Conservation can't stop at the park boundary with Doug Tallamy | Episode 101

Tallamy: we got sixty-two species of birds that have successfully bred on our our property and 1,385 species of moths so far. I mean I've added I've this is 26

 

Chris Lee: Well

 

Tallamy: years later and I've added tw 25 new species this year. So they're still coming in, which tells me this works. This works we have increased biodiversity by more than two thirds. It didn't take that long and it wasn't that hard. All we did was put the plants back, which makes me think, what would happen if everybody put the plants back?

 

Chris Lee: Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Parks and Restoration Podcast. I am your host, Chris Lee. I am joined today by Dr. Doug Talamy. He's an entomologist, conservationist, and professor at the University of Delaware, and his work has transformed our understanding of the relationship between native plants and wildlife. I've read his books. I saw him speak here in Burlington a while back. His research and books, including Bringing Nature Home and The New York Times best-selling Nature's Best Hope, have inspired millions to see their own yards. As part of the solution to the biodiversity crisis. Driven by the belief that everyone can play a role, and in fact has a responsibility to play a role, Doug co-founded Homegrown National Park to encourage people to plant natives in the spaces they care for. His vision really is just this simple. When we all take part, we create the connected habitats that life depends on. For those of you that work in county conservation here in Iowa, Doug will be keynoting the fall conference, and I believe that will be the week that this episode posts. So With that, Doug, welcome to Parks and Restoration.

 

Tallamy: Thank you, Chris. Pleasure to be here.

 

Chris Lee: So homegrown national park, what what is this and how did this idea take root? And that is of course an intended pun.

 

Tallamy: All right. I didn't get it.

 

Chris Lee: Yeah.

 

Tallamy: It's a small nonprofit. but our our mission is to get conservation landscaping to become the default. Everybody's doing it. If you want to change it, that's up to you. But it's we're gonna start out with landscapes that that share our spaces with with nature. I mean that's that's the goal. We're a long way from from that. It came about when I was writing bringing nature home. I came across the statistic that we had 40 million acres of lawn in the US. And that's a 2005 statistic. So you know it's more than that now. I said, Well, gee, how big is 40 million acres? And it turns out it's bigger than than all of New England combined. I said, Well, what what if we cut that lawn area in half? That would give us 20 million acres we could restore right at home. and and We'd call it homegrown national park because we're gonna do it at home. And I wondered how big that was compared to our existing national parks. And I added them all up. It's bigger than all the national parks combined. So I said, well, gee, we can have the biggest national park in the country. all we have to do is cut the lawn area in in half. So that's that was the idea. and I talked about it in my talks. And then when I wrote Nature's Best Hope, I had a chapter about it. But I didn't that's all I did. I didn't do anything else. And I was giving a talk in Connecticut, and a woman, Michelle Alfenderry, was in the audience. She had just retired from a a branding licensing career in Manhattan. She was the perfect example of what we call the non-choir. People who are not already sold on this, they don't really know what the biodiversity crisis is, they haven't interacted with nature their entire life. Michelle's a lovely person, but that was her. She was she was a Manhattanite. She moved to Connecticut because her her husband's a painter and he wanted a bigger space to paint. But her neighbor said, you should come to this talk. So she did. And she came up to me afterwards and she said, You know, you're not you're not reaching your target audience. She said, You're only talking to the choir. And I said, Yeah, it's only

 

Chris Lee: Mm-hmm.

 

Tallamy: the choir that that invites me. And she said,

 

Chris Lee: Yeah.

 

Tallamy: Well, you know, this is great, but you really want to meet the people who don't invite you. And I said, Yeah. She said, You need to do social media. You should start a small nonprofit. You need to do all these things that are are, you know, it's it's the current way we communicate. And I said, you know, I know that, but I don't do that stuff. And and she said, Well, I

 

Chris Lee: Yeah.

 

Tallamy: do. So let's let's get together and make make we'll create that nonprofit. We'll call it Homegrown National Park. It wasn't quite that simple. She had to convince me. I said,

 

Chris Lee: Yeah.

 

Tallamy: you know, We can do it as long as I don't want to run a nonprofit. I said, I'll be the scientific advisor. She said, Okay, we'll do that. so she is really the one who's created Homegrown National Park and we've got an executive director and a board and It's real real functioning unit. We're not very big. We don't charge admission. We don't try, we're not trying to pull membership away from any other group like National Wildlife Federation or anything. we're all on the same page, we're all doing good conservation on private property. We just wanted to use this site as a hub for other groups doing the same thing so that we could use every communication possibility out there to reach that non choir. Because

 

Chris Lee: Mm-hmm.

