The network of nature lovers is as deep and wide as the mycorrhizal webs of fungi that communicates within the soil under our feet.
When North Fork Audubon set out to find a way to bring renowned entomologist, ecologist and author Doug Tallamy, it wasn’t difficult for them to make the connections necessary to bring Mr. Tallamy to Orient last Saturday, June 7, for a standing-room-only talk at Poquatuck Hall.
Pictured Above: Doug Tallamy (holding the right corner of the banner) with board members of North Fork Audubon.
What might have been more difficult — given all the challenges facing the natural world today — was narrowing down a topic for Dr. Tallamy to discuss.
From what the decline in insects means for human survival to the vast ecosystems supported by native oaks to making your backyard a stop on native pathways that he’s working to connect in a network of “Homegrown National Parks,” Doug Tallamy has been at the forefront of vital work being done by gardeners throughout the country to heal the natural world.
His latest book, “How Can I Help? Saving Nature With Your Yard,” was published in April of this year.
“At North Fork Audubon, our mission is to connect people with nature, and that is why we are so looking forward to Dr. Tallamy’s message of home-centered ecology and biodiversity, the success of which depends on all of us in the community working together,” said North Fork Audubon President Peggy Lauber at the introduction to the lecture. “We are confident that Dr. Tallamy’s philosophy of Homegrown National Parks is perfectly aligned with our mission and will give us hope for the future.”
Dr. Tallamy, an entomologist by training with a lab at the University of Delaware, was quick to give credit to pioneering entomologist Edward O. Wilson, whose 1987 essay, “The Little Things that Run The World,” first raised alarms about how killing of insects was disrupting ecosystems that humans rely on.
“The world depends on insects, and if they were to disappear, so would most of our economy,” he said. “We would not be able to survive without insects. It was a somber message, but it was largely ignored, because nobody was worried about insects.”
In 1929, Dr. Tallamy said, there was even a National Insect Killing Week, a “campaign to boost the sales of all brands of chemicals to rid the community of insects.” While insecticides took hold in agriculture and in households, he said, people still reasoned that insects were plentiful in the natural world.
But “there’s a couple reasons why that’s no longer true,” he said. “We don’t have very many natural areas anymore. We’ve turned them into our cities, and they’re not designed to work for insects. We’ve turned them into our suburbs, and they’re not designed to support anything. Even our rural areas are not designed to support insects.”
He added that invasive and landscaping staple species are also not good at supporting insects.
“We have 34 million acres of residential landscapes out there — that’s a huge hit on the food web that supports our birds and everything else,” he said.
But when bee populations began to decline over the past decade, followed by butterflies and birds, people began to take notice.
Three years ago, the United Nations predicted the world will lose one billion species in the next 20 years.
“Most of the species will be insects, but that reverberates up the food chain,” he said. “It’s a prediction. It hasn’t happened yet. But it is our job to make sure it does not happen.”
So how do we start? Getting rid of lawns — which he equates with a dead zone in ecosystem terms — is a great place, followed by removing invasive species and planting native species that local insect and pollinator populations prefer.
But all native species are not equally good at providing habitat.
Plants like native asters, sunflowers and goldenrod feed more than 40 species of native bees, while the 91 species of native oaks in North America are among the most productive habitat that can be found.
Common landscaping plants like privet, pear and burning bush do nothing to contribute to our backyard habitat, he said.
The National Wildlife Federation’s Native Plant Finder (https://nativeplantfinder.nwf.org) is a great place to find plants that will best fit in your particular ecoregion, he said.
“The media says we need pollinators because they pollinate a third of our crops,” he said. “It’s actually about a twelfth of our crops that are pollinated by animals. I hear people say ‘I don’t live near a farm, so I don’t need any pollinators.’ Forget the crop argument. We need pollinators everywhere because they’re pollinating 80 percent of all plants, including some of our crops, and 90 percent of our flowering plants. If we lost our pollinators, we would lose 80 to 90 percent of the plants on the planet. That is not an option.”
“We are not talking about ‘good plant stewardship’ here. We’re talking about essential plant stewardship,” he said. “We will not persist on this planet if we lose our pollinators. That bumps them up on the priority list.”
He said there are between 3,600 and 4,000 species of native bees “that did just about all of the pollination on the planet before we brought in honeybees,” along with about 14,000 species of moths and butterflies in North America alone.
Moths, he said, are better pollinators than butterflies, and they do most of their pollination at night.
Creating landscapes where native bees will thrive is a high impact gardening activity, he said.
“You have to give them something to eat and places to live,” he said, adding that 70 percent of native bees nest in the ground. “They prefer a slight south-facing slope. Your soil around here is perfect.”
He urged gardeners to leave the leaves that fall in their gardens.
“There are more specieas that live underground. they only require high humidity, which is why you want to keep a layer of leaves on the ground,” he said. “It’s an extremely diverse, essential part of our ecosystem. It’s little appreciated, because we can’t see it, but the mycorrhizal fungi that’s down there, if they dry out, they’re not down there anymore.”
He added that many native bees are also ‘woody stem nesters,’ which nest in the stems of native flowers a year after they’ve died back, making the case for leaving those prior year stems in your backyard.
Bee hotels, which he says are fun for humans to make, are actually detrimental to bees because they cause them to congregate and spread disease.
Other suggestions: replace your outdoor lighting with yellow, bug-friendly bulbs. Use mosquito dunks in a pail of water with organic material like straw in it to selectively kill mosquito larvae, instead of pesticides that also kill beneficial insects. Also, 99 percent of bugs killed by bug zappers are not the intended target species.
Sharing native plants and changing the mentalities of homeowner associations from within are also part of his philosophy.
And remember, he said, that 75 percent of the land in this country is privately owned, and changing the way that land is managed is making real change.
Dr. Tallamy said his son had called him recently saying he was trying to heed his father’s advice, but he had too many leaves to put in his flower beds.
Dad’s answer?
“You don’t have enough flower beds.”
“Our plants are much better at getting through those layers of leaves than we think they are,” he said. “What did they do before we got here?”
“We need a new approach to conservation,” he said. “We’ve got to think about the idea that humans and nature cannot co-exist. We’ve had that idea forever,” he said. “The only path forward is to be in the same place at the same time…. You’re not going to save the planet’s problems, but you can save the planet’s problems where you live. We created this problem, and we can solve it.”
Dr. Tallamy urged attendees to visit homegrownnationalpark.org to see the work he’s inspiring people to do, in backyards all over the country, to met this challenge head-on.
“Our mission is very simple,” he said. “We want to motivate millions of people to regenerate biodiversity, and the way you regenerate biodiversity is by planting native plants and removing the non-natives that don’t support it.”
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