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.

 

 

Link To Latest Published Article, “Drought Gardening for People and Wildlife” 

Wingstem (Verbesina alternifolia), a native plant, suffers in drought conditions.

 ALL TEXT AND PHOTOS © Marlene A. Condon

 

The Daily Progress (Charlottesville, VA daily newspaper) and The News Virginian (Waynesboro, VA daily newspaper) both recently published my article, “Drought gardening for people and wildlife” at the following links, respectively:

 

https://dailyprogress.com/opinion/column/marlene-condon-drought-gardening-for-people-and-wildlife/article_4bd921fa-45c9-11ef-9111-0bc7c5d7ea25.html

 

https://newsvirginian.com/opinion/column/marlene-condon-drought-gardening-for-people-and-wildlife/article_3a2d7b10-e4c9-531b-992e-d8cc8bd87b5d.html

 

If you can’t access it at either of these sites, I am reproducing it below for your convenience.

 

Sincerely,

Marlene

  

Drought Gardening for People and Wildlife

 

Once again, Virginia is suffering from a significant lack of rain. With each drought building upon the last, the pattern we are in does not bode well for our collective future. Therefore, if you own land, it’d be wise to manage it in the best possible manner to preserve water.

 

Limiting how often your property is cut is perhaps the foremost action people can take to preserve water, especially to conserve ground water. Most lawns are trimmed way too short, eliminating the "umbrella effect" gained from taller grass.

 

Longer blades shelter the ground, suppressing water evaporation from uncovered soil due to sunshine and wind. Water that goes back into the atmosphere is water that doesn't reach the water table to feed your well.

 

Leaving alone unused areas of grass, such as ditches and hillsides, would be extremely prudent for water conservation. Hillsides are subject to water runoff if there are not enough plants to hold the water in place, and ditches can collect water not only to recharge the soil moisture, but also for the use of wildlife. It’s time for aesthetics to take a back seat.

 

As early as June 25, grass cut way too short in Albemarle County had turned brown.

When it comes to gardening, you should only water when flowers begin to show signs of wilting. They can withstand this process (if it’s not prolonged), which forces them to grow more roots to help survive unusually dry conditions.

 

Common horticultural advice suggests you remove “competing” plants (aka, “weeds”) because they “steal” water from your plants, but it’s best if “weeding” is minimally done, especially during drought periods.

 

When I was young, I listened to the “experts” one time, and one time only. I reluctantly pulled wildflowers from among my veggies and quickly learned my lesson. My plants were wilted by the next day because the soil was no longer shaded by the "weeds". As with grass, you don’t want bare ground around your plants.

Of course, you can make more work for yourself by putting down a mulch layer in place of the plants you pulled, but living plants in proximity to one another do a great job of maintaining soil moisture—and you don’t need to buy them. As every gardener knows, Mother Nature is constantly trying to fill even the smallest of bare spots.

 

You should always follow Mother Nature’s examples, and this is one of them. Conservation of water is one of the reasons plants are always filling in any bare spot they can find.

 

Lastly, prepare for the future by investing in some type of water storage. Rain barrels don’t hold much liquid, but they will do if your gardening efforts are minimal.

 

For larger gardens, you’ll need to consider greater storage capacity. I have two 350-gallon containers sitting under my deck connected to the nearby downspout. I’m thus able to keep plants watered and my two small artificial ponds filled.

The oft-repeated assertion nowadays is that native plants don’t need watering. Could this be the reason so many newly planted trees around town have died? 

We can help wildlife during drought by making water available in our yards. Bird baths are great for birds and flying insects. Many kinds of 6-legged creatures drink water, or make use of it in other ways. For example, I’ve watched honeybees collect water from my bird bath to bring back to the hive to cool it.

 

Toads drink water through their skin, so placing a bird bath on the ground is a great way to help them—and mammals—to obtain water. Whether the bath is on the ground or a pedestal, it’s vital that the bath be shallow: a two-inch maximum depth at the center.

A Tufted Titmouse gets a drink of water while a House Finch family enjoy taking a bath in July of 2015.

Do not use mosquito dunks or any other pesticides in bird/toad baths to kill mosquitoes; it’s totally unnecessary. Mosquito eggs will be slurped up by animals drinking water. Additionally, all animals require clean water so you should be dumping out the water every few days anyway (preferably on your plants), which will dump any mosquito eggs within it.

 

Help hummingbirds by hanging sugar-water feeders for them. Water-deprived plants can’t make much, if any, nectar to feed these small birds. Or grow nectar-producing plants in pots that can be kept watered.

 

During drought, most native plants are not getting the amount of water they need. Now is the time to be realistic, rather than idealistic, and embrace so-called invasive plants. Most of these plants, such as Black Knapweed (Centaurea nigra), do fine in drought and continue to feed our pollinators (and deer) that could otherwise starve.

 

Drought will likely bring a dearth of seeds come fall for seed-eating birds. Please consider putting out bird feeders for them when that time arrives.    

