Nature's Best Hope by Doug Tallamy: March 3, 2020 

Yes,Fly Rod I completely agree with you, we need many, many more people like Dr Douglas who "practice what they preach"with sincerity patience passion.Just finished Dr. Douglas book and it was purely a great eye opener. My brother Dr. Inamdar is also in the University of Delaware, in the Soil and plant department. They have worked together.Thanks to the simple ways that Dr.Doug has shown in his treasured book we also understand what Alexander von Humboldt wanted to advocate. That every ecosystem support a food web, so survival of natives wildlife is essential. The insects, plants and animals are thus interlinked. It certainly is a stark reality that the weight of biomass is less than man created structures on the earth.

I’ve been doing the same to 30 acres at my property in southern New Jersey Fly Rod! It is nice to see like minded people with such important objectives and having a great time doing it! Good job from New Jersey!

Fly Rod, How is your project going? I am just getting started on about 2 acres in WI. Have any good tips you have learned about getting rid of your buckthorn?

Where at in Minnesota are you I'm in isanti

interested to know how the gardening in your area has gone?

Your existing plants provide food for insects that already exist (have been born essentially). The plants you already have, have their place when we have space to also add natives within our yards but your plants don’t enable new insects to be developed because they are not host plants, or native. It is the act of planting native host plants that will improve insect diversity, populations and provide food for future animals! You are not necessarily being asked to remove everything you’ve got but instead being asked to add native plants to your existing landscape, unless you don’t have any more room! Then it would be wise to remove them and replace with natives. It is the responsibility of each one of us to do our part within our properties with the hope of making enough of a difference! If you aren’t able to change what you have or couldn’t afford to then at least teach the lesson you learned by watching this to someone else in the hope that they will do their part! Share the link to this video. That’s the easiest thing to do. Good luck and try to do your part however you can. It takes a village as they say!

@@davidparker8752 Well said! There is no point in destroying non-native, established plants that at least some of the local wildlife have adapted to using, and leaving them with nothing! Helping and restoring native plants is a great goal, but we should hurt native wildlife by forcing them to follow blind rules and a rigid timeline.