https://reasonstobecheerful.world/the-spark-backyard-biodiversity/
"When Doug Tallamy bought his 10-acre property in southeastern Pennsylvania in
2000, the former hayfield was covered in invasive plant species. “I’m an
entomologist, so I always look for insects, and right away I saw that the
insects are not eating these plants,” he recalls. After tackling the non-native
species and introducing native plants — though most of them were planted by the
animals themselves — the land is now a thriving forest ecosystem. Some 62
species of birds come to the area to breed, and Tallamy has documented 1,360
species of moths to date. “It wasn’t that hard,” says Tallamy, a professor at
the department of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology at the University of
Delaware. “Nature is resilient. If I can do it, other people can as well.”
The experience inspired him to co-found Homegrown National Park, a grassroots
conservation initiative helping people regenerate biodiversity on their land by
removing invasive plants and adding native ones. Ninety percent of the insects
that eat plants can only eat those they co-evolved with, explains Tallamy. “So
when you load the environment with a non-native plant it’s essentially removed
from the food web.”
Few non-native plants are as beloved by Americans as turf grass — lawns cover
40 million acres of land in the U.S., equivalent to the size of Colorado. In
addition to using up to nine billion gallons of water daily, they provide next
to no value to local biodiversity. But anyone can reintroduce key ecosystem
functions to their back yard or front lawn, says Tallamy — and it doesn’t have
to be all-or-nothing. “Any way that you can reduce the area of your lawn is a
valuable contribution.”"
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
