Wasting Garbage

If people put wasted food into a compost pile, they wouldn’t have so much trouble with bears and raccoons overturning their trash cans. You don’t need a bin to compost; just place scraps into a pile in an out-of-the-way spot away from the house where bears, raccoons, opossums, and other critters can recycle the material by consuming it. Anything they don’t eat will be broken down by microorganisms into rich soil for your garden.

ALL TEXT AND PHOTOS © Marlene A. Condon

 

You may have heard that humans are made of “stardust”. Although you could imagine this ethereal statement springing from some poet’s imagination, it’s quite true. Your body regenerates most of its cells every seven to 15 years, but the elements that comprise those cells have been in existence for millions of millennia.

The hydrogen atoms in your body were produced at the beginning of time when the universe originated with the Big Bang. Carbon, nitrogen and oxygen atoms were created in burning stars, and the heavy metals or elements essential for human health in trace amounts (such as iron, copper, and zinc) are the result of stars that exploded (supernovae) long ago.

 

In other words, humans and all life forms are dependent upon the recycling of matter, especially that which is organic—carbon-based matter that comes from the remains of other life forms, such as plants and animals and their waste products. Because existing matter must be reused in the creation of new lives, it should never be sent to a landfill where it’s essentially locked away and unavailable.

 

Most landfills contain little dirt, very little oxygen, and therefore few if any microorganisms, which means any biodegradation of the discarded, tightly compacted material takes place extremely slowly. A landfill study conducted by University of Arizona researchers uncovered still-recognizable 25-year-old hot dogs, corn cobs, and grapes, as well as 50-year-old newspapers that could still be read.

 

(Talk, Earth. "Do Biodegradable Items Degrade in Landfills?" ThoughtCo, Oct. 29, 2020, thoughtco.com/do-biodegradable-items-really-break-down-1204144.)

 

Yard trimmings that can naturally decompose on their own comprise 6.2% of waste put into landfills. Food, another naturally degradable substance, accounts for another 21.9%. Thus, about a third of landfill deposits consist of organic material that’s trucked from suburban homes, restaurants and other businesses, hospitals, and every sector of society to be buried along with the rest of people’s discarded paraphernalia.

 

Instead, it should be composted, whether at homes with yards, at the landfill, or at special composting facilities. The material of life is not the “garbage” many people consider it to be, a word suggesting organic matter is worthless or useless.

 

Yet it may be difficult to alter people’s feelings about keeping organic material around to decompose on their property. Consider the following exchange from a social media site.

 

A woman posted a photo of a large pile of yard trimmings in her driveway and wanted to let folks know she was looking for someone to take it away. In the background of the photo, you could see a fancy garden of well manicured shrubs and trees with nice wooden fencing delineating the different parts of the landscape.

 

Knowledgeable gardeners would never part with such yard “debris”; they would realize it should be composted to be used to enrich the soil for those garden plants. Indeed, someone immediately suggested just that, while another person wrote in support of that notion and to add that it would be broken down and gone by spring.

 

At this point, yet another lady chimed in to ask which spring (2022? or 2023?) and to make clear it was already summer—the obvious intent of her comment being that she wouldn’t want those yard clippings sitting around in her yard for at least a year or more! For her and the lady who posted the original query, this material simply had no place in their well kept yards. They saw the unwanted organic matter as garbage that would rot and destroy the ambience of the beauty they had painstakingly created.

 

Introducing such folks to the realities of life is the only hope we have of possibly getting them to recognize the many reasons it’s vital to recycle organic matter. Even in space, stardust is recycled.

NATURE ADVICE:

 

Woody yard trimmings can be composted via a brush pile. It’s easy to build one. Simply pile logs and larger debris in the desired location, then add smaller branches, twigs, and even leaves on top of the assemblage. As with a compost pile, rich soil will be found at its base within a few years. Place the pile in a far corner away from the house where you or Mother Nature might plant flowering vines to grow over it.

 

NOTE: A brush pile can provide shelter, nesting areas, and “homes” for numerous kinds of wildlife. During summer, ground-nesting mammals and birds might build nests at the bottom. After the logs have begun to rot, salamanders can hide in them during the day, waiting for the cover of darkness to start hunting for food. If the logs are rotted enough, Eastern Five-lined Skinks and other lizards may lay their eggs there.

