CONDON’S CORNER

An Overdeveloped World Doesn’t Support Wildlife

 

© Marlene A. Condon 2026 All Rights Reserved 

  [Published July 9, 2026, by The Daily Progress, the daily newspaper of Charlottesville, Virginia and published July 11, 2026, by The News Virginian, the daily newspaper of Waynesboro, Virginia.] 

Black Knapweed (Centaurea nigra), a native plant in Europe, is one of the best plants for surviving drought conditions and also feeding insects, such as this Common Buckeye butterfly.  

“An Over-developed World Doesn’t Support Wildlife”

 

I’ve been an observer of the natural world for—literally—as long as I can remember. My very first memory is of walking along the city sidewalk with my older sister as she pushed a baby carriage containing our baby brother. As he is two and half years younger than I am, I know I must have been approaching the age of three as it was springtime—the time of my own birth—and my brother had been born at the end of the previous year. 

 

The city sidewalks were busy with large red-and-black ants going about their own lives as we went about ours. I possess many such memories of my earliest years of life as I seem to have been born with an avid interest in nature.

 

I’m now several decades beyond my youth and I have never lost my fascination with this aspect of life. Consequently, I possess thousands of photos I’ve taken of the natural world that attest to the attraction of nonnative plants to our wildlife. Thus, the push to rid our environment of alien plants is quite concerning to me.   

 

If our world wasn’t so developed (covered over with buildings and roadways) to accommodate humans, we wouldn’t have an abundance of alien plants populating human-disturbed areas (e.g., road margins where the nutritious and friable topsoil has long since been removed and poor subsoil left behind).

 

The reality is that the “intent” of nonnative plants is to keep the environment working as it should. Alien plants fare better in such areas (generally speaking) than native plants that have been here for millennia.

 

Native plants do best in the rich, built-up-over-centuries soil that preceded the arrival of Europeans and folks of many other nationalities, whereas many so-called invasive plants do well in the nutrient-poor soil left over from construction, roadside-grading, winter-salting of roads, highway department-mowing along roads, deposition of vehicle-exhaust chemicals, etc., etc.

 

Thus, we are lucky that humans transported—intentionally or not—alien plants to our land because we would instead have bare ground following development. Unlike the topsoil that is removed or despoiled by development, subsoil can support far fewer organisms (such as bacteria and earthworms), which is the reason it’s less fertile than the soil that would normally sit above it.

 

No matter what town you live in nowadays, you are bound to see development taking place to rob yet more land from the local critters. Consequently, the only way to help wildlife survive is to turn homeowners’ properties into nature-friendly gardens that can well support our local fauna. But do you see that happening? Not much.

 

Instead, you still see most homeowners mowing huge swaths of lawn that not only pollute the environment, but which also may serve only to support our overpopulation of deer—yet another current huge environmental problem. Consider that deer prefer to eat native plants (although they eat many nonnative plants as well) and you have to wonder why there isn’t a big hue-and-cry from native-plant enthusiasts for the government (i.e., the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources) to cut down the deer herd immediately to sustainable levels.

 

After all, how can anyone expect native plants to survive when we have a surplus of native deer to eat them? Yet the popular narrative continues to be that “invasive” plants are the biggest problem facing native plants, even though so-called invasive plants look invasive only because they fill areas cleared of native plants by mankind or deer.

 

This situation—in which the basic problem of too many deer is not addressed first—is very similar to what’s been happening in the Chesapeake Bay since the early 1960s. Throughout all of this time, our scientists have kept replanting native submerged grasses into a body of water that has, all along, remained hostile to the growth of these plants. The fact is that without first reducing the destructive consequences of sediment and nutrient pollution entering the Bay—thanks to what people are doing upstream—native grasses simply cannot possibly thrive there.

 

Likewise, the scientists’ answer to native-plant decline on land is also to tell folks to keep planting more native plants despite the untenable growing conditions of depleted soils, an overabundance of deer, and often, year after year now of drought or near-drought. One could say that a dearth of critical thinking appears to be ongoing in Virginia with no sign of this situation getting better anytime soon.

