Nature's Best Hope - Book Review

 During the first week of January, I read Nature's Best Hope by Douglas Tallamy. This is an excellent book filled with so much information about the birds and insects, and what people can do to improve the environment. The subtitle of the book is "A New Approach to Conservation that Starts in Your Yard" - and that is exactly what the book does. It provides such a vast array of ideas from which to choose. 

Some of the ideas we've already implemented during the past Summer when Olivia did her 4-H OWLS project.  However, there are still ways that we can build upon what we did and further improve the lives of birds and insects as well as other wildlife.

Some of the key points made in the book that I want to remember and share are:

- In 1903, with the state of Arizona on the verge of mining the Grand Canyon, President Theodore Roosevelt stood on the canyon's lip, gazed out over its unique magnificence, and uttered the five words that would save it: "Leave it as it is." 

- 95% of the country has been logged, tilled, drained, grazed, paved, or otherwise developed.

 - We have purposely imported thousands of species of plants, insects, and diseases from other lands, which have decimated many native plant communities on which local food webs depend. 

- We have carved the natural world into tiny remnants, each too small and too isolated to support the variety of species required to sustain the ecosystems that support us. 

- It is tempting to garden only for beauty, without regard to the many ecological roles our landscapes must perform. 

- For a typical homeowner east of the Mississippi, 80% of the plants in your yard are species that evolved in Asia, Europe, or South America - species that are unable to support the complex food webs necessary to sustain ecosystem function in your area. 

- President Richard Nixon understood the limits to the amount of abuse our natural resources could endure. In his 1970 State of the Union address, he said, "We can no longer afford to consider air and water common property, free to be abused by anyone without regard to the consequences. Instead, we should begin now to treat them as scarce resources, which we are no more free to contaminate than we are free to throw garbage into our neighbor's yard." 

- We must stop segregating ourselves from nature and learn to live as a part of it.

- If conservation is to happen, it must happen largely on private property, but not just on farms and raches; it must include all types of private property.

- There are few of us who cannot improve our relationship with the land we own. 

- The first serious efforts to protect natural areas from overexploitation were enacted some 500 years ago by European aristocracy as a means of protecting their favorite pastime: hunting. 

- Conservation by populor demand did not take root in Europe until the 1800s, when British artists started to change the subjects of their paintings from human forms and religious events to the beauty of the natural world. 

- Yellowstone National Park was the first national park in the world.

- In 1966, Congress passed the Endangered Species Act.

- Young box turtles spend much of their time underground.

- The built landscapes between habitat fragments must be ecologically enriched to the point where they can sustainably support entire lifecycles of local biodiversity. 

- 40% of the chemicals used by the lawn-care industry are banned in other countries. 

- 40-60% of fertilizer applied to lawns ends up in surface and groundwater, where it kills aquatic organisms and contaminates drinking water. 

- Land ownership is not just about privilege. It's about responsibility. (Roy Dennis)

- Because our gardens are usually in full public view, they are a form of communication.

- Thomas Jefferson featured plants from China and Europe whenever he could, because his landscape was a a symbol of his status. 

- If you are seeking peaceful solitude in a natural setting, a yard with plantings that create outdoor rooms is ideal.

- A cardinal in your yard is not justa cardinal in your yard: it is your cardinal. As such wild creates can no longer dpend on while natural plants to sustain them, you must assume responsibility for the well-being of your cardinal, your blue jay, and your AMerican toad. 

- One of the biggest benefits of Homegrown National Park (the natural areas that you create on your property) is providing our future earth stewards with the convenient option of entering the natural world 365 days of the year right at home. 

- Homegrown National Park will teach us, and our children, to value the natural world rather than destroy it. 

- Insects that attempt to eat milkweed leaves soon find their mouthparts glues permanently shut by the sticky sap. Monarchs, however, have found a simple but amazing way to defeat this defense: they block the flow of sap to milkweed leaves. 

- Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt in 1804 stated that human activities would change the earth's climate if they continued unabated.

- The community of insectivores that relied on caterpillars for food were seriously diminished when introduced plants replaced native plants.

