Nature's Best Hope Quotes

“Few arborists would suggest planting trees on a three-foot center, but if we planted our trees in groups of three or more on ten-foot centers, the resulting root matrix would keep them locked in place through thick and thin. None of the trees would develop into a single majestic specimen tree, but together they would form a single grove of trees that the eye will take in just as if they were one large tree. Planting tree groves will also protect against the domino effect. Every time we take down a tree, we make the remaining trees more vulnerable to straight-line winds. There is one catch to this approach, however: the trees must be planted young, so their roots can interlock as they grow.”
― Douglas W. Tallamy, Nature's Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation that Starts in Your Yard

“...humans now occupy or have seriously altered nearly all of the spaces outside our parks and preserves. Each of us carries an inherent responsibility to preserve the quality of earth's ecosystems. When we leave the responsibility to a few experts (none of whom hold political office), the rest of us remain largely ignorant of earth stewardship and how to practice it. The conservation of Earth's resources, including its living biological systems, must become part of the everyday culture of us all, worldwide.”
― Douglas W. Tallamy, Nature's Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation That Starts in Your Yard

“Aldo Leopold had a dream. He dreamt of a time when people accepted their roles as citizens of the natural world rather than its conquerors, a time when the land was not viewed as a commodity to be exploited but as the source of our continued existence. He longed for a time when people appreciated and respected wilderness, not just as a hunting ground or a recreational playground, but as a truly awesome and unimaginably complex machine that required all of its parts to function well.”
― Douglas W. Tallamy, Nature's Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation That Starts in Your Yard

“Trees evolved to grow together in a forest. They intertwine their roots, forming a root matrix that is nearly impossible to uproot. Forest trees with interlocked roots may snap off in big winds, but they typically don’t uproot. Because aesthetics have trumped function for so long, we have planted large, isolated specimen trees ready to blow over nearly everywhere. If we change our goal from creating majestic specimen trees to picturesque groves of trees, the interlocking effect of root matrices will be strongest.”
― Douglas W. Tallamy, Nature's Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation that Starts in Your Yard

“Gardening is like cooking. It is tempting to cook only with the goal of achieving great taste, with no thought of healthy eating, but that often results in tasty concoctions so full of fat, sugar, and salt that they are deadly in the long run. Similarly, it is tempting to garden only for beauty, without regard to the many ecological roles our landscapes must perform. All too often, such narrow gardening goals result in a landscape so low in ecological function that it drains the vitality from the surrounding ecosystem.”
― Douglas W. Tallamy, Nature's Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation that Starts in Your Yard

“There can be no purpose more inspiring than to begin the age of restoration, reweaving the wondrous diversity of life that still surrounds us. —E. O. WILSON”
― Douglas W. Tallamy, Nature's Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation that Starts in Your Yard

“A: Every plant can be evaluated through a cost-benefit analysis. The ecological costs of autumn olive are enormous. They are one of the most invasive plants we have, and they decimate local plant and animal diversity and thus threaten ecosystem stability and function wherever they spread. Autumn olive berries might provide cancer-fighting benefits, but so do berries of many native plants (elderberry, for example). We can take advantage of other sources of lycopene. In my view, this is a clear case where the costs of planting a nonnative species far outweigh the replaceable benefits.”
― Douglas W. Tallamy, Nature's Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation that Starts in Your Yard

“Millions of acres that are now lawn in the United States once supported the native herbaceous plants that fed lots of grasshoppers and crickets. Grasshoppers, despite their name, depend primarily on broadleaved forbs, while crickets mostly develop on dead plant material. In pursuit of our obsession for neat landscapes, we have eliminated both in too many places. Finally, areas overrun with invasive groundcovers such as Japanese stiltgrass, vinca, or English ivy wouldn’t support grasshoppers because the plants grasshoppers depend on have been replaced by species they cannot eat. We can bring grasshoppers and other insects back if we plant more of our private and public spaces with the native plant species they require.”
― Douglas W. Tallamy, Nature's Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation that Starts in Your Yard

“include perennial sunflowers (Helianthus spp.), various goldenrods (Solidago spp.), native willows (Salix spp.), asters (Symphyotrichum spp.), and blueberries (Vaccinium spp.). Including these plants in our gardens, along with the greatest diversity of native flowering plants we can muster, is our best defense against losing local native bee species.”
― Douglas W. Tallamy, Nature's Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation that Starts in Your Yard

“the entire country will become engaged when our need for robust and diverse ecosystems in all of our human-dominated landscapes becomes common knowledge! CHAPTER ELEVEN What Each of Us Can Do There is in fact no distinction between the fate of the land and the fate of the people. When one is abused,”
― Douglas W. Tallamy, Nature's Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation that Starts in Your Yard

“dominated landscapes twice a year. This makes rest stops such as the Terpstras’ yard essential for migrants, especially in large cities. And each stop, no matter its size, has ecological value. Margy and Dan have shown us all how effective one couple can be in their spare time. I cannot think of better role models.”
― Douglas W. Tallamy, Nature's Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation that Starts in Your Yard

“to the nest each trip, the pair would have brought in 812 caterpillars per day, or 4060 caterpillars in the five days Stewart watched the nest. The chicks he observed stayed in the nest only eight days before they fledged. These observations are not exceptional. Field researchers have watched bobolinks”
― Douglas W. Tallamy, Nature's Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation that Starts in Your Yard

“migrants stop to rest and eat in a habitat loaded with invasive shrubs, they do not stay long. Instead, they linger in habitats with plenty of the spicebush and arrowwood viburnum”
― Douglas W. Tallamy, Nature's Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation that Starts in Your Yard