 

Consider that so-called invasive plants can be downright life-saving. They can survive not only our degraded physical environment, but also drought—both of which have become much more commonly occurring—while still feeding our wildlife. 2026 is the perfect time to be taking this truth into consideration.

“Leatherleaf Mahonia” (Mahonia bealei) is considered “invasive” in Albemarle and Augusta counties (among some other counties in Virginia), even though it’s not that commonly seen. Its flowers feed honeybees foraging in February when they may be the only blooms open, and its fruits feed birds (such as the female Northern Cardinal seen here) in late spring.    

I live in western Albemarle where we’ve received barely 50% of the amount of rain we should have received for the first five months of the year. The plants had continued to look good only because the weather had been on the cool side.

 

But now, as I write this article, we are experiencing hot summertime weather even though summer has not even officially begun and it’s already been 11 days with nary a drop of rain locally. Neither native plants nor animals do well under these conditions, the plants struggling to survive and unable to make fruits or seeds to feed wildlife.

 

On the other hand, nonnative plants often do fine under hot, overly dry conditions. My yard has many perennial Black Knapweed (Centaurea nigra) plants, the flowers of which feed numerous butterflies, bees, and insects of many kinds. Two Glossy Abelia (Abelia x grandiflora) shrubs do the same all summer along with my two Mimosa trees (Albizia julibrissin) that also attract Ruby-throated Hummingbirds.

 

I can’t stress enough that every yard should contain a mix of native and “invasive” plants to help our wildlife to survive. Current environmental conditions simply do not allow for environmental propaganda that is not based in fact.

 

The choice is yours to make. Choose unwisely and we lose many critters forever.

 

 

 Condon’s Corner

With native trees dying, it’s time to embrace “invasive” plants

© Marlene A. Condon 2026 All Rights Reserved

[Published May 14, 2026, by The Daily Progress, the daily newspaper of Charlottesville, Virginia and published May 16, 2026, by The News Virginian, the daily newspaper of Waynesboro, Virginia.] 

 

Oaks have been dying for many years now, and more species are following suit, such as White Pine (Pinus strobus) and Tulip Poplar (Liriodendron tulipifera). If you expect to feed and care for our wildlife, grow plants erroneously called “invasive” and fight new restrictions placed upon doing so.

The Daily Progress newspaper of April 16, 2026 included this article headline: “Outpacing evolution: Scientists using DNA to battle climate change”. Apparently, scientists have given up on getting people to change their ways to avoid climate problems brought about by our extensive employment of fossil fuels.

Instead, they’ve decided it would be “easier” (don’t believe it) to completely alter the genetic blueprint for the estimated one million species facing extinction so these creatures can tolerate climate extremes, disease, and drought. In other words, man has finally begun to think of himself as God, the Almighty. (The hubris!)

You can see the acceptance of our situation by other news stories, too, such as an AOL story that told us, “As the planet warms, scientists burn homes to figure out how to best protect them in wildfires.” Even more concernedly, some scientists are putting a positive spin on what’s happening: “Five ecosystems transformed by climate change give birth to new, sometimes even richer worlds.” [From an ad for a PBS program]

And then, AOL recently published, “Climate doom and gloom? Try laughing instead. Activists embrace joy in the fight to save Earth”. If only it were a laughing matter, but here in Virginia, it isn’t.

On April 9 of this year, abc7News printed an article about Virginia’s recently elected governor, Abigail Spanberger, signing bills to create “4 laws to combat invasive plant species in Virginia”.

Gov. Spanberger signs 4 laws to combat invasive plant species in Virginia

The article states that the bills will “protect the state's land, water, and wildlife.” It quotes executive director, Laurn Yatkor, of Blue Ridge PRISM, an environmental group “that helped draft three of the four new laws.”