- Chickadees are able to assess the quality of the landscape before they deide whether or not to set up house. In yards with introduced plants, chickadees lay 1.5 fewer eggs than nests in yards dominated by natives. In these same yards, there were 1.2 fewer chicks produced and the chicks matured at a slower rate of 1.5 days compared to nests located in yards with lots of native plants. These changes cumulatively are making a huge and negative impact on the chickadee population. 

- A chickadee must find thousands of caterpillars to rear one clutch of young.

- Birds do eat berries produced by introduced plants. Nearly all of our invasive shrubs produce their berries in the fall; and both migrating and overwintering birds depend on fall berries for the fats that they need either to fuel their migration or to build fat reserves for the long winter months if they don't migrate. 

- Berries from introduced Eurasian plants such as autumn olive, glossy buckthorn, bush and Japanese honeysuckle, and multiflora rose container very little fat, typically less than 1 percent, while berries from natives such as Virginia creeper, wax myrtle, arrowwood, viburnum, spicebush, poison ivy, and gray dogwood are loaded with valuable fat, often nearly 50 percent by weight.

- Introduced plants are high in sugar at the time of year when our birds need to consume berries high in fat.

- When fall migrants stop to rest and eat in a habitat loaded with invasive shrubs, they do not stay long. Instead, they linger in habitats with plenty of the spicebush and arrowwood viburnum berries they need to fuel their migration.

- It takes 200 aphids to equal the weight of one medium-sized caterpillar. Caterpillars are also more nutritious than most other insects. They are high in protein and fats.

- A typical nestling eats a full meal 30-40 times a day. That means a parent (or couple) raising five chicks must bring food to the nest about 150 times a day. 

- Some genera, such as Quercus (oak), Prunus (cherry), and Salix (willow), host hundreds of caterpillar species.

- For most caterpillar species, only two of these life stages, the egg and larval stages, are completed on the host plant. 

- Monarch caterpillars almost never form their chrysalises on milkweed.

- When outdoor lights are on, insect visits (e.g., moths) declined 62%. A solution is to have the lights turn on only when you, or an intruder, are out and about in your yard.

- There are nearly 4,000 species of native bees in North America.

- Half of the Midwest's native bee species have disappeared from their historic ranges in the last century.

- There should be a continuous sequence of flowering plants in our landscape to help the bees. Although having more than one species of flowering plant blooming at once is desirable and gives bees nutritional options, a landscape that goes through a 2-3 weeks period with no blooms is deadly to bees. 

- Goldenrod nectar is an important source of energy for migrating monarchs. Its seeds feed a number of wintering sparrows, juncos, and finches, and birds use them to line their nests in the spring. Its stems provide housing for native bees during both summer and winter and support four species of gallers (insects that create galls) as well as several stem-boring caterpillars.

- Fall-blooming asters provide essential forage for migrating monarches, even well after goldenrod blooms end. 

- Diverse plant communities will generate diverse animal communities wherever they are.

- A silver maple has the potential to produce 287 species of caterpillars.

- Plant trees in groups of thre or more on ten-foot centers to result in a root matrix that would keep them locked in place through thick and thin. The trees must be planted young, so their roots can interlock as they grow. 

- Pocket prairies can be as small as 3'x7' and still provide pollen and nectar for flower visitors as well as nectar and host plants for monarchs. 

- Install a bubbler to attract a variety of birds.

- Reduce your lawn by half. Think of a lawn as an area rug, not wall-to-wall carpet.

- Remove invasive species.

- Plant keystone genera - native oaks, cherries, willows, birches, cottonwoods, elms, goldenrods, asters, and sunflowers. 

- Be generous with your plantings. Plant groves of trees at the same density that they would occur naturally in a forest. 

- Install window well covers to prevent toads, frogs, voles, and other small creatures from becoming trapped in window wells.

- Set your mower height no lower than three inches. 

- Replace the lawn under trees with well-planted beds replete with groundcovers. Large decorative rocks also provide pupation sites. A fallen log or old stump is even better to add to the bed.

Further books to read:

- A Sand County Almanac

Sites to explore:

- www.nwf.org/NativePlantFinder

- https://www.audubon.org/native-plants