 

In winter, the brush pile will be used for shelter from harsh weather and for protection from predators. Birds will forage nearby so that they will have a place to hide if a hawk comes hunting. At night, some of these birds may sleep among the interlocking branches. Amphibians (such as treefrogs), reptiles, and many kinds of insects will spend the cold months in a dormant state inside the rotting logs.

 

The brush pile can also provide a learning experience for children (and adults!). Poke carefully at the decaying tissue and you may find millipedes and pillbugs, all of which dine on dead plant material, thus breaking down the brush pile. Bacteria and fungi are also present, drawing life from the lifeless wood and decomposing it in the process. Lichens (complex plants composed of an alga and a fungus in a symbiotic relationship) grow upon the wood surfaces, releasing a weak acid that breaks down plant tissue. Spiders and centipedes prey upon the scavengers (those organisms feeding on the wood), while skunks, birds, and other predators tear apart the logs in order to make a meal of the variety of creatures living there.

 

A brush pile is valuable in so many ways!

 

Oriental Bittersweet—A Murderer Who Kills by Strangling or Smothering His Victims?!

A Northern Mockingbird defends its larder of Oriental Bittersweet fruits that would help it to survive the winter of 2019-2020.

Thanks to misguided human intervention, the vine was cut on this tree that had stood alongside a dirt road for decades, which resulted in the mockingbird losing its dependable food source for the following winter. The Oriental Bittersweet started to regrow in the spring of 2020 (seen here at bottom up to middle of photo), but wasn’t ready to make fruits by the winter of 2020-2021. How was depriving this bird (and possibly other animals) of food throughout the harshest time of the year helpful to our natural world?

ALL TEXT AND PHOTOS © Marlene A. Condon

 

A “fact” sheet from the Blue Ridge PRISM (https://blueridgeprism.org/factsheets/), a group whose “mission is to lessen the negative impact of invasive species on both private and public land within 10 counties located in Virginia’s northern Blue Ridge region” (https://blueridgeprism.org/) declares that Oriental Bittersweet “murders forests, strangles trees, [and] smothers [the] understory.”

 

Wow. This statement exemplifies perfectly how people concerned about “invasive” plants tend to employ derogatory accusations to prejudice the reader’s opinion right from the get-go. And that’s not all.

 

Continue reading and you find an emotional essay that, rather than straightforwardly supplying facts, instead infuses this vine with uniquely human behavior: “[T]his attractive vine has an aggressive agenda.” Honestly? For bittersweet to have an “aggressive agenda”, it would have to have brains to carry out a conscious and deliberate plan of assault upon the trees of the forest.

 

This type of barrage—one that accuses so-called invasive plants of behaving in the manner of disreputable human beings—is typical of much nativist rhetoric. It has always struck me as odd because we’re talking about plants.

 

So! Let’s move from the fantasy of plants behaving as if they are bad people to the reality of plants behaving quite naturally as plants.

 

What do plants need to do to perpetuate their species?

 

·    They need to grow to reach maturity; in the case of vines, that growth is usually upwards. Many vining plants cannot flower—which they need to do if they are to reproduce—if forced to grow horizontally.

·    Plants need to get their offspring into the wider world in case catastrophe strikes their original position. This feat is often accomplished with the help of animals that enjoy eating fruits produced by the plant. Whether the animal eats the fruits on the spot or carries them away, the seeds within the fruits may successfully get through the animal’s intestinal tract to land far away from the parent plant, allowing the species to spread for the continuation of its kind.

 

In other words, what people see as an “infestation” is simply a species doing what it must to keep from going extinct. It doesn’t know some people have a problem with that.

 

The aforementioned “fact” sheet notes that Oriental Bittersweet “thrives in disturbed soil and tolerates full sun and dappled shade. It may occur abundantly around old home sites, in fields and fencerows, along road edges, and in forests throughout the Blue Ridge.” The sheet goes on to mention that, “This invasive vine now infests the eastern U.S.” and “has been a serious pest in New England since the 1970’s [sic].”

