The ‘National Park’ That Stretches From Coast to Coast

While the current administration guts the Endangered Species Act, reduces national monuments, defunds national parks and opens millions of acres of public lands to drilling and grazing, Tallamy is urging every American to give nature a boost where they can. “Everything we plant, don’t plant, or apply to our yard impacts the greater ecosystem in which our yard exists, and thus everything that depends on that ecosystem,” he writes in his most recent book, How Can I Help? Saving Nature with Your Yard. He argues that we don’t have the luxury to ignore that simple truth. “Everybody requires healthy ecosystems whether they know it or not,” he says. “That means it’s everybody’s responsibility to contribute to taking care of these systems.”

Tallamy emphasizes the urgency: “When you read that we’ve lost three billion breeding birds and have 22 percent fewer butterflies just since the year 2000, global insect decline, two-thirds of wildlife gone — that’s upsetting to a lot of people,” he says. “Even if they don’t know anything about biology, they don’t want to hear that everything on the planet is dying.”

Rather than stopping there, Tallamy pivots toward agency. “Our simple message is: There are things you can do. You can see the results. It empowers you to be part of the solution instead of part of the problem.” He argues that the reward of taking action is immediate: “If you plant an oak tree in your yard, you can see the difference tomorrow.”

Homegrown National Park’s website and Tallamy’s books give detailed practical advice on what anybody can do, from planting keystone species to shrinking one’s lawn and leaving the leaves as shelter for pollinators. But even people without a yard can find plenty of useful information. “If everybody did container gardening on their balcony, it [would become] a resource for native bee species in cities,” he says. “Migrating monarchs will use these plants.” And if someone really does not want to handle plants, Tallamy has hands-on advice for them, too: “Then change the light bulb outside from a white bulb to an amber bulb to stop killing moths all night long. You don’t need a PhD to do that, but it would make a huge difference.”

Whether this grassroots movement can scale fast enough to make a measurable ecological difference remains an open question. But as governments struggle to halt biodiversity loss, Tallamy is betting on changing culture.

Referring to the U.N.’s initiative of conserving 30 percent of land and water by 2030, commonly referred to as 30 x 30, he says, “You’ve got to count what’s happening on private property. And nobody’s doing that. Nobody’s recording it. That’s what that biodiversity map is all about.”

In his books, which have sold over half a million copies, Tallamy propagates a stubbornly upbeat view. “The cultural change from an adversarial relationship with nature to a collaborative one is starting to happen,” he writes in his latest book, “and it gives me hope about the future of biodiversity and thus our own future.”

Tallamy’s initiative is especially trying to reach people not usually interested in ecosystem health. “That is of course most people,” he acknowledges. “We try to create a social network to motivate people who don’t have a clue, who don’t know they are responsible for good earth stewardship right where they live.” He tours the country relentlessly giving speeches “and there is usually someone who has been dragged in by their neighbor.”

In parts of the Deep South, Tallamy says, traditional landscaping culture remains resistant to rewilding. Many homeowners associate tidy lawns with safety and social acceptance.

Tallamy is refreshingly candid about the limitations of his approach. Even converting every targeted lawn would represent less than one percent of U.S. land, he acknowledges. Critics argue that such a change cannot solve biodiversity loss on its own. “I never said Homegrown National Park is going to solve the biodiversity crisis,” he says. “Getting everybody involved and changing the culture is going to help. It’s going to help a lot.”

A recent feature in the New York Times questioned whether his insistence on native plants is out of date because some species adapt to a changing habitat. But Tallamy has shown in dozens of studies that native plants are crucial for many species’ survival.

The real metric, he argues, isn’t simply acreage restored but whether ecological thinking becomes mainstream. Evidence of that cultural shift, he believes, is already emerging. Demand for native plants now exceeds supply in many regions. Conservation landscaping is beginning to increase property values rather than diminish them. Native plant professionals are increasingly booked months in advance.

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Still, Tallamy admits the movement remains tiny relative to the challenge. Even counting the two million people who visit Homegrown National Park’s website annually, “That’s nothing compared to 340 million people in the U.S. we need to reach.”

Mostly, he wants people to stop thinking of conservation as something professionals do somewhere else. “The object is to get people to realize that they have agency over what happens on their little piece of the Earth,” he emphasizes. “And that it matters.”

The post The ‘National Park’ That Stretches From Coast to Coast appeared first on Reasons to be Cheerful.

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