Placing unwanted tomatoes in the yard, especially during drought, helps Box Turtles to get the liquid they need.

NATURE ADVICE:

 

If global climate change has brought recurring droughts to your area, it’s time to prepare for similar future scenarios. Homeowners, as well as government entities, such as highway departments, and farmers who cut grass for hay, must rethink how they manage landscapes under their control. It’s no longer business as usual; changing weather patterns require changing routines.

 

DISCLAIMER:

 

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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.

 

Time to See the Light Regarding Loss of Insects and Birds

This Christiansburg, Virginia, plaza could be planted with native trees and still not support caterpillars, thanks to the excessive lighting that is a prime killer of moths.

Plenty of native trees exist in the eastern United States to support moth caterpillars, but when moths spend the night circling artificial lights—such as the street lamps seen here among an abundance of large native trees—they die without reproducing.

ALL TEXT AND PHOTOS © Marlene A. Condon

Originally published in The News-Virginian (Waynesboro, Virginia) on July 16, 2022

https://newsvirginian.com/opinion/columnists/condon-time-to-see-the-light-regarding-loss-of-insects-and-birds/article_6d0f3322-03eb-11ed-8317-53ceb5edb5ab.html#tracking-source=home-top-story

On summer nights, when I was a child, my mother would scream at us kids to quickly get into the house before all the insects (mainly moths) circling our carport light had a chance to come inside with us. Nowadays, I can put on my own carport light with hardly any insects—certainly not moths—coming to it.

The reigning assumption regarding the loss of insects and birds (derived from research published in 2017, “Native plants improve breeding and foraging habitat for an insectivorous bird”,

 

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0006320717305153)

 

is that the most crucial step people can take to save the environment is to grow native plants. But is this theory truly the environmental panacea for our time?

 

Bringing Nature Home by Doug Tallamy also stressed the importance of growing native, rather than nonnative, plants. In this book, the author showed a nighttime image of the United States aglow with lights [page 28, 2007 advance reading copy]. He captioned it, “A composite image from space of the United States at night shows the extent to which we have converted natural areas [i.e., native plants] to developed landscapes [i.e., alien plants]”.

 

True enough. However, the more ominous takeaway is the dire effect of all those lights upon insects, especially the moths whose caterpillars have always been essential to birds raising their young. These larvae are now largely gone because adults are largely gone. Moths that circle lights all night until they are exhausted, or where they are easily caught by predators (such as bats and owls), are moths that don’t reproduce.

 

Why am I so sure that lights are the problem rather than a decrease in the number of native plants? I’ve lived in my home for more than 36 years. My yard has always been surrounded by mature oak forest, and I’ve watched through the decades the trees growing so tall that I can no longer view the Blue Ridge Mountains only a few miles to the west.

 

Nevertheless, despite the ever-increasing woody mass of native trees and shrubs around me, the numbers and kinds of insects and birds have decreased in my yard, just as they have elsewhere. I’ve never employed pesticides on my property, and I have gardened in full agreement with Mother Nature (hence my 2006 book on this subject).

 

The argument that there’s not enough native woody plants doesn’t work here because mature forests have comprised a substantial percentage of my property as well as the surrounding area. In fact, this idea doesn’t apply to much of the eastern United States.

 

Travel in a plane between New England and the South or fly in a hot-air balloon over your local area, and—unless you live in the concrete jungle of a city—you are going to observe plenty of large native trees in yards, parks, and “natural” (i.e., managed) areas.

 

In 2017, German researchers made world-wide headlines with their paper published in the journal, Nature, in which they detailed their own discovery of insects disappearing. Many suggestions have been put forth for the loss, including such things as pesticides (over 1 billion pounds a year are deployed in the United States, https://www.brownfieldsummit.com/how-many-pesticides-are-used-in-the-us) and loss of natural habitat due to development.

 

None of these considerations explains the loss of insects on my property over the course of almost four decades. A more plausible explanation is the ever-increasing number of lights needlessly burning all night around homes, churches, schools, libraries, businesses, barns, vineyards, American flags, and in parking lots and even national parks. Indeed, despite living in a rural area, it’s now difficult for me to view the Milky Way, thanks to light pollution.

 

Light constitutes an insidious menace because its allure to insects is so strong and its effect upon them so deadly, while people are oblivious to its ramifications. There’s no harm in growing more native plants, but this action is not going to prevent the loss of more insects.

 

If you truly want to help our insects and birds, you need to shut off lights burning all night, every night, for no good reason. Then we might see a light at the end of the tunnel for saving what’s left of our insects and the birds dependent upon them.

NATURE ADVICE:

 

In addition to limiting the amount of time you leave exterior lights burning after dark, you should take into account the amount of light exiting your windows. This light also attracts insects and keeps them “glued” to windowpanes instead of reproducing. To prevent light from escaping your windows, please use curtains or blinds.

 

And please keep in mind that lighted yard decorations also contribute to the loss of insects.