 

What does this paragraph tell us? It says that rather than being “a real beast” as the fact sheet opines, Oriental Bittersweet is doing what comes naturally: It’s responding to what people do to their environment, a fact pretty-much always overlooked by nativists in their diatribes.

 

Disturbed soil is part and parcel of home sites, fields and fencerows created by people to grow crops, roadways because you can’t make a road without disturbing the land, and forests throughout the Blue Ridge because these mountains were denuded by logging—more than once in the history of the country.

 

And let’s not overlook another fact: People intentionally brought bittersweet here to grow in their gardens. This species is not the “invader” suggested by use of the term “invasive”. It should more accurately be described as an escapee.

 

Is bittersweet problematic? This question can’t be answered by a simple “yes” or “no” because the answer depends completely upon a person’s point of view, which is dependent upon what is most important to him.

 

For the person (such as I) who truly cares about wildlife and disappearing habitat in developed areas, the answer is no. Because most folks maintain very few plants around their homes (and even farms nowadays), there’s not much available for animals (especially birds) in need of food, shelter and nesting sites. Bittersweet that has climbed high into a tree on the edge of someone’s property or along roadways provides these necessities that are absent from most yards (and farms).

 

Does it matter if the vine’s presence kills the tree? In the natural world, there is nothing sacrosanct about a tree, and from the human perspective of someone who wants to help our feathered creatures, it shouldn’t be a problem either if the vine is providing more for wildlife than the tree does.

 

Now, if you’re managing a forest for lumber, your perspective is totally different. Since you look at every tree as a source of income, you want what’s best for your purposes rather than what’s best for wildlife.

 

And what if you’re an environmentalist who wants the natural world to more closely resemble its former self before Europeans arrived? Well, that’s a fantasy that can never become reality. Yes, you can work endlessly on your (and perhaps others’) property to get rid of the many plants people brought here some time ago, but the cat’s out of the bag. It’s a waste of your life, especially if your efforts don’t improve living conditions for wildlife, the main reason often given for “invasive-plant” removal. And if you’re employing pesticides that poison the Earth to accomplish this goal, you’re just adding insult to injury.

Lastly, I’ve been asked if I would be unhappy if a neighbor planted Oriental Bittersweet along my property line where it could spread onto my land. Mother Nature—who’s certainly a neighbor—has done just that, as I find this vine growing here and there around my yard. As it has yet to show up where I could let it grow without it being a problem for my preferred plants, I pull it out if it’s small enough and persistently cut it if it isn’t (so it can’t flower).

 

Gardening is the perpetual process of making decisions about which plants you want to encourage and which you don’t. Anyone who thinks otherwise is fooling himself.

 

NATURE ADVICE:

 

If you believe poisoning (pesticiding) our environment is better than allowing so-called invasive plants to grow, you really ought to rethink your perspective. Instead of buying into denunciations of these plants, get out into the world and observe it carefully with an open mind that will allow you to recognize the truth: The presence of nonnative plants that assist wildlife to survive is far better than the barren area that’s typically left when people remove “invasives”.

 

Few people make an effort to replace the plants removed because they mistakenly believe native plants will (magically) show up. It's possible they might, but the usual reason “invasive” plants grow where they do is because they are more suited than native plants to the environmental conditions in these locations.

 

Where’s the Tolerance for Wildlife?

People openly express tolerance for other people, but rarely for the wildlife that keeps the environment running properly for their benefit. The “Welcome Your Neighbors” sign pictured here grew out of an idea at Immanuel Mennonite Church in Harrisonburg, VA. The church wanted to reach out to neighbors and neighborhoods to welcome those who come from different backgrounds and places. It would be wonderful if folks would reach out to their wildlife neighbors as well to make them feel more welcomed.

ALL TEXT AND PHOTOS © Marlene A. Condon

 

Hoo-boy. If you care about our natural world, the last thing you should do is to read your neighborhood blog. It’s terribly disturbing to see how intolerant of wildlife people tend to be.

 

Recently, one man asked about advice for ridding his yard of an “invasion of chipmunks”. The replies brought me great consternation.