 

Tallamy: it this isn't going to work unless we do reach everybody. So that's the goal.

 

Chris Lee: Yeah.

 

Tallamy: That's what it's all about.

 

Chris Lee: Yeah. So what is homegrown nationals park national parks I guess kind of niche or or claim to fame? and I know, you know, you can you can register your sites and stuff, like what what is it that makes it kind of unique from, you know, like you said, National Wildlife Federation or, you know, any the other NGOs out there? what is it that kind of

 

Tallamy: Yeah.

 

Chris Lee: sets this one apart and then how do people engage with it?

 

Tallamy: Well one of things that that set us apart, at least in the beginning, was what we call the the map, the biodiversity map. So you're going to register your property on the map and then add to the database the amount of area you either are or you're going to be a good steward of. and because for most people, this is a pledge. They haven't done it yet. And it's a process, you know, it can take take years depending on the side of your your property. and that would create a database that could then be used for for research maybe in the future. it also created the states are color coded so that you can look at your state and see how he compared to other states. There's a little bit of a competitive nature in there. But since then some other groups have have come up with maps too. So in that sense it's not all that different. The I think what people like about it is that that catchphrase homegrown national park. We're going to create a national park right where we live. You don't have to, you know, travel half half a day or many days to get to an existing national park. You don't have to compete with millions of other people that are there. There's no entrance fee. You can walk outside and enjoy nature right where you live. it's really rewarding. as a matter of fact, it's it's empowering because more and more people recognize the planet has some real issues and and that's depressing, but they all feel there's nothing I can do about it. What can one person do about it? Well, Homegrown National Park gives you a whole list of things you can do about it, and they're not hard. You can work at it right right at home and you can see a difference. that's another thing. We've we've got serious environmental issues out there. Climate change is a huge one. but if I said I want you to really contribute to climate change in the next week, I mean you could add solar panels, you could stop driving your SUV, you could do

 

Chris Lee: Sure.

 

Tallamy: things that really are important, but you won't see any difference. It's too big of a problem. If you plant an oak tree in your yard, you will see a difference. You'll see a difference very, very quickly. so

 

Chris Lee: Yeah.

 

Tallamy: there's there's a difference there. It it makes people feel like they're part of the solution instead of part of the problem. It's just

 

Chris Lee: Mm-hmm.

 

Tallamy: a feel-good operation. And I have discovered, I mean, we're learning this as we go along, but but that feeling of empowerment that I really can make a difference is probably the main motivating factor. People seem to love it.

 

Chris Lee: Yeah. Yeah. And that's where when I when I first heard about this and and I I started reading your books. and then our library director, she came in, we had this we've got this local I don't know, kind of conservation group and she's like, we we gotta we gotta bring Doug Tellemy to town and we're like, yeah, that that'd be cool and then you came and gave a talk and and I'm just like, Man, like just the the feeling of empowerment that comes from like this one little tiny thing that you can do actually does move the needle was was incredibly energizing. So I'm curious, was giving that people the sense of agency, was that intentional from the from the beginning? Like or did you realize kind of after you got rolling that wow this this really is kind of the power of this.

 

Tallamy: You know, the beginning of what I'm doing was more than twenty years ago, and homegrown national park grew out of that, but We my wife and I moved into a ten acre part of a farm. It was broken up into different ten acre lots. And it had been farmed for for three hundred years. and the last thing they did was mow it for hay. So there's very little there. And our goal was to restore it. But between the time that they put it on the market and the time we actually moved in, it was three years that it had been out of mowing. And when you mow in this this neck of the woods, you're really just mowing the rootstocks of all the invasive plants. So ornal oriental bittersweeten, Japanese honeysuckle, and bush honeysucklein,

 

Chris Lee: Yeah.

 

Tallamy: multiflora rose and and you know, all of them were there. So when you stop

 

Chris Lee: It's the same here in Iowa.

 

Tallamy: mowing, that's what comes back. And when we moved in, we had ten

 

Chris Lee: Yeah.

 

Tallamy: acres, it was impenetrable. We couldn't even walk around. So that

 

Chris Lee: my gosh.

 

Tallamy: is what turned the corner for me. It was my first inter real introduction to invasive plants. and I am an entomologist, I'm always looking for insects and Pretty early on, it was I mean evident that they're not on those plants. So I said, Well, what's that doing to the food web? And I wrote a couple of grants and I got them, surprise, surprise, which told me our p my peers really weren't thinking about this either. So they changed the direction of my research, started giving talks because people were requesting them, which right away was different. I had I mean, I'm really a behavioral ecologist. I have studied y why insects do what they do for most of my career. But people don't care about that. People did

 

Chris Lee: Yeah.

