Team Wilder story Jasmine Isa Qureshi

Team Wilder Story Jasmine Isa Qureshi

Jasmine Isa Qureshi

TransPortraitsUK

Jasmine Isa Qureshi

Jasmine Isa Qureshi (they/she) is an intersectional writer, activist and storyteller, with nature and conservation at the heart of all her work. She is a trained Marine Biologist and has been featured/published/worked as a researcher for the Gay Times, Birdwatch, BBC Wildlife, Wild Space Productions on Netflix, CBeebies, BBC Natural History Unit / BBC Earth and Sound Off Films.

Being an Ambassador for the Bumblebee Conservation Trust and Engagement Officer for the youth led organization, A Focus On Nature, has given her space to share her knowledge and connections with nature to a wider audience.

Jasmine spoke at the Team Wilder Community Campfire, Spring meeting. Take a look at the recording further down on this page.

Jasmine Isa Qureshi Team Wilder Community Campfire — Attitude, Bumblebee Conservation Trust, Sound Off, A focus on nature, BBC Studios Natural History Unit, CBeebies, Writing Our Legacy, Natural History Museum - Generation Hope

Where it all began

Growing up in London with no garden, Jasmine's passion for wildlife began small - noticing insects, tiny plants, moths and spiders locally, as well as watching nature documentaries. Going through these different phases of loving wildlife and developing a relationship and interest with the natural world, Jasmine found that there were barriers to enter this space, due to her identity of being a trans woman of colour and not being welcomed.

Jasmine Isa Qureshi 13 — Jasmine Isa Qureshi

This passion and interest for entomology stayed with Jasmine and as an ambassador of the Bumblebee Conservation Trust, she does a lot of work to raise awareness about bee's. pollinators and the wider ecosystem. This means Jasmine gets a chance to see a lot of people's wildlife gardens.

It is important to raise awareness of allowing wildflowers to grow in people gardens and in verges.

My garden of a thousand bees

During lockdown, an amazing film was made called 'My garden of a thousand bees', created in a Bristol garden, where the bee's in the filmakers back garden were filmed. Due to travel restrictions at the time, the filmmaker discovers so many bee's and captures their beauty and shows how many different types can be found locally - from small tiny bee's to large queen bee's. Other animals and insects were also filmed in that ecosystem showing that your back garden is one of the most diverse and incr4dible ecosystems that you can find. You just have to look and notice it.

If you want to get involved in wildlife gardening, it shows you the great beauty you can attract to your garden, if you just go and look and you look closer... A big part of wildlife gardening is leaving it be and letting it flourish.

Jasmine Isa Qureshi
Queer Rootz

Making green spaces more diverse

Through experiencing barriers to green spaces, Jasmine's work hopes to lead towards making green spaces in the UK more diverse and accessible to everyone, decolonising green spaces. This work progressed to her founding Queer Rootz.

Queer Rootz gives a voice to previously underrepresented voices in ecology from the queer/ trans community and faces the systemic issues that create barriers to green spaces, It raises intersectional awareness and aims to not only save the planet, but increase understandings of conservation practices, wildlife and the environment.

"We need everyone to get involved if we are going to save the natural world". Queer Rootz explores the concept that nature is very flexible, which a good way to be when viewing the natural world.