 

I fully expected someone would immediately tell him to get a cat, and it was, indeed, at the top of the list. Despite years of public service announcements by the American Bird Conservancy to inform people that cats kill huge numbers of birds (and many other kinds of animals) every year, a great many folks still believe cats are “natural” predators and useful for controlling “vermin”.

 

People don’t seem to understand that cats are nonselective when it comes to killing prey. “Now numbering well over 100 million in the United States, cats kill approximately 2.4 billion birds every year in the U.S. alone, making cat predation by far the largest source of direct, human-caused mortality to birds.”

 

https://abcbirds.org/program/cats-indoors/

 

People also don’t recognize that “vermin” is a derogatory term that serves to implant a negative opinion in the public psyche, which encourages the wanton killing of animals described as such. It suggests that an animal is generally known as a “pest” (another derogatory term) that is dangerous in some way to humans and has no redeeming values. It’s a terrible way to view the organisms that, in fact, all exist to make the Earth habitable for mankind.

 

In the case of chipmunks, these mammals disperse seeds and thus help to replant forests and fields. They also serve as food for a variety of other animals, such as foxes and hawks. The best way to limit their numbers is by way of snakes, another kind of animal people kill needlessly, as evidenced by remarks from social media:

 

“I hate snakes.” “Ugly beast”.

 

Regarding copperheads:

 

· “See y’all don’t get it. For us city slickers the first sight of this snake is not oh cool. It’s more like of F}+{#k.”

 

·    “Copperheads are vicious.”

 

·    “I’m a big gardener and am in the woods daily. It’s one of my fears.”

 

·    “[W]e killed one last summer.”

 

·    “I smashed the copperheads [sic] head with the blunt end of my rake to keep others safe. These copperheads are aggressive as far as I know, no other snake has hissed at me aside from a copperhead.”

 

·    “Very nasty snakes! They bite for any reason at all. We have lost two small dogs to copperhead bites.”

 

·    “[Th]e shovel has been accurate. They have 6 acres of woods in my yard to do their thing. They don’t need to be by my pool to bite my dog (happened) or my grandkids.”

 

·    “Think we all got the point. Be safe and observe your surroundings. Got to do what you have to do. Called survival.”

 

·    “I killed them when I saw them. With dogs, and kids and a wife, I did it for the safety of my family.”

 

Are copperheads venomous? Yes. Are they “vicious”, “aggressive”, or “very nasty”? Absolutely not. They do NOT “bite for any reason at all”. They try to protect themselves (by biting) only when seriously threatened and frightened, as any animal (including dogs and cats) or person would do.

Must you kill venomous snakes for the sake of your dogs, kids, and wife? Not necessarily. If you have decided to move to an area with such snakes, it’s smart to learn to be on the lookout for them around your home. Children and adults alike should never walk around without watching where they are stepping, and they need to remember to never, ever stick their hands or feet where they cannot see if something is there that could harm them.

Don’t think that’s a realistic expectation? Surely you teach your children not to stick their fingers into sockets (death by electrocution) and to look both ways before crossing the road (death by vehicular impact)—both of which are far more likely occurrences when kids are on their own than being injured or killed by a copperhead, especially if brought to the hospital immediately for treatment. Of course, common sense should dictate that very young children should never be outside all by themselves.

 

When it comes to snakes (or wild animals of any kind), you simply need to keep your distance to avoid being injured, and this important truism should be taught to children. Pets, on the other hand, cannot be taught to stay away from snakes; therefore, it’s your responsibility to accompany them outside instead of letting them roam freely.

 

Snakes don’t chase after people or pets; they prefer to be left alone to go on their merry way and strike only when feeling threatened. So, be smart! Stay away from these reptiles and keep your pets and small children away, too.

 

 NATURE ADVICE:

 

Never take advice from neighbors unless you know for a fact they are experts in the subject.

 

For example, regarding chipmunks, a person wrote that they “are very damaging. Many big holes all over the Yard [sic]”. Chipmunks do not make holes all over the yard. This person was probably seeing vole or shrew burrows. Chipmunks hide their burrows.