 

Tallamy: care about this. And I like that, you know, you're doing something that people actually care about. so I started giving talks, and then they started saying, well, we want, we want to read something. What can we read? And you know, the grants were new, we hadn't published anything yet. I said, There's nothing to read. So after a year of saying nothing, I just to defend myself, I said, okay, I'll write a pamphlet. And the pamphlet got long and became bringing nature home.

 

Chris Lee: Mm.

 

Tallamy: So I didn't plan any of this. I I actually wrote Bringing Nature Home, but I didn't think anybody would read it. I thought I'd go back to studying how cucumber beetles choose their mates, and that would be that. but no, people people are interested. They wanna, you know, they want to fix the planet. So knowing that, discovering that I should say, because I didn't I didn't realize, you know, we got the headline, we've got, we've got Insect apocalypse, global insect decline. I didn't think anybody would care. But they do care. And that surprised me.

 

Chris Lee: Mm-hmm.

 

Tallamy: So it's it's not that I knew that from the start. I've been learning as as we go. and I am I am pleased at the energy that the general public has to restoring life on on planet Earth.

 

Chris Lee: Yeah. I in in hearing that, what what I hear is like you you related it to climate change earlier. And how like, you know, hey, okay, the go fix climate change, right? Or or or or do something for climate change. Like, my gosh, like I I I I don't even know where to start. But in this, like the like the biodiversity, the the loss of biodiversity, it is like the feedback is almost immediate. You know, you go and and change your your invasive species ridden landscape to now native species, and all you do is just go out there with a light at dusk or at nighttime and just shine around and see what's out there. Like the the feedback is almost immediate. Like, look, look what I did, look at all these things out here. And you start writing things down, and that is immediately relatable. No matter where you're at, whether you live in the rural or in the urban setting. Or anything like that. And I think that's the real value of this. And and that was what was resonating with me when I when I heard you talk that first time down here in Burlington was holy smokes, like there is nobody out there that couldn't relate to this, that couldn't do something about this. And so walk me through you so you started restoring that 10 acres that you've got, and you know, and it was a lot of blood, sweat, and tears. Walk me through that process and what you saw through time. Cause that is just it's so fascinating. Like I I remember hearing that and thinking, this is this is another Leopold Shack system where he's going out and he's just planting pine trees and then they're they're dying and he's planting more pine trees and he's just just through sheer force of will restoring this acreage that was lost and over time sees it come back. to and and redevelops a healthy ecosystem. I'm like, this is such an incredible story. So walk me through what that was.

 

Tallamy: It's funny that you would relate at least my house to the Leopold shack because it's getting there, it's falling apart. you know, yeah, Leopold they worked hard and they struggled a a little bit with it. I've been surprised at how easy this has been, at least in terms of putting the right plants and having them live and having them take off and having them attract all all the wildlife. the of course the hardest part. was dealing with those invasive plants. It is still the hardest part. I I joke, but it's not a real joke that it was really my wife that got rid of most of the invasives.

 

Chris Lee: Yeah.

 

Tallamy: I was I had a job and giving talks and writing books and stuff. But you know, many of the many of the autumn olive, for example, and the multiflora rose, I mean, they had trunks like this, so In the beginning, when when it really was an open landscape, I did have a tractor and I would crawl underneath and wrap a a chain around the the trunk and just yank them out. Very satisfying. You could create a big, big mound of bodies and really feel like you did something. It always broke off the roots and

 

Chris Lee: Yep. That is immensely satisfying.

 

Tallamy: they would come up from those little rootlets. So it didn't totally solve the problem. But yeah, my wife was she loves being outside and she was she was relentless. Every day she was out there with her little whacker. She doesn't like to use herbicide, so she just whacks them out. and that was instructional because it if you looked at the 10 acres, you'd give up. You'd say, this is impossible. We can't do this. But if you just pick at a corner and you get rid of that big body there, and then you you pick at another corner, you say, well, you know, maybe we can. And over over time, and it was a couple of years, she really got the the place in in good shape. Then we noticed, so where you yank at that that big multiflora rose. The next next spring, oak had come up. We didn't have any oaks making acorn. Where'd that acorn come from? A beach

 

Chris Lee: Right.

 

Tallamy: would come up. And I remember sitting in a it was getting my hair cut. Barber shop, that's what it's called. And they had a photography magazine there and I opened up and here's a blue jay flying with an acorn in its mouth. I said, I didn't know they did that. And I looked it up, yeah, they do that. They're the primary disperser of oak acorns. So wherever the ground was disturbed, they would find it and plant a tree for me. So much of what has come back has been brought in by wildlife. the squirrels, there's a on the edge of the property, there were two big hickories. They brought the hickory nuts all over the place. right at the edge of the street is a big wall black walnut. They moved the walnuts over the place. Deer brought in persimmon seeds, you know, pooped them out and they they grew.

