Being a Keystone Human

Mike Hoag (of Permaculture in Action: Transformative Adventures – one of my favourite groups), used the term “keystone human”, and that’s my ambition in life now, to be a keystone human.

National Geographic definition of a keystone species is: “A keystone species helps define an entire ecosystem. Without its keystone species, the ecosystem would be dramatically different or cease to exist altogether. Keystone species have low functional redundancy. This means that if the species were to disappear from the ecosystem, no other species would be able to fill its ecological niche. “

Do we humans have “low functional redundancy”? As in, if there were no humans, could the ecosystem maintenance functions performed by humans be performed by some other species? The opinion often comes up in my circles that humans are an invasive pest, consuming themselves to extinction. So much for ecosystem maintenance. And yet we are, as a species, capable of creating a unique ecological niche, one no other species can fill, for art and science and wonder. Truth and beauty, as the saying goes. Many other cultures, over milennia, have proved that.

“Everything gardens” is the permaculture principle I think of. The bush turkey on my walk has made a giant pile of leaves on the bike track. It has raked the forest floor trying to move all the leaf litter from one side of the bike track into its egg incubating pile on the other, and glares at me as I pass. The kangaroo grass grows in tussocks that encourage a fire to burn through low and fast, helping its seed germinate and knocking out the competition. Toxoplasma gondii needs a cat to complete its life cycle, so it alters the brain of the mice it infects to make them more rash and less perceptive of risk. The brain alterations in humans are probably just a side effect. Every other species on the planet is busy trying to modify its environment to suit itself, to provide food, to be suitable for raising its young, to protect itself from predators (including both big ones with teeth and little ones with spike proteins). We’re no different, just another living species, gardening.

The thing is, the way a keystone species gardens defines an entire ecosystem. It’s an awesome responsibility. It can, as National Geographic says, make an ecosystem dramatically different or make it cease to exist altogether, and we’re on the “cease to exist” pathway right now. The trick is to garden well in the bigger sense of gardening as ecosystem tending. To be a keystone species in a life supporting global ecosystem. And to do that, we need to be keystone humans in life supporting local ecosystems. People who are not functionally redundant. I hope I can be one. It seems to me a thing worth doing in life.