 

Another person suggested people should call “Critter Control. They will catch and relocate them with Have-a-Heart traps.” Not true. It’s illegal to relocate wildlife. If an animal control service says it will relocate wildlife, the company is being dishonest. Any animals trapped on your property are going to be killed, and perhaps not humanely.

Lastly, the original poster who asked about chipmunks said, “I can shoot them, right?” This person lives in a suburban area and his only concern was that the animal was eating his flowers. Imagine wanting to discharge a gun in a neighborhood where houses are not that far apart and killing animals that are simply trying to survive. Perhaps most disturbing of all, though, is that this man was undoubtedly blaming the wrong critter for his woes. Chipmunks are not herbivorous; they do not eat the greenery of growing plants or their blooms.

 Emerald Ash Borer—Save the Tree, Endanger the Ecosystem

A purple-box survey program was carried out by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to detect the spread of Emerald Ash Borers throughout the country. Coated with an “extremely sticky” glue, the numerous traps each caught and killed a large variety of insects (including butterflies) that were viewed as collateral damage by authorities. As very little could be done to halt the spread of EAB, the purple boxes simply served to deplete already-dwindling insect populations.

ALL TEXT AND PHOTOS © Marlene A. Condon

 

Almost 20 years ago, I attended a Virginia Outdoor Writers Association meeting that was held at Mountain Lake near Virginia Tech [VT]. A VT entomologist led us on a walk around the lake. He spoke about the systemic pesticide injections they were using to try to save the hemlock trees from the overly populous nonnative Hemlock Woolly Adelgid (Adelges tsugae) feeding on them.

 

A systemic pesticide is one in which the active chemical ingredients are water soluble so that the pesticide is absorbed by a plant and then circulates throughout the plant’s system. It’s akin to the chemotherapy used to treat cancer patients, except that instead of killing cells within the organism itself, as happens when a person is treated, the chemical kills any critter feeding on any part of the poisonous tree.

 

Therefore, I asked the entomologist if he wasn’t concerned about this effect on nontarget species (i.e., animals other than the adelgid). He answered that he’d never given it any thought.

 

As the saying goes, most folks can’t see the forest for the trees. They are so concerned about having to act to save trees that they lose sight of the bigger picture: the effects of their pesticide usage upon the ecosystem. The adelgid/hemlock scenario is now being played out with the Emerald Ash Borer [EAB].

 

Scientists and environmentalists alike argue that we cannot afford to lose our native trees because they support native insects. But what is the ecological value of using poison to keep alive an ash tree that will attract such critters as the Tiger Swallowtail (the state insect/butterfly of five states, including Virginia where I live) and then kill its caterpillars, among a multitude of other leaf-eating insects?

 

The pesticide Emamectin, recommended for EAB control, is widely used to eradicate “lepidopterous pests”—the caterpillars of moths and butterflies. It doesn’t discriminate between the larvae people want to get rid of and the ones they don’t. Imidiclopid can be used instead, but this pesticide has been implicated in the deaths of honey bees.

 

I’ve read that “Only about two-thirds of a teaspoon of active ingredient is used to treat the entire tree.” This statement suggests that the quantity of insecticide used is insignificant, but the quantity isn’t important—the effect is.

 

A catastrophic result of treating trees with an injected pesticide is that those trees become perpetual killing agents. In this time of increased environmental consciousness, most folks understand that the wanton extermination of non-targeted species is unsound.

 

You might think these animals are doomed to die anyway if the ash trees aren’t rescued, but that’s not necessarily true. Most of these insects are generalists that can feed upon a variety of plant species, but they won’t be able to move along to other plants if they are dispatched by the pesticide in your trees.

 

People shouldn’t be so willing to accept the poisoning of the creatures upon which the functioning of our environment depends. Rather than providing cost-share programs that monetarily assist folks to exterminate numerous species of arthropods, government should have spent its (our) money more wisely by paying citizens to collect ash seeds that could have been preserved to be planted after borer populations have plummeted—as they will.

 

As soon as large ash trees are greatly reduced in number, most of the borers will starve for lack of a food source. Meanwhile, a natural buildup of predator populations will have taken place to keep remaining borer populations in check.

