Operation Spider: a Bridge, a Rock Nursery, and the Web of Life

Spiders have inspired cultures across time and geography, from Akan people’s Anansi to Lakota’s Iktomi, but remain part of the invertebrate gap in biodiversity teaching and research. A collaborative science-based interdisciplinary project transformed the effects of constructing a bridge across a canyon into a bridgebuilding among human communities while caring for some of the smallest animals in this ecosystem.  

Around the time an arachnologist noticed large rocks split open in her study site, a US Forest Service Lands Specialist noticed the direct conflict of two permits: one for behavioral ecology research and environmental interdependence; the other for a multi-million-dollar bridge replacement project. When a spider population at this site faced tremendous impact from this project, Operation SpiderSave, was born.

Their combined efforts brought together nearly every department of a US Forest Service Ranger District to move rocks holding spiders’ shimmery egg sacs across the highway to create a “rock nursery” – letting spiders complete their life cycle and supporting overall ecological balance. Wildland firefighters, trail crews, a NEPA coordinator, a permit administrator, and the entire River Ranger crew extracted rocks, burying them in the same relative depth and angle as their original site within this nursery.

Spiders play key roles in ecosystems especially with insect population health, which in turn ripples out to impact fish, bears, eagles, anglers, river runners—and beyond. Operation Spider was not just protecting a single species. The volunteers’ actions were in support of our collective interdependence. Invertebrates like these form critical foundations of life and are experiencing dramatic global declines Spiders can remind us that vibrating any thread affects the entire web.

While we humans may not produce silk, we have imagination and capacity-for-care; combined these can increase the beneficial role humans play throughout the web of life together.

Operation Spider is a testament to how people can come together beyond politics and borders to share information to help unravel the mysteries of our world and put this knowledge exchange in service of our shared home. It also illustrates how sharing stories like this can inspire further actions.

Our fates are intertwined.