 

Chris Lee: Mm-hmm.

 

Tallamy: now I planted a lot of things too. As a matter of fact, I planted too much. When I when I garden now it's with a chainsaw because I've lost my light in a lot of places.

 

Chris Lee: Yeah.

 

Tallamy: But it came back. And one of the the most interesting thing to me was measuring how it it came back. And I could do that because I live here. and I I measure two things, the number of breeding birds, the birds we have found nesting on our property, and the number of moth species that I have I have found and taken pictures of. we got sixty-two species of birds that have successfully bred on our our property and 1,385 species of moths so far. I mean I've added I've this is 26

 

Chris Lee: Well

 

Tallamy: years later and I've added tw 25 new species this year. So they're still coming in, which tells me this works. This works and and it works faster than you think. In one of my talks I talk about you know, the world wildlife statistic where we've earth has lost two thirds of its wildlife since nineteen seventy. Well, I look at what's happened in our property, you know, we have increased biodiversity by more than two thirds. It didn't take that long and it wasn't that hard. All we did was put the plants back, which makes me think, what would happen if everybody put the plants back? Now that's a simple statement. But it also means getting rid of the plants that do not support the biodiversity. And that is the biggest challenge we have. We have millions and millions and millions of acres that are invaded with plants that are very poor at supporting the biodiversity. walked over my neighbor's yard the other day. It's a new neighbor, and and we had met them but didn't know them very well. He's got 14 acres, and it is 14 acres of of porcelain berry and autumn olive and and multiflora rose. It's just a mound of things that aren't doing anything. And

 

Chris Lee: Yeah.

 

Tallamy: and you know he's there with his wife. Is he going to get rid of that? First of all, no, he's not that interested. But even if he was,

 

Chris Lee: Yeah.

 

Tallamy: it would be a mammoth mammoth job. So how how do we attack that? you know you could say well we'll get a bulldozer and level the whole thing, but there's a lot of good things in there. You you know it's already planted. All you have to do is get get rid of the bad guys. I call it addition by subtraction. That's actually

 

Chris Lee: Mm-hmm.

 

Tallamy: Rick Dark's terminology. but that subtraction is is a challenge. So finding finding ways to manage the invasive species is our biggest challenge by by far. And of course, one thing is to stop selling them in our nurseries. That makes no sense at all. But

 

Chris Lee: be a really great start, yeah.

 

Tallamy: there we are.

 

Chris Lee: Yeah. So I and I'm sure I can hear it right now in the in in my listeners of there are a lot of people that listen to the show and a lot of my colleagues in this line of work that we are faced with that every single day. You know, right here in Des Moines County, our our conservation department, we manage a sh I don't know about 2,000 acres. all but some of those are just they're constantly being overrun with with invasive species and it feels like it is just too much. What's what's your recommendation to those of us in this line of work that I mean this is what we're tasked with doing. We we're tasked with protecting ecosystems at scale. And yet to do it at scale seems almost insurmountable. what what's what's your what's your recommendation to us?

 

Tallamy: It's insurmountable for just a few people doing it, but there's a lot of us out there. I talk about managing invasive species on just your property. You just worry about your property. 78% of the country is privately owned. 85% east of the Mississippi is privately owned. So if everybody tackled the invasives just on their property, right away it's a lot more manageable. Now if you own a thousand acres, that's a job, but still

 

Chris Lee: Sure, yeah.

 

Tallamy: you probably have the resources to to do it. So if everybody did that and everybody did it consistently, we would reduce the seed rain that is always falling on the the public properties that have to be managed. These are long term goals, but to say it's impossible I don't want to give up like that. We need a bigger

 

Chris Lee: Mm-hmm. Yeah, you're right.

 

Tallamy: workforce. You know, the the the workforces that we had during the Depression that turned a lot of the areas of the country around just so they could have jobs. We could do that again. Don't tell me we don't have the money. Look at the money we spent on every single election. you know, billions and billions

 

Chris Lee: Mm-hmm.

 

Tallamy: of dollars. We just have to elevate conservation as something that's important. But it it's it's the logic of reducing the plants that are making seeds every every year. Over a series of years, because we got the tremendous seed bank out there. I don't want to minimize that. And and getting the public to help. This is what I talk me when I talk about personal responsibility. If you own a piece of the earth, you own the earth the stewardship of that piece of the earth. And if you don't want to

 

Chris Lee: Mm-hmm.