 

I’ve lived at my nature-friendly and pesticide-free property for over 35 years, and native predators have always kept the numbers of Gypsy Moth (Lymantria dispar) and Japanese Beetle (Popillia japonica) limited to such a low level that I rarely see them. They are not at all problematic for my plants.

 

It should be noted that poisoning the Earth with chemicals has never solved nonnative-insect problems. Despite spending many millions of taxpayer dollars on pesticides, we still have Gypsy Moths (in the country since 1869) and Japanese Beetles (here since 1916).

 

The course of action to take cannot be based solely upon hysteria that makes people think, “We’ve got to do something (anything!).” Mother Nature can handle this situation far better than humans because the natural system of checks and balances works—far more sensibly and safely than our misguided efforts with pesticides.

 

NATURE ADVICE:

 

You might want to reconsider obtaining free leaves from friends and local government-run programs. Given people’s propensity these days to employ pesticides, you may be adding poisons to your garden. Yikes!

 

 

Lights Out!

 

Lights illuminating a hotel burned day and night, needlessly wasting energy while increasing power-plant emissions that contribute to global climate change. The 24-hour lighting of nearby plants was probably not beneficial for them.

Lights Out!

 

ALL TEXT AND PHOTOS © Marlene A. Condon

 

This year my first fireflies of the season appeared in my yard on May 20. There were only two to be seen very briefly, but I’m hoping there will be many more. Unfortunately, however, the numbers of these insects have dwindled in many places around the world, in large part to human activities.

 

Habitat loss and pesticide usage take a toll, but one factor people tend to overlook is the effect of artificial lighting on these particularly vulnerable creatures. Their courtship revolves around the flashes of light sent by both the male and female to communicate their interest in mating. But, in the glow of light pollution, it can be nearly impossible for them to detect the bioluminescence they emit to find each other.

 

Look around and you’ll notice how many people leave lights on outside houses, barns, and commercial buildings all night long, sometimes 24/7. These lights not only negatively impact fireflies, but also moths and numerous other kinds of insects that depend upon darkness to procreate. Is it any wonder, then, that insects are disappearing?

 

I imagine most folks simply don’t give these lights much thought, but they should. According to the International Dark Sky Association, about 35% of light is wasted, which equates to about 3 billion dollars spent per year on exceedingly harmful sky glow. Additionally, about 15 million tons of carbon dioxide—a driver of climate change—are emitted each year in order to power outdoor lighting, which is often nonessential.

 

Because of city lighting, birds migrating at night are killed in huge numbers every fall and spring. Lit windows invite birds to crash into them. These avian creatures don't have any conception of the glass blocking their way through the lighted rooms they believe they can fly through.

Studies show that birds cluster around brightly lit structures, just as nighttime insects do when they continuously fly around a carport or porch light. This travel delay necessitates finding food when daylight arrives, but that can be difficult in an area of concrete and asphalt. Is it any wonder many migratory bird populations have severely declined over the past five decades?

 

The World Atlas of Artificial Night Sky Brightness is written by scientists and measures what is called artificial sky glow—the reflected light scattered in the atmosphere from electric lighting around the world. Illustrative of the amount of sky glow is the estimation that the Milky Way is no longer visible to one-third of the people on Earth, especially in the most heavily industrialized regions. Sixty percent of Europeans and eighty percent of North Americans are no longer able to enjoy this natural wonder.

 

This light pollution affects human health as well. According to Richard G. Stevens, an epidemiologist at the School of Medicine (University of Connecticut), “[L]ight at night, in all its forms, can most disrupt our normal circadian rhythms...This circadian physiology has developed over billions of years. Humans have been living with electricity only since the late 19th century, and with widespread access in industrialized countries only since the 20th century. While that sounds like a long time, it’s a tiny drop in the evolutionary bucket. We are only beginning to understand the health consequences artificial light has on our circadian physiology.”

 

He goes on to write that, “Humans, like most other life forms on the planet, have...a built-in cycle for sleep and wake patterns, hunger, activity, hormone production, body temperature and a vast array of other physiological processes. The cycle lasts roughly 24 hours, and light, especially sunlight, and darkness are important signals to keep it on track.”

