Native Flags 
nativeflags.net

Native Flags is an urban reforestation project created by Miami artist Xavier Cortada to help restore native habitats for plants and animals across Miami-Dade County, Florida. 

This participatory eco-art effort is presented through The Reclamation Project at the Miami Science Museum.   

Participating residents are asked to plant a native tree sapling alongside the project's green flag in their yard and state:

    "I hereby reclaim this land for nature."

The project's conspicuous green flags serve as a catalyst for conversations with neighbors, who will be encouraged to join the effort to help rebuild our native tree canopy.

Participants can email the artist photos of the flags/saplings in their front lawn (along with their name and address).  These can be uploaded to the project website and plotted on a map to see how residents across the county have reclaimed land for the native trees long displaced by development.

The Project Partners

On October 4th, 2007, Miami Mayor Manny Diaz (left) launched Native Flags by planting a Paradise tree and the first Native Flag at the Miami Science Museum Energy Park.  Click here to read event press release.

Other groups, including Citizens for a Better South Florida, Hands on Miami, the City of Miami Office of Sustainable Initiatives,  Democracia USA and the League of Conservation Voters are using the Native Flags project as a vehicle for community engagement in their urban reforestation and environmental awareness efforts.  Follow-up efforts on sustainability (as well as community building) will be encouraged through this volunteer network.

Community groups and native nurseries are encouraged to become project partners. For more information, please contact the artist at xavier@cortada.com.

 

The 12 South Florida Native Tree Species

Cortada worked with eco-practitioners to select the twelve fast-growing native species to be used in the urban reforestation campaign aimed at helping re-grow our community's native tree canopy.  At the right, please see the 12 designs created by Xavier Cortada for the center of the project flag (click on their scientific name to see larger, color design). 

The project's twelve native trees are:

 

Small Native Trees
Firebush	Hamelia patens
Florida Privet	Forestieria segregata
Wild Coffee	Psychotria nervosa

To learn about the native trees of the Native Flags project, please visit Native Trees at the Miami Science Museum website.

Information about The Reclamation Project is available at http://www.reclamationproject.net/nativeflags.htm

ALSO:
Information about these and other native trees are available online at http://www.miamidade.gov/derm/native_plants_and_animals.asp.
 
Larger tree specimens are available for free to eligible residents through the Miami-Dade County Adopt-a-Tree program, see: http://www.miamidade.gov/derm/adoptatree.asp.

 

Native flags is a participatory eco-art intervention that takes as its starting point the wide-spread destruction of South Florida native habitats.

Re-growing our native tree canopy yard by yard helps sustain our community's biodiversity.  It also encourages us to further our custodial responsibility for the natural world.

Ideally, as we watch each tree grow, our interest in our environment will also grow.

-- Xavier Cortada

Ecological Rationale for Native Flags

Fusing art, scientific knowledge, and civic engagement, Native Flags seeks to involve residents directly in remediation efforts through the planting, maintaining and protection of native trees; gather broad-based public support for the stewardship of sound ecological practices; and create an enhanced sense of place for local residents.

There is an urgent need to reforest extensively in dense urban environments with drought-tolerant native plant species in order to offset the effects of carbon dioxide emissions that contribute to global warming, counteract the impact of aggressive development on the urban ecosystem and enhance native biodiversity.

Animals and plants evolve together over thousands of years creating a fragile and interconnected system.  Wildlife evolves with and because of the habitat around them and plants utilize animals to disperse seeds or pollinate flowers. The removal or addition of new species can throw an entire ecosystem off balance. For instance, the introduction of exotic species has become a major and costly problem in many of South Florida's parks and preserves, and has caused significant health and economic problems to the citizens of Florida. For these reasons, it is important to protect and restore native habitats with native plants and animals.

Because the pace and extent of this kind of native reforestation is so slow and minuscule, there is a need to think and act quickly and creatively to enhance public awareness and understanding of the urgency to engage in deep bioremediation, and to stimulate commitment and action toward that end.
 

The Eco-Art  Practice

Native Flags is part the Miami artist's eco-art practice, see:  www.reclamationproject.net. 

According to the South Florida Environmental Art Project (SFEAP), eco-art is defined as "…a multidisciplinary practice that is artistic, scientific and social simultaneously…Eco-artists work in complex collaborations across disciplinary boundaries, utilizing a full complement of artistic and community development skills, either their own, or those possessed by others. Eco-artists work in close engagement with stakeholder groups and communities toward various forms of bio-remediation and transformation of damaged ecosystems. They skillfully fuse art with environmental advocacy, science, engineering and education toward enhancing communities' relationship to place and to all ecosystems sharing that space."   
 

xavier cortada
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Xavier Cortada's work has been shown across the Americas, Europe, Africa and Antarctica and locally in the Miami Art Museum, the Miami Museum of Science & Planetarium and the Bass Museum of Art. The Miami artist has been commissioned to create art for the White House, the Florida Supreme Court, Miami City Hall, the Museum of Florida History and the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. Cortada's work is also in the permanent collection of The World Bank.

For more information, please visit http://www.cortada.com.