 

Tallamy: do that, then hire somebody who's gonna do it. But it is your responsibility. If you buy a house and you don't take care of it, it falls down. And we get that, you know. So we we assume the responsibility of taking care of the house, taking care of our car. But gotta take care of the earth too. and I'm not all that sympathetic since we created these problems to begin with. If we hadn't brought in all these alien plants, we could just let it go and it would go through secondary succession like it did 150 years ago, and we'd be done. It'd be easy as pie. All right. We wanted

 

Chris Lee: Mm-hmm.

 

Tallamy: our pretty plants from Asia, we've got them. Now we have to deal with it. I'm just ranting. I'm sorry.

 

Chris Lee: Yeah. No, I've you're you're you're spot on. I w I wanna dig into another angle here that those of us in the field of conservation deal with. oftentimes our focus is on protecting what still exists. So we look at these these areas that are still quote unquote pristine, right? And I've served on grant committees and oftentimes these these grant scoring criteria are built around selecting for the best that still exists. For somebody to take a hay field and secure a grant to restore, you know, this this overgrown hayfield that's covered in in invasive species, they're they're almost never going to get funded compared to the person that's got, say, a fen on their property and it still has, you know, these native species and the and they the the farmer was never able to get the dang thing to dry out. You know, I know some of these places here in Iowa where they, you know, they just they tried to tile it and they they used dynamite and they couldn't they couldn't stop this thing from being wet. And and then finally somebody, one of the ecologists from the DNR come by and he's like, hey, hold on, do you know what this is? And and so it's We focus so much on on protecting I know some counties have even like they've done entire floristic surveys of the entire county and you know they've looked at the the coefficients of conservation, they've they've mapped the areas that still have the the highest value native species still naturally existing, even though if they're not, you know, say native remnants or anything. Where how should we think differently about protection versus restoration? Where where's what's your take on that?

 

Tallamy: We need to expand the way we think now. We do want to protect any bits of of natural systems that are out there. You know, that has been our conservation model for the last century. and we certainly want to keep doing that. The only problem is it doesn't it's not enough. You know, we are w we've got little pockets of preserved areas. They're too small, they're too isolated, and they're constantly bleeding species. So if we only stick to conserving what is not already destroyed. We're we're just gonna march right toward that sixth grade extinction event. so I think we have to go beyond that. We do have to go into restoration, and again, I'll use my own private property of as an example. It works. and all of a sudden you can put back an awful lot of of the wildlife that was that was lost. You know, we've got 770 million acres of rangeland out there. That's that's four and a half times the size of Texas. We've got 410 million acres of cropland. We've got 405 million acres of personal woodlots. These are these are woodlots managed by private citizens, not by warehouser. That's a lot of acreage and some form of agriculture. We're not gonna get rid of agriculture, but we can easily manage our cattle better. We can keep them out of the out of the streams, which is where most of the biodiversity goes anyway. The examples in Nevada of how these streams come back when you do do that are incredible. You know, you you get the cows out, the the willows and the cottonwoods come back, then the beavers come, they dam it up, you've expanded, you've raised the water table, you've expanded forage for the cows. So you've actually increased the value of your your cattle ranch, and you've made a biodiversity haven. And this is in rocky, you know, dry desert lands where it looks like You really would have given up if somebody hadn't actually tried that. Iowa. J the whole Midwest. You know, we came up with Roundup Ready corn and soybeans, so we could spray Roundup on the crops and not kill Hey, let's just spray Roundup right up to the road and kill all the weeds. The milkweed, the New York iron weed, the Joe Pie weed, the the you know, every the evening primrose, everything we call a weed, which happens to be what maintained the biodiversity of the Midwest. For a hundred years. We coexisted with agriculture in a really diverse way because we kept those plants on the roadside. So, and then we planted lawn, which has to be moat, and we're adding more carbon to the atmosphere. And we did that because it looks neat and we want to be high status as farmers. I mean, I get it, but they're not good reasons. They're not good reasons. I mean, you you look at at the the problems with the monarch. There's several problems with the monarch, but We need to address those problems by putting the plants back. and you know, Iowa's doing that. You've got a very successful roadside restoration program. Illinois got to do a better job, Indiana's gotta do better. And it and it's that way all the way to the East Coast. It's just followed us here. There's a little, little, you know, family farms down the road. Mowed turf right up there looks really neat. Nothing, nothing alive at all. the the pollinator strips that Iowa State has come up with right through the corn and soybeans. Another wonderful idea, supported by CRP funding, intercepts topsoil, intercepts

 

Chris Lee: Mm-hmm.

