Advocating for One Species

In his excellent book Bringing Nature Home: How Native Plants Sustain Wildlife in our Gardens, Doug Tallamy suggests becoming an advocate for a troubled species in order to raise awareness and help promote conservation efforts for an organism that otherwise may be invisible to the general public. As an example he offers up the charismatic monarch, whose plight has encouraged individual, neighborhood, city, and regional efforts to re-establish milkweed-rich habitat to help increase their population on the continent.

Tallamy cites ecologist Dan Janzen, who speculates that mass extinctions could be mitigated “if every person in the world became the advocate for one species.” It’s an optimistic and intriguing thought. Most people know about the endangered whooping crane or the gray wolf and would find it easy to push for protections for these noble creatures, but what of the Coffin Cave mold beetle or the Arkansas fatmucket mussel (both also endangered)? Would the advocate assigned the the less glamorous species feel slighted? Or would the simple act of getting to know these species engender affection in their advocates?

The fun part about this approach is that you don’t always have to advocate for every species; preserving habitat for the monarch, for example, also helps many other pollinators who benefit from habitats that are planted to help monarchs. And it doesn’t need to be narrowed down to a single species; why not adopt an entire genus and learn about it?

Is there a particular native plant you are fond of? Learn all about it and tell your neighbors why it’s so great! Learn about the insects and birds that may utilize it, and what their life cycles are like. Incorporate them into your garden, and if you are up for a challenge, try to save seeds and germinate them in the spring to give away to local friends.

And maybe change it up year to year. One year, I was all about butterfly milkweed. The next year, it was grey-headed coneflower. Next up, birdsfoot violet. All have found their way into my garden (the violet is still a little iffy, but I’m hoping for good things from it). This year, I am on to leafcutter bees–moving up a trophic level to insects has the added benefit of requiring learning about the plants they upon which they depend, so you get to promote many species for the price of one.

If you love monarchs, you will of course want to plant milkweeds in your yard. But it would also be beneficial to educate your neighbors and encourage them to include milkweed in their landscape as well. It is harder for monarchs to find one small patch of milkweed in a neighborhood, but if they can hop from plant to plant, yard to yard, everyone benefits.

Leafcutter bees may find enough forage in my yard, but they would have an easier time if my neighbors had flowers and trees they could visit for pollen as well. And they would certainly do better if my neighbors refrained from using pesticides on their property. As an advocate for these bees, I can educate folks about how they pollinate not only native flowers but also fruit and vegetable crops. Once they get to know these little helpers they may be less inclined to use chemicals that would harm them.

Everything is connected. You can’t help monarchs without helping their host plants, which is turn help many other species. Every plant, insect, or bird you advocate for will help their entire ecosystem, and it’s an easy way to establish a connection yourself.

Originally published on Sycamore Greenway Friends