Bringing Nature Home

From the Audubon Minnesota website:
Monday, March 16, 2009 - 7:00-8:00pm
Macalester College, John B. Davis Lecture Hall, Ruth Stricker Dayton Campus Center

Dr. Douglas Tallamy, author of a new book that calls for planting gardens that appeal to wildlife—especially insects—brings his important message to St. Paul on Monday, March 16. The author of Bringing Nature Home, How Native Plants Sustain Wildlife in Our Gardens, will speak at 7:00 p.m. in the John B. Davis Lecture Hall in the Ruth Stricker Dayton Campus Center at Macalester College. The event is free and open to the public.

Many birders, gardeners, and landscapers are already great fans of Tallamy’s book and viewpoint. An entomologist and dynamic speaker, he will discuss the clear link between native plant species and native wildlife.

As more and more of nature disappears under bulldozers and chain saws, gardeners may just be the salvation of birds and other wildlife. Wild creatures are losing places to live and breed at an alarming rate, and their food sources are shrinking. If more and more of us filled our yards and gardens with native plants, we’d help create the biodiversity that sustains all life forms, including our own.

Tallamy clearly makes the case for natives and against alien plants. He shows how non-native plants are nearly invisible to native insects and other wildlife: if insect larvae haven’t evolved with a plant they can’t use it. In this way we lose strands in the web of life, a scenario occurring all over the world. How important is this? Research shows that 96 percent of North American’s land birds rely on insects to feed their nestlings, and insects rely on native plants.

“We help decide which animals will make it and which will not every time we plant or remove something from our yards,” Tallamy says.

For everyone interested in the conservation of birds and other wildlife and everyone who gardens, this is a “don’t miss” event. Please refer to the Macalester College campus map (pdf). The Ruth Stricker Dayton Campus Center, where the lecture will be held, is building #25 on the map.