Caring Deeply

“One of the downsides (or is it an upside?) of dragonfly monitoring is you begin to care—deeply—about things you may not have thought about before. A wetland is converted to a shopping center. The new parking lot that makes it easier to shop comes with a price in nature. Instead of celebrating a new coffee place, you wonder which dragonflies—and what associated plants and insects and members of the aquatic community—have vanished to make way for it. You see a meandering creek turn into a tightly channeled stream and you think of the effects on the underlying substrate, the bottom of the waterway.” —Cindy Crosby, Chasing Dragonflies