Wild Conservation Ideas: Currency Images and a Moon Vault

Animals have long been present on banknotes. The U.S. features a bald eagle on its $1 bill. China uses a dragon and a peacock, Ethiopia depicts an elephant, many Middle Eastern nations have falcons, Russia shows a bear and South Africa spotlights a springbok.

If you look at a U.S. $1 bill today, you’ll find an image of an eagle holding arrows in one talon and an olive branch in the other. On a U.S. buffalo nickel (minted between 1913 and 1938), an American bison—modeled on Black Diamond, a bison who, at the time, lived in New York’s Central Park Zoo—stands on a patch of ground. The nickel marked the first time that an animal that wasn’t an eagle appeared on a circulating American coin. The American bison kept its status as the only non-eagle animal on U.S. currency until the 50 State Quarters Program introduced more animals (and more bison) in 1999.

That makes me wonder: how many other nations have depicted wildlife on their currencies, and does such representation present a conservation opportunity? Recently, researchers investigated these very questions.

Today, as the story goes, we find ourselves having to conserve wildlife because our kind hasn’t traditionally done a very good job of respecting other species. Usually, we hear about how humans have harmed animals over the course of our tenure on Earth. But a new study shows that through the ages, the presence of humans has increased the complexity and heterogeneity of ecosystems and has often had a positive effect on their biodiversity. In fact, human cultural diversity is likely to have had an overall positive effect on ecosystem biodiversity. The relatively recent homogenization of human cultures may, therefore, be regarded as an important driver of the major extinction events going on in the Anthropocene.

Some scientists disagree with the notion that people negatively intervened in their ecosystems more than 10,000 years ago. They say that cultural diversity is likely to have had an overall positive effect on ecosystem biodiversity.

But what if despite our best efforts, a catastrophe occurs, and all our current conservation efforts fail? Here’s a really wild idea: store genetic samples of all the Earth’s current life-forms in a biorepository on the moon. Could it work?

Cash conservation

For many around the world, using cash is a part of every day, despite the increasing trend towards digital transactions. But do we pay any attention to the artwork and images that are used on our currencies?

To get a sense of the “value” that countries around the world might place on their native wildlife, a team of researchers from Griffith University in Queensland, Australia, explored what types of fauna nations around the globe choose to use on their currencies and the opportunities that doing so presents for conservation awareness and efforts.

A proposed plan aims to safeguard Earth’s imperiled biodiversity by cryogenically preserving biological material on the moon. It’s a fascinating—and futuristic—idea.

In a study published in the science journal People and Nature in July 2024, the researchers investigated the representation of native fauna on 4,541 banknotes from 207 countries between 1980 and 2017 to identify taxonomic patterns and determine whether endemic and threatened species were more present. They found that:

• native fauna was depicted on 15.2% of banknotes reviewed;
• 352 unique species—with a strong bias towards terrestrial species (89%)—were shown;
• bird and mammal species (83% combined) dominated;
• African banknotes had the highest numbers of mammal likenesses;
• birds were favored in South America; and
• worldwide, threatened species were commonly depicted on banknotes, with 30% of all imagery containing these species.

Given the global biodiversity crisis, this could denote a trend to showcase threatened species to highlight their plight and raise national awareness. The researchers believe that their study underscores the role that wildlife imagery on banknotes could play in shaping public perception and national identity of a nation’s biodiversity. By highlighting both celebrated and threatened species, currencies around the world can serve as a unique platform for promoting conservation awareness.

Researchers recently investigated how often wildlife—specifically, native animals—were depicted on different nations’ currencies. By highlighting both celebrated and threatened species, currencies around the world could serve as a unique platform to promote conservation awareness.

The Griffith University researchers recommended several avenues for further investigation to explore the relationships between wildlife representation and perceived value, including studies of how representation changes over time, the inclusion of images of flora and examining the decision-making processes governing wildlife imagery on banknotes.

Biodiversity boosters

In an article published in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B in April 2024, archeologists from two German universities, the University of Cologne and the University of Tubingen, examined the role of humans in the control and evolution of biodiversity on our planet. They argue that the idea that humans had lived harmoniously with nature as hunter-gatherers mischaracterizes the history of human interactions with ecosystems.

The archeologists suggest that the relationship between humans and habitats has always been much more complex and complicated, and that—in addition to the negative effects—people have had positive effects on biodiversity through time. They state that although biodiversity loss occurs locally due to human activity, it is often strongly promoted elsewhere. This dynamic must, therefore, be placed in a wider context.

In the wild, ravens are opportunistic feeders, and their diets vary based on habitat and available food sources. Even in the last Ice Age, ravens benefited from their human neighbors, especially from the food options that hunter-gatherers provided.

The scientists’ research combines various case studies from the Late Pleistocene (approximately 129,000 to 11,700 years ago) and recent studies on Ice Age ravens, which show that the birds benefited from their human neighbors about 30,000 years ago—especially from the food options that hunter-gatherers provided.

Results of zooarchaeological and stable isotope analyses applied in the case of the ravens show that such processes can lead to an increase in biodiversity on a local level. This is because certain animals benefit from human influence and others that are excluded locally by humans, such as large predators, move to other areas. Overall, this increases the complexity and heterogeneity of such ecosystems, thereby often resulting in a positive effect on overall biodiversity.