“what”
― Douglas W. Tallamy, Nature's Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation that Starts in Your Yard

“It might seem preposterous to equate a walk in your yard with a trip to Yellowstone. Your yard surely will not provide breathtaking views of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, Bridal Falls, or the Teton Range, but there is much that Homegrown National Park can provide without the expense, crowds, reservations, or traffic jams of a monumental road trip. And it can provide these”
― Douglas W. Tallamy, Nature's Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation that Starts in Your Yard

“What if each American landowner made it a goal to convert half of his or her lawn to productive native plant communities? Even moderate success could collectively restore some semblance of ecosystem function to more than twenty million acres of what is now ecological wasteland. How big is twenty million acres? It’s bigger than the combined areas of the Everglades, Yellowstone, Yosemite, Grand Teton, Canyonlands, Mount Rainier, North Cascades, Badlands, Olympic, Sequoia, Grand Canyon, Denali, and the Great Smoky Mountains National Parks. If we restore the ecosystem function of these twenty million acres, we can create this country’s largest park system. It gives me the shivers just to write about it. Because so much of this park will be created at our homes, I suggest we call it Homegrown National Park.”
― Douglas W. Tallamy, Nature's Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation that Starts in Your Yard

“Across the United States, millions of acres now covered in lawn can be quickly restored to viable habitat by untrained citizens with minimal expense and without any costly changes to infrastructure.”
― Douglas W. Tallamy, Nature's Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation that Starts in Your Yard

“Restoring habitat where we live and work, and to a lesser extent where we farm and graze, will go a long way toward building biological corridors that connect preserved habitat fragments with one another.”
― Douglas W. Tallamy, Nature's Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation that Starts in Your Yard

“Conservation that is confined to parks will not preserve species in the long run, because these areas are too small and too separated from one another.”
― Douglas W. Tallamy, Nature's Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation that Starts in Your Yard

“We are living off of the ecological interest that was generated by a healthy ecological bank account long ago, but we are eating up the principal of that account at a steady”
― Douglas W. Tallamy, Nature's Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation that Starts in Your Yard

“in 1903, with the state of arizona on the verge of mining the Grand Canyon, President Theodore Roosevelt stood on the canyon’s lip, gazed out over its unique magnificence, and uttered the five words that would save it: “Leave it as it is.” Unfortunately,”
― Douglas W. Tallamy, Nature's Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation that Starts in Your Yard

“And yet we have already grown well beyond the earth’s limits. The last time planet Earth was able to support the human enterprise sustainably—that is, provide for human needs without degrading the principle of the earth’s ecological bank account—was 1975, when the earth’s population was 4 billion (Juniper 2013). As I write in 2018, global population is approaching 7.5 billion, and we have seriously degraded the earth’s carrying capacity—not only for humans, but for other species as well.”
― Douglas W. Tallamy, Nature's Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation that Starts in Your Yard

“Our environmental boat has sprung a leak. Many of us are trying to repair the leak; others are bailing to keep us afloat until the leak is plugged. What is baffling, though, is that far too many of us are dumping new buckets of water into our boat, as if sinking it will not be a problem for them. At this point, each of us must decide what role we will play in the future: Will you be a bailer or a dumper? Your choice of plants in your yard will determine what role you have chosen.”
― Douglas W. Tallamy, Nature's Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation that Starts in Your Yard

“knowledge generates interest, and interest generates compassion,”
― Douglas W. Tallamy, Nature's Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation that Starts in Your Yard

“there is hardly a page in this book that doesn’t imply or directly describe something each of us can do to contribute to Homegrown National Park. But no more beating around the bush—in this chapter, I briefly outline ten concrete steps each of us can take to make Homegrown National Park a successful reality.”
― Douglas W. Tallamy, Nature's Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation that Starts in Your Yard

“Creating Homegrown National Park will require a collective effort from landowners everywhere.”
― Douglas W. Tallamy, Nature's Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation that Starts in Your Yard

“Restrict turf to wide paths that guide pedestrians through your landscape, that draw the eye to a featured aspect of your design, or that define beds, tree groves, or various hardscapes as being purposeful and cared for. In their 2015 book, Planting in a Post-Wild World, Thomas Rainer and Claudia West suggest that we think of lawn as an area rug, not wall-to-wall carpeting. Superb advice!”
― Douglas W. Tallamy, Nature's Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation that Starts in Your Yard

“Few arborists would suggest planting trees on a three-foot center, but if we planted our trees in groups of three or more on ten-foot centers, the resulting root matrix would keep them locked in place through thick and thin. None of the trees would develop into a single majestic specimen tree, but together they would form a single grove of trees that the eye will take in just as if they were one large tree.”
― Douglas W. Tallamy, Nature's Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation that Starts in Your Yard

“My point is this: each of the acres we have developed for specific human goals is an opportunity to add to Homegrown National Park. We already are actively managing nearly all of our privately owned lands and much of the public spaces in the United States. We simply need to include ecological function in our management plans to keep the sixth mass extinction at bay.”
― Douglas W. Tallamy, Nature's Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation that Starts in Your Yard

“in 1620, when the pilgrims landed at what is now Provincetown at the lower tip of Cape Cod, they found the potable water they had been looking for, but they also found a near continuous span of well-spaced mature trees. By the early 1800s, however, the entire cape had been clearcut for settlement and sheep herding, with nary a tree remaining.”
― Douglas W. Tallamy, Nature's Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation that Starts in Your Yard