The recent 2021 World Economic Forum Global Risks Report compiled some of the most prominent threats we face today. Among these threats were weapons of mass destruction, collapse of states, and loss of biodiversity––including pollinators such as bees.
Biodiversity is essential to healthy ecosystems. With lower biodiversity, the planet is at increased risk to pests, diseases, and insecurity of the food system. Biodiversity is necessary to the productivity of soil and the ecosystem as whole. Without it, the natural systems that human life depends on for survival would collapse.
Pollinators in Decline
According to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, 150 species go extinct every day due to human activities. This includes pollinators essential to our food system, such as bees, wasps, moths, butterflies, flies, beetles, hummingbirds, perching birds, fruit bats and possums. Our ecosystems are full of highly specialized relationships between species that depend on each other for survival, and plant-pollinator relationships are especially important. Around 90 percent of flowering plants and 35 percent of food crops around the world depend on these pollinators to survive. Pollinators add between $235 billion and $577 billion to global crop value each year.
With this knowledge, you might be alarmed that a study done by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that the population of wild bees has dropped across 23 percent of the United States. This same study found that agricultural crops most dependent on pollinators more often had a declining supply in the face of increasing demand.
Declining Habitat
The cause? Habitat loss. Manmade infrastructure such as lawns, roadways, and cities are the biggest threats that face our local pollinators. Land that used to hold plant species that act as food and shelter to local pollinators has been developed for human use.
Monarch butterflies, now listed as endangered, are one example of how critical native plants are to local pollinators. Last year, researchers counted 192,228 monarch butterflies in their annual overwintering sites. This year, there were 28,429. This is a 99.4 percent decrease from their populations in the 1980s. The cause of this devastation is the loss of their milkweed habitats in favor of human infrastructure.
Thinking about species extinction can be overwhelming. With the situation as dire as it is, it is easy to feel powerless. But it doesn’t need to be this way. The reality is that each of us has the power to make change from our own backyards.
Gardening for Change
This past May, the National Wildlife Federation celebrated its 9th anniversary of its Garden for Wildlife initiative, which last year prompted a 50 percent increase in people seeking to make their gardens into biodiversity-boosting sanctuaries where wildlife can flourish. According to a study done by the National Science Foundation, if the trend of increasing wildlife-friendly gardening continues, it could make a tangible difference in the survival of native species.
Why might our local gardens hold such a vital role in the environment? To illustrate this, let’s take another look at the monarch butterflies. Their dramatic decline can be explained by the loss of milkweed. Adult monarch butterflies eat the nectar of many flowering plants, but they will only breed in areas where milkweed grows. This is because milkweed is the only plant that provides the nutrients necessary for the larva to mature into a butterfly. But milkweed is in decline, and so the butterflies are too.
Our ecosystems are full of highly specialized relationships between species that depend on each other for survival, and plant-pollinator relationships are especially important.
That is why the planting of keystone plants—native plants that are essential to the survival of 90 percent of butterflies, moths, and up to 60 percent native bees in a local ecosystem—can make such a huge difference.
Cultivating a wildlife garden is good for your health, too. Gardening has been shown to improve your concentration, elevate your mood, and lower your stress levels.
Where You Come In
So how can you create your own wildlife garden?
- Introduce local native plants to your garden: These are the plants that local pollinators have learned to depend on over the course of evolution. When you add native plants to your garden, you are planting essential species that pollinators need to survive and reproduce. The National Wildlife Federation has a native plant finder to help you with this. Look into which plants support the most wildlife in your area, and put an emphasis on those.
- Add a water source to your garden: This can include a pond, a bird bath, or a stream.
- Replace your lawn with a nature-friendly alternative: According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the maintenance of lawns contributes more than 27 million tons of pollutants to the atmosphere every year, and uses 9 billion gallons of water. Instead, consider creating a meadow of native wildflowers and grasses, or a moss garden. Both alternatives have the added benefit of needing less maintenance, since you will be planting species that are already adapted to your local climate.
- Provide shelter: Trees, brush piles, and shrubs can all act as natural structures for wildlife to take shelter in and raise young. However, you can also add a birdhouse or a roosting box to boost your garden’s habitability.
- Add a food source: Native plants, including trees and shrubs, all can act as food sources for wildlife. However, you can choose to supplement this with a bird feeder, hummingbird feeder, squirrel feeder, or butterfly feeder. All are lots of fun to watch!
- Use sustainable gardening practices: You can do this by controlling the spread of exotic, non-native species in your garden, reducing the area that is dedicated to lawn, eliminating the use of chemical pesticides and fertilizers, composting, and more.
Revolutionizing our ideas of gardening is not a fix-all solution. It cannot replace the need for protection of undeveloped lands, which offers wild habitat free of human interference that gardens cannot provide. It also cannot replace the need for a drastic change in agricultural practices. The truth is that even if an overwhelming number of us become wildlife gardening connoisseurs, destruction of biodiversity will still persist.
However, the potential of backyard gardens to heal our local ecosystems cannot be overlooked. Choosing to utilize backyard space to heal nature and support native species is to reintroduce a portion of their habitat that has been taken from them by increasing development.
Feel free to reach out to me at cscarlettkennedy@outlook.com
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