She’s quoted as saying that “Invasive plants are one of the most urgent and under-recognized threats to Virginia’s pollinators, songbirds, livestock, waterways, tree canopy, and recreational parks,” She goes on to say, “The scope and the scale of the problem are vast, and it will take a village to repair the damage done and ensure a healthy environment for future generations.”

But where’s the factual information to support these statements? None exists because nothing could be further from the truth. Removing so-called invasive plants will only deplete desperately needed food and habitat for our critters and doom them to the extinction people supposedly are trying to avoid.

When you truly want to do what’s best, you take the time to make sure you understand the problems, rather than simply repeating dogma put forth by numerous groups who don’t actually know how the environment works.

We are told that these “new laws aim to support long-term solutions that are more effective at prevention and species management. Specifically, it illegalizes the planting of invasive species along state highways, expands the Noxious Weeds List, incentivizes local jurisdictions to raise funds to control invasive species, and gives state agencies the ability to use volunteers to control invasive species on state lands.” Yikes.

What are the alternatives to planting “invasive” species along our highways? For numerous decades, Virginia insisted upon nonnative lawn grass as the only plant to be used there, despite the huge cost—monetarily and environmentally—to keep it mowed regularly throughout the growing season. Yes, grass had to be kept cut due to societal expectations for this type of plant, which you can see all around you locally as you drive by the vast majority of yards.

Even now, with the number of mowings reduced to twice a year, we still spend an enormous amount of money on Virginia’s almost 60,000 miles of interstate, primary, secondary, and frontage roads.

But the beauty of leaving these strips to do their own thing throughout much of the growing season is that a huge number of nonnative wildflowers have moved in, creating beauty and interest for the traveler. Now this scenery will be replaced by native plants that are not going to thrive along interstates. After numerous decades of constant mowing, the soil has been compacted, which is not conducive to native plants that have mostly evolved within forests of loose, rich soil.

Common sense should tell you that the best plants for degraded habitats are, therefore, plants known as “invasive” because they do so well in areas where the land would otherwise be quite barren because native plants would struggle. In point of fact, the term “invasive” is a prejudicial word meant to fool people into believing these alien plants are somehow “bad” and thus should be hated and removed.

And, adding insult to injury, nonnative plants are usually removed with pesticides that poison the ground, the plants they’re used on, and any organisms that happen to be upon the plants when the pesticide is applied.

Yet, in truth, so-called invasive plants are actually critically vital saviors, not only for our wildlife but for our native plants! Over the course of time, nonnative plants rebuild the soil so that native plants can one day return. And, in the meantime, they feed and/or provide nesting sites for our wildlife so they can survive.

Indeed, we should be grateful for alien plants that can grow in degraded areas instead of denigrating them out of prejudice based upon ignorance that’s been taught from elementary school on up for some decades now. And to think such useful plants are now going to be added to an official “noxious weeds” list, a name that is exceedingly pejorative and is probably employed to slyly implant the idea in people’s minds that they should feel contempt for alien plants.

But should they? Absolutely not. So-called invasive plants feed Virginia’s insects and hummingbirds with nectar or pollen and songbirds with fruits or seeds—a truth native-plant folks are loathe to accept.

These new laws meant to “help” wildlife will instead shepherd its demise. If you own property and truly care about our critters, my advice is do not follow the recommendations of government agencies and groups like PRISM who influence them. Stand up for what is truly best for our environment.  

 

Alien Plants Benefit the Environment

A native Eastern Tent Caterpillar feeding upon an alien Multiflora Rose shrub in Albemarle County, Virginia.

ALL TEXT AND PHOTOS © Marlene A. Condon

 Originally published in The News-Virginian (Waynesboro, Virginia daily newspaper) on October 27, 2022

 

https://newsvirginian.com/opinion/columnists/condon-many-alien-plants-benefit-the-environment/article_5d18e73c-557c-11ed-8f02-8375034e2011.html

 

On June 8, 2011, the journal Nature published a commentary by 19 ecologists who urged conservationists to “assess organisms on environmental impact rather than on whether they are natives”.