 

Tallamy: nutrients before it gets in the watershed. It's a win-win for everybody. That should be standard in every single bit of agriculture acreage that's that's out there. So there are ways we can restore huge areas of of the country. and I didn't say it was easy. It is easier to preserve something that's already there, no doubt about it. But it's not enough.

 

Chris Lee: So I've I've got a a list of listener questions here. So I before I I had this, I sent an email out to the the people that followed the show here and the members of the next level leadership community here at Parks and Restoration. And I and I got a few back and one of them one of them is this and and I think this is a great time to to bring it in. out and this comes from from Samuel, he was actually the one that picked you up from the airport. I think took you back to the airport when you came and talked down here. he's a a big native plant guy. He's turned his whole yard in the middle of town. he's been on the show, turned it into just native plantings. it's not been without some political fallout from the local community. but we won't get into that right now. You can go back and listen to the episode with Samuel Hollingsworth if anybody wants to check on that. But he asks, at what point do we get more direct, more blunt about our our approach? If the carrot doesn't work, is there a time for the stick and how will we know we reach that point? And I know this is something that Iowa politically is wrestling with right now because we've got major issues. I mean, beyond just the biodiversity situation that the globe is facing, here at home, we've got major issues with water quality. the the you know, the industrial ag system, while it is a a critical component of our economy in a lot of things, it's not working for the people of the of Iowa in a lot of ways. And we have all of these voluntary programs. You mentioned CRP and the, you know, and the the prairie strips that Iowa has researched and and the research that's coming out of there is incredible what those little little prairie strips will do for biodiversity and water quality and soil retention, all that stuff. But it's not enough. Like it we we we adopted the nutrient reduction strategy, what, two thousand eight, and we've gone backwards. on on our nitrogen and phosphorus in our waters right now. I mean, I I operate a lake here at County Conservation that turns green every summer because it gets it has so much phosphorus in it. It gets so much duckweed that floats on the top. It looks like you can walk across this hundred and seventy eight acre lake. And so we've got a watershed plan and we've got a watershed coordinator hired and he's trying to do conservation stuff and we're making some headway. You know, he's offering them programs and cost share, but it's it's not enough. We're not getting there fast enough. We're What's your what's your take on on at what point do we switch to regulation or to policy or that kind of stuff?

 

Tallamy: I think we have to do both. you know, we talked about selling invasive plants. There are states all over the the country. Delaware was one of the first that has banned the sale of all all these invasive plants. That's a top-down regulation. What was interesting to me is that the nurserymen actually were for it. They were part of the committee that put this together because it used to be voluntary. And the one nursery guy who didn't do it was the one who sold the most plants. So they said, we want it to be illegal for everybody and then we're on a r you know equal playing field. So top down regulation doesn't have to be something that's that's really abhorrent to an awful lot of of people. I do know that that carrots work and if they're not working as well as we want, we need to increase the carrots. so you know in Las Vegas you get up to six dollars per square foot rebate for every square foot of lawn you remove and replace with a planning Zurich planning. It used to be three dollars. You know, they're just they're increasing because it's it's a serious business. They don't have the water for it. if we had, if we were serious about conservation landscaping, you would get a a you'd get a tax break for doing it. And you know, not 50 cents either. so that is one thing we can do. You make the carrots real.

 

Chris Lee: Mm.

 

Tallamy: but at the other end there the you know for the people who just refuse to do it. then there do have to be be some sticks. where and then you have to make the the sticks real. I mean, it's it's not a fifty dollar slap on the wrist where it's not, you know, it's it's just easier to ignore it. and you put those two things together, I I think I think it can work. you know, you you you you're right. What's happening on the farmland is not benefiting people of Iowa very much. And the first thing you'll hear is, you know, we got eight point three billion people on the planet, we've got to feed them, and and that is true. I think I think there ought to be subsidies for farmers who are doing the right thing so that they don't have to sacrifice in terms of income anything to to do you know, conservation agriculture. To to put in the the prairie strip, to remove the weeds on the side of the road. because what they're doing is preventing the dead zone in the Gulf. They're helping the production of ecosystem services for everybody in the country. New York City, Des Moines, anywhere you live, it's it's helping the situation. So they should be compensated for it. just because they own the land doesn't mean they're responsible for for footing the bill for for making ecosystem services for everybody. That's true for the ranchers. it's true for anybody at at any level. that would take a huge change in the way our culture thinks about conservation. there's still what do we have, 350 million people in the US now? I don't know how many people are worried about conservation, but it's not in the top ten of of things people worry about in at a coming election.

