above the high 90°s.

 

The Madagascar Banana shares this rocky home with:

Leaf-tailed Gecko, West Coast Ebony, Madagascar Crested Ibis, Tsingy Wood Rail, Ghost Orchid, Red-fronted Brown Lemur, Pale Fork-marked Lemur, Screw Pine, Fossa, Heron, Flame Tree, Fony Baobab, Madagascar Rosewood, Madagascan Fruit Bat, Madagascar Palm, Tsingy Aloe, Western Bamboo Lemur, Bemaraha Bamboo, Ring-tailed Mongoose, Madagascar Fish Eagle, Madagascar Lace Plant, Rufous Trident Bat, Armoured Leaf Chameleon, Sifaka Lemur, and many many more.

 

Threats

Historically the Madagascar Banana population has been reduced by human habitat destruction. Specifically the conversion of dry forests for agriculture, growing maize and cassava, and cleared for pasturelands for cattle.

 

Slash-and-burn farming is particularly problematic. While, under normal conditions, the mature Madagascar Banana is fire tolerant; frequent, high-intensity human-induced fire destroys seedlings and young plants that have not yet developed their thick, protective pseudostem. 

 

The extinction of animal species is an historic and ongoing threat to the Madagascar Banana’s survival. The island was once populated with multiple species of very large lemur, Sloth Lemur, Koala Lemur, Giant-ruffed Lemur, who were likely seed dispersers of the Madagascar Banana. But following the arrival of humans on Madagascar, and due to human hunting and habitat destruction, the large lemurs are now extinct.

 

Losing these seed-dispersing lemurs reduces the reproductive success of the Madagascar Banana. As mentioned it’s monocarpic, they only flower and fruit once, a whole lifecycle resulting in a singular abundance of fruit and seed. That today fruits into a habitat with less beings to receive and distribute it.

 

Lastly, human-induced climate change due to persistent overreliance on fossil fuels, threatens the Madagascar Banana. As global temperatures rapidly rise, the island’s dry season is getting longer and more intense. These are months in which the plant is not photosynthesizing, not producing new energy, and so as that time lengthens that increases the possibility that stored energy reserves might run out, resulting in death.

 

Conservation

Fortunately, most of the known remaining population of Madagascar Banana are found within protected areas, in the Tsingy de Bemaraha National Park and the Anka-rana Special Reserve, providing protection against logging and clearing. Additionally, conservationists in these reserves are focusing on fire management, creating firebreaks for example, and working with local communities to reduce the frequency of wildfire.

 

The Kew Royal Botanic Gardens has collected seeds from the few remaining wild individuals that are now conserved in the Millennium Seed Bank. And there are living individuals in botanical gardens in Kenya and Italy.

 

The Madagascar Banana has been considered critically endangered on the IUCN Red List since 2018 and their population is currently in decline.

 

Our most recent counts estimate that less than 5 Madagascar Banana remain in the wild.

Citations 21:33

Information for today’s show about the Madagascar Banana was compiled from:

 

Allen, R. 2018. Ensete perrieri. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2018: e.T98249345A98249347. –  https://dx.doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.2018-1.RLTS.T98249345A98249347.en

 

Allen, Richard; Clarkson, James J; Ralimanana, Hélène (6 July 2018). “The critically endangered Madagascar Banana”. Kew Royal Botanic Gardens. - https://www.kew.org/read-and-watch/madagascan-banana

 

Borrell, James S et al. “Enset in Ethiopia: a poorly characterized but resilient starch staple.” Annals of Botany v.123, no.5 (2019): 747-766. - https://doi.org/10.1093/aob/mcy214

 

Grubb, Peter J. “Interpreting some outstanding features of the flora and vegetation of Madagascar.” Perspectives in Plant Ecology, Evolution and Systematics v.6 no.1-2. p 125-146. 2003. – https://doi.org/10.1078/1433-8319-00046

 

Humbert,  H., and  Jean-François Leroy. 1936. Flore de Madagascar et Des Comores : Plantes Vasculaires. Tananarive: Imprimerie officielle. – https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/8099122

 

IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature). Andrefana Dry Forests - 2025 Conservation Outlook Assessment. IUCN World Heritage Outlook. October 11, 2025. – https://worldheritageoutlook.iucn.org/explore-sites/andrefana-dry-forests

 

Musée colonial de Marseille. 1907. Annales du Muśee colonial de Marseille. Vol. ser. 2 v. 7. Marseille: Faculté des sciences de Marseille, Musée colonial. – https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/45311062

 

UN Environment World Conservation Monitoring Centre. World Heritage Datasheet: Tsingy De Bemaraha Strict Nature Reserve. - http://world-heritage-datasheets.unep-wcmc.org/datasheet/output/site/tsingy-de-Bemaraha-strict-nature-reserve/

 

Tsingy de Bemaraha National Park. Madagascar National Parks. - https://parcs-madagascar.com/en/parc/tsingy-de-Bemaraha-2/

 

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

Music 22:58

Pledge 29:37

I honor the lifeforce of the Madagascar Banana. 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 Madagascar Banana 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.