 

https://www.nature.com/articles/474153a

 

“Classifying biota [the plants and animals of a region] according to their adherence to cultural standards of belonging, citizenship, fair play and morality does not advance our understanding of ecology [the relations of organisms to one another and to their physical surroundings]. Over the past few decades, this perspective has led many conservation and restoration efforts down paths that make little ecological or economic sense”.

 

This other side to the story regarding alien species—in particular, nonnative “invasive” plants—is rarely publicized, yet it needs to be. It’s been eleven years since this essay appeared and was ignored by virtually everyone. As a result, the general public, government at every level, scientists, the media, and especially environmental groups and the people that support them have now instituted a scorched-earth policy that’s bringing about much destruction of viable habitat and the poisoning of our environment via herbicides.

 

Many people fervently believe that so-called invasive alien plants pose a dire threat to native insects, undoubtedly due to the 2007 book, Bringing Nature Home, by entomologist Doug Tallamy. In it, he wrote that “scientists who know what they are talking about” developed “an extensive body of theory” that predicts that native plant-eating insects “should be able to eat only vegetation from plants with which they share an evolutionary history”.

 

This assertion, which holds that herbivorous insects eat only those plants they have co-evolved with under the same environmental circumstances, sounds logical to the uninitiated. However, it disintegrates under scrutiny.

 

Dr. Tallamy tells us that these 6-legged critters that feed upon plant tissues are limited to feeding upon “no more than a few plant lineages [a single line of genetic descent through time]”, thus making them “specialists”. However, each plant lineage can include hundreds, if not thousands, of species around the world—which means an insect is likely to be able to feed upon at least some of the plants that are related genetically, regardless of their country (geopolitical boundary) of origin.

 

In other words, specialist insects aren’t usually limited to just one plant species, contrary to what this University of Delaware professor would have his readers believe. Because we know that countries share plant lineages (and even some species), phytophagous (herbivorous) insects should be able to eat vegetation from other areas on the Earth even though they evolved in concert with only some of the plant species in a lineage—and, indeed, they do.

 

In Bringing Nature Home, Doug Tallamy recounts the plight of native Eastern Tent caterpillars (Malacosoma americanum) that ran out of cherry leaves on a tree too small to feed them adequately. He mentions that leaves were still available to the caterpillars in the form of a Japanese Honeysuckle vine (Lonicera japonica) that had climbed the little tree, but he points out that the caterpillars “had not taken a single bite out of the alien plant…even in the face of starvation”.

 

This tale gives the reader the impression that the caterpillars could have eaten the honeysuckle if only it had been native, thereby having evolved with the insect. He does not point out that the caterpillars would have faced starvation even in the presence of a native vine, tree, or shrub if—like the alien honeysuckle—it wasn’t a member of the Rose Family, as is this caterpillar’s preferred native host plant, the cherry.

 

Several native Eastern Tent caterpillars feeding upon an alien Multiflora Rose shrub in Albemarle County, Virginia.

I have documented myself tent caterpillars feeding on a relative of the cherry—a nonnative, unevolved with, and much despised Multiflora Rose (Rosa multiflora) growing at the base of a leaf-stripped Black Cherry tree (Prunus serotina).  A factuality is that you can find native insects feeding upon nonnative plants, but, of course, you need to look!

 

People have been manipulated into believing alien plants serve no ecological purposes in the environment, when, in fact, they very much do, in very many ways, for innumerable insect (and other) species. As the 19 ecologists wrote in their paper, “[A] valuable step would be for scientists and professionals in conservation to convey to the public that many alien species are useful”, and that “Natural resource agencies and organizations should base their management plans on sound empirical evidence and not on unfounded claims of harm caused by nonnatives.”

 

Amen.

 

 

NATURE ADVICE:

 

Don’t remove alien plants just because they are alien plants. If you see critters using them, ask yourself if putting in new plants will immediately provide as much food and shelter/nesting sites as the nonnative plants presently there, or will it take many years for the new plants to provide habitat. Plant natives where you are increasing the amount of habitat on your property, rather than where you are destroying it.