Ultimately, say the archaeologists, biodiversity regimes cannot be separated from human influences and not all of these influences are negative. It also follows that increased diversity in humans probably has an overall positive effect on biodiversity as a whole and that a decisive driver of the biodiversity crisis in the Anthropocene is, in part, the homogenization of human cultures.

Cryopreservation is a process that preserves cells, organelles, tissues or any other biological constructs for a long time by cooling the samples to very low temperatures.

Lunar lockbox

Still, we can’t deny that today, biodiversity loss on Earth is rampant. To safeguard it, why don’t we cryogenically preserve biological material on the moon? It just so happens that the moon’s permanently shadowed craters are cold enough for cryogenic preservation without the need for electricity or liquid nitrogen.

That’s the idea proposed by scientists at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, the Smithsonian National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute, and others in a paper published in the journal BioScience in July 2024. It outlines a road map for creating a lunar biorepository, with ideas for the types of biological material to be stored, governance and a plan for experiments to understand and address challenges, such as microgravity and radiation. The study also demonstrates the successful cryopreservation of skin samples from a fish, which are now stored at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.

Initially, the lunar biorepository would target the most at-risk species on Earth today, but the ultimate goal would be to cryopreserve most species on Earth.

The moon’s permanently shadowed craters are cold enough for cryopreservation without the need for electricity or liquid nitrogen.

The proposal takes inspiration from the Global Seed Vault in Svalbard, Norway, which contains more than 1 million frozen seed varieties and functions as a backup for the world’s crop biodiversity in case of a global disaster. By virtue of its location in the Arctic nearly 400 feet underground, the vault was intended to be capable of keeping its seed collection frozen without electricity. However, in 2017, thawing permafrost threatened the collection with a flood of meltwater. The seed vault has since been waterproofed, but the incident showed that even in the Arctic, a subterranean bunker could be vulnerable to climate change.

Unlike seeds, animal cells require much lower storage temperatures for preservation (-320 degrees Fahrenheit). On Earth, cryopreservation of animal cells requires electricity, human staff and a supply of liquid nitrogen. Each of these three elements are potentially vulnerable to disruptions that could destroy an entire collection. To reduce these vulnerabilities, scientists needed a way to passively maintain cryopreservation storage temperatures. Since such cold temperatures do not naturally exist on Earth, the scientists looked to the moon.

The moon’s polar regions feature numerous craters that never receive sunlight due to their depth and orientation. These permanently shadowed regions can be -410 degrees Fahrenheit—more than cold enough for passive cryopreservation storage. To block out the DNA-damaging radiation present in space, samples could be stored underground or inside a structure with thick walls made of moon rocks.

The starry goby boasts a beautiful, star-spangled appearance with iridescent, blue spots that adorn a dusky, mottled body. In the wild, the fish is found from the Red Sea to Hawaii and from northern Japan to western Australia, where it inhabits shallow bays, coral reefs, lagoons and tidal estuaries.

At the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology, the Smithsonian research team cryopreserved skin samples from a reef fish called the starry goby. The fins contain a type of skin cell called “fibroblasts,” the primary material stored in the National Museum of Natural History’s biorepository. When it comes to cryopreservation, fibroblasts have several advantages over other types of commonly cryopreserved cells, such as eggs, embryos and sperm. We still don’t have the scientific knowledge that’s required to reliably preserve the eggs, embryos and sperm of most wildlife species. However, for many species, fibroblasts can be cryopreserved easily. In addition, fibroblasts can be collected from an animal’s skin, which is simpler than harvesting eggs or sperm. For species that do not have skin, such as invertebrates, scientists could use a diversity of sample types, such as larvae and other reproductive materials.

The next steps are to begin a series of radiation exposure tests for the cryopreserved fibroblasts on Earth to help design packaging that could safely deliver samples to the moon. The team is actively seeking partners and support to conduct additional experiments on Earth and aboard the International Space Station. Such experiments would provide robust testing for the prototype packaging’s ability to withstand the microgravity and radiation associated with space travel and storage on the moon.

If this idea becomes a reality, the researchers envision the lunar biorepository as a public entity that will include private and public funders, scientific partners, countries and public representatives with mechanisms for cooperative governance akin to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.

As wild as it sounds, some day in the future, there could be a place in the stars that remembers all of the rich life that once roamed Earth.

The scientists are quick to point out that the biorepository isn’t meant for a time when the Earth fails (after all, if the Earth is destroyed, the biorepository won’t matter), it’s intended to help offset natural disasters and, potentially, to augment space travel. Life, as far as we know, is rare in the universe. The lunar biorepository would provide another, parallel approach to conserving Earth’s precious biodiversity.

Warehouse of what-was

Cash and cultures; conservation and the cosmos. Perhaps, at times and in small ways, we did respect the rest of the beings who share the Earth with us by calling attention to their lives—through our depictions, our human habits and our scientific efforts to preserve their possibilities.

But should we reach that point where the unimaginable happens, it would be good to know that there’s a place in the stars that still remembers.

Here’s to finding your true places and natural habitats,

Candy

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