 

Chris Lee: Yeah.

 

Tallamy: so we need to we need to get it up there. Like number one, maybe. You know it

 

Chris Lee: Mm-hmm.

 

Tallamy: If we don't do this now, we're not going to be here. If we really do go to the sixth grade extinction event, we will be one of them. And when it's when it's happening, it's too late. There are thresholds beyond which the earth cannot recover. So we've got to do this before we reach those thresholds. So it's, I mean, it's why I give these talks and everything, it's why I try to convince people this is serious business. It's not just fun, it's not just entertaining, it's not just feel-good, it's absolutely necessary. And since everybody on the planet requires these services, it's everybody's responsibility. The government is supposed to be doing things for the common good. We have to elect governments that will do that. And that's gonna come from us. We could say, it's the government's fault. Well, we elected them. So, you know, we've got to get

 

Chris Lee: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

 

Tallamy: serious about who's who's in the offices making these decisions.

 

Chris Lee: Yeah. So how how do we do that? I mean, what what does that look like? I mean, you're asking

 

Tallamy: Yeah.

 

Chris Lee: you're you're asking millions of people to change something that's that's deeply cultural. I mean, generations have, you know, have bought into this idea that the beautiful mode lawn is is the status symbol. And,

 

Tallamy: Yeah.

 

Chris Lee: you know, I mean like we for it's like we're wired to enjoy the smell of mode grass. I d you know, like like for most people that's that's a pleasant experience for And we're Now standing here trying to to change their minds, like, well, you know, maybe there's a there's a there's a better thing. Plant these these plants and and here here's the kickback that I always get. you're telling me to plant a bunch of these weeds so that I have a bunch more bugs in my yard? no. So what it I mean, you've been at this a lot longer than than I have and and and Yeah, right. So what

 

Tallamy: There there is the challenge of Homegrown National Park, right right there.

 

Chris Lee: what have you learned about changing people's minds? Like what kind of messaging Changes that that perception.

 

Tallamy: Well, first of all, I don't talk about getting rid of the lawn. I talk about reducing the area. The lawn is the perfect plant to walk on. So where you are really gonna walk in your yard, guide you through your yard, that's where lawn remains. You still get to grass, smell the grass and smell smell the smell. there was an interesting article in the New York Times real estate section maybe two months ago. and What it showed is people who've done conservation landscaping and really gone a whole hog at it are actually getting higher than the asking price when they go to sell their house, which is, you know, total surprise to the real estate industry. That's why they they put it. I mean, that's that's an article about this in the real estate section, the non choir. But what it's saying is, hey, you really want to sell your property for more than then you know, don't have seven acres of lawn because that's not gonna sell anymore. and and that, you know, you're talking about money then. That is going to be a major influencer, motivation. I'm actually gonna make more money if I do that. If more and more people do it, we're going to change the You're you're not gonna be the outsider, on the only one on your your block. You're gonna follow along. Nobody wants to stick out. They wanna do what everybody else is doing. So the more people do it, the easier it is to to join in.

 

Chris Lee: I think what I what I keep hearing is it's not an all or nothing thing. And we often like to think in terms of binaries, right? Like it it's either yes or no, it's a do or don't, it's a have

 

Tallamy: Yeah. Black or white. Yeah.

 

Chris Lee: a yard or you don't. And in everything, I mean most of the most of life and and everything lives in that that gray area in between. Right. And so what I'm hearing is is it's really that. And we should stop speaking in such absolutes. Like you have to have native plantings in your yard. Well, no, I mean if you've got if you've got a few kids and they they use the yard from fence to fence for their soccer field, probably not gonna work real well. But later on, once they move out of the house, maybe it will. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

 

Tallamy: Not not then. Not then. But they're gonna grow up. That's right, yeah. You know, y there is room for compromise here. we we did a study. If you have seventy percent of your native of your plant biomass native, you can sustain a a family of chickadees. That gives you thirty percent that you can have your crepe myrtle, you know, you can have your ginkgo. just but right now it's about eighty percent non-native in in a typical yard. So that's not a compromise. Shift it more towards natives. If it looks like weeds and it's wild and messy, it's because that's the way you designed it. We don't have to have meadows in our front yards. You know, that's that's on public display. We're trying to transition right now. There are very attractive pocket prairies, little pockets here and there that can be really effective for pollinators. But if you really want to do the meadow, which just happens to be the hardest thing to do, put it in the backyard.

 

Chris Lee: Yes.

 

Tallamy: so it's it's a it's a matter of being sensitive to the culture. Don't just the word the use of the word bug. You know, a bug is a disease. It infects your computer. It's a negative

 

Chris Lee: Right.

