KAXE's Tuesday Morning Show strives to take an in-depth look at some natural resource-based issues important to our region. We hope to discuss not only the problems but also highlight some creative solutions.
This episode of "The Decline of Native Pollinators" featured Brandon Hough, the executive director of Homegrown National Park.
Patching a fragmented habitat
The Homegrown National Park movement seeks to restore environmental networks and corridors by encouraging homeowners, renters and businesses to restore small areas of land with native plantings.
As natural habitats have become separated from one another by development, it has become more difficult for insects, birds and other species to move from natural area to another. This is called “habitat fragmentation.”
Like us, animals rely on safe corridors. A typical day for humans might involve traveling by road between home, work and a grocery store. An insect like a bumblebee might need to travel between patches of flowers, an underground nesting tunnel, and a safe shelter to sleep through the night.
“How are animals supposed to get from A to B when we’ve taken so much of their habitat, their trees, their flowers, their grasses, their waterways?” asked Hough, the executive director of Homegrown National Park.
Can a patio plant make a difference?
Environmental challenges like these can be daunting, and many people feel overwhelmed by the scale of these problems. Homegrown National Park aims to demonstrate the cumulative impact of many small efforts.
Each volunteer registers their restoration effort on an online map, which covers the United States and Canada. For instance, if you replant the grass under your maple tree with native plants — say, 300 square feet — you could add that project to the map.
Restoring an area involves just two activities: removing non-native invasive species and replacing them with native plantings.
“We try to make this as simple as possible,” Hough stated.
The project also assists volunteers with selecting species that will grow well and have a large impact for wildlife in their area.
Currently, there are over 35,000 contributors and roughly 112,000 acres planted — about the size of the 39th largest National Park (Great Sand Dunes National Park in Colorado is 107,342 acres).
Homegrown National Park aims to restore 20 million acres of private land, and in the process, connect the fragmented national parks to each other with corridors of wildlife-friendly native plantings on private land.
Invasive species, beautiful burdens
Restoration efforts can’t just involve planting native species: it’s also important to remove invasive ones. While some exotic species may co-exist with native ones peacefully, there are others that will shade out, poison or otherwise destroy their native neighbors.
Two factors shape a species’ invasiveness: its effect on native species and its ability to spread to new areas.
For instance, the non-native garlic mustard both shades out and chemically poisons nearby plants. If it stayed in one spot, the losses might be reasonable. However, it uses a spring-like mechanism to launch its seeds far from the parent plant, where they can get caught by wind or a passing animal to spread the scourge far and wide.
The Homegrown National Park project encourages its volunteers to eradicate these types of plants wherever possible.
In contrast, the greater plantain is a non-native species that has spread widely outside of its natural range but is not considered invasive because it doesn’t have negative effects on its newfound ecosystems. While it is not a native species, it is a reasonable one to keep around due to its benign nature. (Hough, for instance, hosts a few non-native lilacs on his property. Though lilacs are not native, they don’t spread out of control.)
Even when benign, exotic species can present a problem for wildlife when they dominate the landscape (for instance, a turf lawn). Most species of insects, for instance, have become specialized (reliant on only one or a few species of plants).
One well-known example is the monarch butterfly, whose caterpillars can only feed on milkweed plants. While an adult monarch butterfly may feed happily on an exotic plant, that exotic plant cannot feed its offspring and is likely sitting in a spot that formerly hosted a native plant like milkweed.
“When you’re planting all these exotics, you’re robbing all these insects and species of the food they need. And when that happens, they just go away. And that’s why we’re seeing such severe, you know, declines in pollinators and insects... There’s simply not enough food for them.
"So often I hear people say, ‘Why don’t they just eat something else?’ And I joke, ‘Why don’t you just eat poison ivy?’ Because you did not evolve to do that! If your grocery store started stocking all these other exotic things that you couldn’t consume, but the store owner said, ‘Well, they’re pretty,’ you probably wouldn’t be that happy. And if there wasn’t enough food for everybody in the store, populations would go down.
"That’s what’s happening out in the world and the natural world with insects."Morning Show conversation with Brandon Hough
Balcony bird beacons
Even small plots in urban environments can have a big impact. Christian Cooper, a birder in New York City, developed a small garden on his rooftop.
"He gets all these wonderful birds and butterflies and pollinators on his garden, where you would not expect it — in Manhattan — to see these things. But you plant it and they’ll come,” Hough said.
For renters and others who can’t alter land or property, the Homegrown National Park team has put together resources and a tool for container gardening. These plantings focus on keystone species, which Hough describes as “linchpins for supporting biodiversity.” The tool assesses your region and recommends the best container-friendly native plants.
Backyard benefits
Insects aren’t the only animals who benefit from these projects. Chickadee parents depend on the habitat around their nest to feed their young, venturing only about 2 acres from the nest site to gather 500-700 caterpillars a day for over two weeks. That’s a lot of caterpillars, and those caterpillars need a lot of native plants to survive! On properties with less than 70% native plant species, songbird populations have suffered due to the lack of food.
Replanting a conventional lawn with native species is a hugely beneficial step for the ecosystem, in addition to reducing homeowner costs. Replanting even a portion of a lawn with native species will improve water quality, attract beneficial species, and reduce financial and energetic burdens for the homeowner.
Lawns cover over 40 million acres of the United States: more than any other irrigated crop! If just half of this was converted to native plantings, the Homegrown National Park project would meet its goal.
The project is also scalable for homeowners who like the look of a traditional lawn but still want to help wildlife species in other ways.
“If you have a yard and you’re not really fully ready to commit to getting rid of all your turf, and you just want to plant one tree, consider planting an oak tree, especially a white oak," Hough said. "If they’re native to your region, white oaks are sort of the ‘granddaddy of biodiversity.’ They can support over 900 species of moths and butterflies.”
Landowners who have already completed restoration projects (or not converted their land in the first place and keep it clear of invasive species) are encouraged to add their land to the map. Folks are also welcome to add aspirational projects and projects that are in process.
“It really doesn’t matter if you have a little bit or a lot, every action you take matters. And, you know, if you can put just one native plant in a container on your back porch, that’s something,” Hough said.
For more on science and nature, subscribe to our Season Watch Newsletter or visit the Season Watch Facebook page.
Funding for this project was provided by the Minnesota Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund as recommended by the Legislative-Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources (LCCMR).