 

Scientists suspect that some serious health problems could be the result of circadian disruption, for which “the most potent environmental exposure that can cause [it] is ill-timed electric lighting, particularly at night.”

 

https://theconversation.com/new-atlas-shows-extent-of-light-pollution-what-does-it-mean-for-our-health-60836

 

It’s vitally important for people to recognize how harmful night lighting is to the many forms of life, including humans, on Earth. It’s high time for lights out!

 

NATURE ADVICE:

 

You can do humans and their fellow creatures a great service by letting people know they should minimize the amount of light being wasted.

 

When you notice unwarranted lighting (for example, light not being utilized by anyone in the wee hours of the morning) in parks and at businesses, let the government entities and business owners know about the harmful effects of leaving lights burning unnecessarily.

 

If you or your neighbors feel the need for nighttime outdoor lighting, consider motion detectors instead of continuously lit floodlights.

 

Finally, always use the dimmest lighting you can, but better yet, consider whether lighting is essential or whether you could do without it.

 

The Plant Police Are Coming for You

These two male Rose-breasted Grosbeaks are feeding on sunflower seeds that originated in North America, but we often feed wild birds seeds from other lands, such as niger (also spelled nyger) that is grown in Africa, India, and other places in Southeast Asia. Why is it okay to provide foreign foods in a feeder to native animals, but frowned upon to feed them by way of nonnative plants that have the additional benefit of also providing shelter and nesting sites?

ALL TEXT AND PHOTOS © Marlene A. Condon

 

In 2010, overpopulated deer herds denuded virtually every native plant in my yard. Consequently, the plants were unable to flower and produce fruits. If I hadn’t grown nonnative plants unpalatable to deer, such as Japanese Barberry shrubs (Berberis thunbergii) that did make fruits, a flock of bluebirds that visited the following extremely cold and snowy winter would not have found nourishment. 

When I excitedly reported to the state Internet bird-reporting site my discovery that bluebirds ate Japanese Barberry fruits, I was taken to task for growing “such an invasive alien plant in [my] yard!” Although my comment went out to serious birders who presumably care about these avian creatures, no-one expressed happiness that the bluebirds at least found something to eat.

 

In the ensuing eleven years, a huge invasive-plant mythology has been written to support waging an unjustified war against specific alien plants, and government at all levels has been brought on board to deny you the right to grow plants that can survive deer overpopulations, climate change, and vast alteration of our physical environment.

 

The City of Cape May, New Jersey, almost passed Ordinance 404-2020 in December of 2020 “relating to the control and elimination of invasive plants”. It was much supported by the Cape May Environmental Commission, a member of which wrote a letter to the editor which contained the usual misinformation that, nevertheless, often convinces unknowledgeable government officials to act in a manner that harms, instead of helps, nature.

 

The letter writer spoke of kudzu to say that “It outcompetes all native vegetation and creates a monoculture made up of itself. This is true of all invasive plants [emphasis mine].” This last pronouncement is simply not true.

 

So-called invasive plants grow where conditions are especially suitable for them, but not for native plants, which means aliens aren’t “outcompeting” natives. Rather, native plants are not growing there in the first place. Additionally, “all invasive plants” do not necessarily create a monoculture. Autumn Olive (Elaeagnus umbellatus) shrubs often share fields with Eastern Redcedar (Juniperus virginiana) and other species.

 

The next sentence of the letter reads that “You may control an invasive on your property, but if it has seeds, both the birds and the wind spread the tree, bush, or plant.” What does this statement tell you? It declares that the so-called invasive plant provides food for birds, and if it’s a tree or a bush, it goes without saying that it also supplies cover and perhaps a nesting site for them.

 

Yet the sentence following the declaration above tells us that “Monocultures do not feed our bees, butterflies, or birds.” This kind of conflicting information is extremely common in letters to the editor and in articles in which the author wants to convince us of the evils of supposedly invasive plants.

 

Continuing, the writer says that, “Planting native trees attracts insects that are needed to feed the birds [but] [a]lien tree species do not attract these specific insects, so they may be pretty, but as far as the environment is concerned, they might as well be stone statues.” Wrong.

