News
Long Live Our Mighty Oaks!
CALIFORNIA MIGHTY OAKS – by Mary Sanichas
A fun, easy-to-read summary of the many ways oak trees hold ecosystems together — with over a dozen links and resource about how we can support them. Perfect for introducing students, neighbors, friends and family to the importance of native oak trees.
Jon Koch
The Muscatine Pollinator Project took over acres of old unused farm land that had gone to weed to create a 55 acre Pollinator Park inside the City limits of Muscatine.
Prairie Strips*
Small changes Big Impacts. Prairie strips provide a win-win scenario for farmers and wildlife. Research shows that by converting 10% of a crop-field to diverse, native perennial vegetation, farmers and landowners can reduce sediment movement off their field by 95 percent and total phosphorous and nitrogen lost through runoff by 90 and 85 percent, respectively.
Beyond Parks and Preserves / June 23, 2021
In a recent NY Times article, Zoë Schlanger describes a policy shift in managing our national parks, from protecting all species within our parks to picking a choosing which ones we have the resources to save. Climate change is blamed as the culprit that has pushed park managers and budgets beyond their capacity, although most of the actual problems described in the article are caused by invasive species we have brought to this country and would be problematic even without climate change. Climate change is indeed serious management issue, though not the only issue, and it has shown us the limitations of restricting conservation to parks and preserves. Parks are fixed in location, but a changing climate demands flexible responses on the part of plants and animals they are designed to protect. When confined to a fixed space, they lose that flexibility.
Native Planting in Big Cities / by Banford Weissmann
New York City is essentially a giant ecologic scar with hard, impermeable surfaces stretching out over hundreds of square miles. Natural green spaces are relegated to a few places here and there, and trees poking out of sidewalks struggle to survive. Can an Idea like Homegrown National Park™ even work in a place where habitat fragmentation is so extreme?
3 Steps for Choosing Native Plants for Your Yard / by Wildlawn
Plant selection is more than just gardening; it’s restoration. Over the course of a few centuries, we have changed the topography and soil chemistry of every corner of this country through agriculture, industry, and urban development. We have altered the places where native species were once able to establish themselves successfully, and our local ecosystems have suffered as a result.
Where Are All the Native Plants? / by Archewild
Coneflower, Milkweed, and Beebalm make up almost 30% of the native plant market. You can find them in almost any garden center on the east coast, and we’re sold and told to plant them every year. But if these native plants are so important, durable, and easy to grow, why don’t we see them in the wild? In truth, these types of plants used to dominate the landscape, but after decades and centuries of altered topography and over development, their habitats have all but disappeared. In the sink-or-swim world of natural selection, native plants have fallen into two camps: specialized and generalized communities.
6 Reasons to Plant Native / by Archewild
Establishing native species on your property allows for ecosystem processes that can’t be achieved with common lawn grass or ornamentals. If you want to rebuild and strengthen the natural habitat in your backyard, that plan has to include native plants. There are many, many important reasons to start restoring your property with native plants, so let’s start with the basics.