Homeless
The Art
Try to imagine this - November 2019, Australia, and in the midst of a record-breaking week of 107+F temperatures something shocking is happening. Thousands of Spectacled Fly-Fox bats are falling out of the trees, dead, unable to find shade to cool their bodies. It is estimated that over 23,000 bats died in this way. Now, it’s May 2024, in the jungles of the Tabasco region of Mexico, where hundreds of Howler Monkeys have fallen out of the trees, dead from heat stroke and dehydration.
We come across stories like these in the news and they seem to us bizarre and isolated, but they are not as random as they first appear. In fact, they are predictable, and all connected by an incontrovertible fact – rising temperatures and other impacts from global climate change are making life difficult, and increasingly unsurvivable, for many species of wildlife who live in trees.
Like those bats and monkeys, countless organisms, including birds, mammals, insects and various forms of plants, rely on trees for food, shelter, breeding and protection. Their tree habitat is affected by many aspects of climate change and other human activities that also impact the trees themselves – extreme heat, more intense storms, infestations, floods, devastating wildfires, drought, deforestation, among others. These impacts portend dramatic changes to the forests’ biological ecosystems, impacting numerous plants and animals that did not cause, nor benefit from, the burning of fossil fuels or deforestation. And some of these effects are happening right now, all around us.
About the art – This piece summons the feeling of branches, barren of leaves and wildlife, reflecting the absence of tree dwellers from their natural homes.