 

Native trees may support more caterpillars and sawfly larvae (an animal commonly considered a “pest” when feeding in people’s yards) than alien plants, but that doesn’t mean the pretty nonnative plants “might as well be stone statues”. Flowers are typically what make a plant pretty, and many so-called invasive plants make flowers that attract a huge number of pollinator species. These insects are dwindling in number, undoubtedly due, at least in part, to the vast amount of lawn area in this country that is devoid of "weeds" (interpretation: flowering herbaceous plants) that could feed them.

 

The conclusion of the letter writer is that, “We need this ordinance as a way of supporting the need to educate and control invasive species.” Amazingly, the local government tabled the ordinance, but you can bet the Cape May Environmental Commission will be back pushing for some version of it yet again, even though the “facts” provided by this member of the commission are inaccurate.

 

Unfortunately, some states have fallen under the spell of the mythological “invasive-plant” narrative. In the state of Washington, “plant police” are authorized to charge you with a crime (harboring an illegal alien!!!) and assess fines should your yard contain a plant on the “Noxious Weed List”.

 

https://www.nwcb.wa.gov/washingtons-noxious-weed-laws

 

The Environmental Protection Agency is working to bring this reality to backyards everywhere across the land of the free. Susan Gitlin, Office of Sustainable Communities at the EPA, writes of “refining lists of plants that are regulated at the state and federal level”, positing that such plants “have moved from their native regions into new areas where they crowd out native vegetation.”

 

https://www.astm.org/standardization-news/?q=update/invasive-plant-listing-ja13.html

 

This now entrenched, but false, belief of nonnative plants crowding out native plants has been made “factual” only by perpetual repetition by native-plant societies and other special-interest groups, including invasion-biology scientists, but it contains serious errors of omission. For example, people ignore the factuality that growing conditions in many locations are no longer hospitable to most native plants.

 

Alien plants, such as Autumn Olive that these folks are determined to eradicate, are especially noticeable along highway edges created by construction of roadways or in fields abandoned by farmers. Like native colonizers, such as Virginia Redcedar, they can grow just fine in soil compacted for centuries by cows weighing a half-ton each or road-building crews that bulldozed the land, removing topsoil.

 

If you weren’t paying attention for the past forty-five years and now notice the abundance of nonnative plants in such areas, you could easily believe that nonnative plants pushed out native plants. This misperception forms the basis for the entire field of invasion biology.

 

But the actuality is that abandoned fields, roadsides, hiking trails, and clearcut forest not replanted filled eventually—I’m talking many years—with colonizers, whether native, nonnative, or a mix of both. I’ve been watching it happen since I was a college student in the 1970s, and you don’t even need a scientist to explain why this scenario makes sense.

 

Any avid gardener knows the saying, “right plant, right place”, meaning that every plant has specific growing requirements that must be met for it to thrive. Most native plants cannot grow in the corrupted soil profile of disturbed areas, which includes homeowner yards that have been cleared and graded. When I moved into my house 35 years ago, the gray-clay subsoil had been exposed and the yard looked like the surface of the Moon.

 

Alien plants quickly provided wildlife habitat, and my moonscape became a nature-friendly garden supporting a larger diversity and abundance of wildlife than had existed when the land was deeply shaded by forest. Over the decades, these plants rehabilitated the soil and numerous species of native plants have moved naturally into my yard, but I refuse to remove the alien plants that have been—and remain—so helpful.

 

I’ve seen far more wildlife—in species and numbers—in my yard over the past 35 years than most folks will ever see in a lifetime of visiting wildlife refuges and national parks. I know for a fact that nonnative plants are beneficial to wildlife by providing them with food and shelter and to native plants by rehabbing the soil for them to return.

 

If you want to truly aid our wildlife and the environment in its entirety, you must ignore the mythmakers of plant-invasion biology. But don’t ignore your lawmakers! Please let your congressional representatives know you don’t want laws restricting alien plants on your property—and tell them the excellent reasons why not.

 

 NATURE ADVICE: 

Before taking advice from those folks who may have their own agendas for pushing you to remove alien plants, make notes on which animals are making use of them, as I have done for many years. It may well change your mind as to what’s in the best interest of our wildlife.