 

Tallamy: connotation. Let's call them insects, maybe, and

 

Chris Lee: Mm-hmm.

 

Tallamy: and say, you're asking me to change my art so that I have monarchs? Yes, I am. And that's not so hard, not so bad. So it's it is messaging. but the really thing is gonna make a difference, I think, is when it it becomes valuable enough to enough people that it actually increases the value of your your property. And that is happening. That's really, really good news.

 

Chris Lee: Yeah. Yeah. You you bring up the the difference between like you know, like a pocket prairie, a and a native species that are gardened versus a an area that you've tried to establish into native species. You know, and so I let's call it a restored prairie, right? Or a a pollinator plot that you know, maybe you you you tilled up and you planted a seed. That is a very difficult thing to manage, as I am experiencing. So I've been even even prior to reading your book, I had tried to I've got I just live on a couple acres here and areas that I knew I wasn't gonna use for the lawn where the kids gonna play soccer. I'm like, okay, that's that's going into pollinator. My wife supported it completely. like the area over our over our septic area. like great, you know, wildflowers. And so we bought this high diversity wildflower mix and we, you know, we prepped it all. And it's been just a battle to keep All the things I don't want in there out of there. Like I the the the first year the whole thing just grew up to burdock because it's it's real sandy. it's it's just it's terrible soils. and that's been a fight ever since 'cause I I I didn't get on it fast enough and I let it go to seed and so now it you know it just keeps coming back and then I constantly got honeysuckle popping up in it and I've got one year my I I planted the road ditch. I completely converted it into a pollinator mix and one year it just blew up to Queen Anne's lace, like for just just The whole thing. and I'm like, I don't I don't even know what to do here, right? Like I I I I'm a conservation guy and I'm I'm not even sure what the right step is. Do I burn it? Do I mow it down? Do I just start over? And it it it has been tough. And this kind of leads me into a question that Ryan, he's he's with our parks department here in Burlington. these native plantings are often sold as low maintenance, but establishment years can be labor and cost intensive. What's the Honest maintenance and budget picture for the first three to five years compared to turf, because that's a lot of the pushback that I get is like, man, that that's that's gonna be expensive. And then it's it's gonna look like a weed patch for three to five years. But I think there's also the distinguishment that I'd like you to touch on between like a where you plant some plugs and you do it kind of like a flower garden, but it's with native species, versus this native plot establishment. So walk me through what your experience has been with that, either on your place or in places that you've seen through home growth. National Park.

 

Tallamy: Of course you live in Iowa and the farther west you go, the the fewer trees actually wanna be there. where I live, yeah, the answer is trees. You put the trees back, it is easy. You plant an acorn, all you have to do is protect it from the deer, which is that's a little bit of a challenge right there. But but it is so much

 

Chris Lee: That that can be a challenge, yes. I've had that too.

 

Tallamy: easier. Putting woody plants is so much easier than establishing a a meadow because a meadow doesn't a meadow is a transitional stage, particularly in the east. We get enough rain that it wants to move right through to scrub into into forest. Now, if you're

 

Chris Lee: Mm. Yeah.

 

Tallamy: far enough west in in Iowa where you don't get enough rain and it's not going to do that automatically, okay. But if you're in the east, you're the default shouldn't always be, okay, I have to make a a prairie. You really were oak savannah back in the old days, where you had a few

 

Chris Lee: Mm-hmm.

 

Tallamy: big trees and then you had had prairie plants under underneath, but that If I lived there, that's what I would be be thinking about. you mentioned mowing, you mentioned fire. Yes, to both of them. Fire is the best. burn once every three years, burn each section once every three years, but never burn the whole thing at the at the same time. fire is not going to control your woody invasives. You've got to spot spot spray and and kill the root system. but once you do that. And again, depends on what your neighbors are doing, but that seed

 

Chris Lee: Mm-hmm.

 

Tallamy: rain will will be reduced. It is, it is a management challenge. There is absolutely no you know, no question about it. there's a guy out here, Larry Wiener, who's been doing meadow restoration for 30 years, and he says just with a mowing schedule, you can shift things towards native bunch bunch grasses. If you mow heavily in the spring, you're keeping the cool season European grasses down and and many of the the woodies. And that's it. That's the only time you mow during the the year. And you do that three or four years in a row and your panicums and other things are gonna gonna come in on their own. and you haven't planted anything. all you've done

 

Chris Lee: Mm-hmm.

 

Tallamy: is is change your your mowing schedule. We need to to learn more about simple techniques like that that will make this type of management easier. I've got a terrible Japanese stiltgrass issue here. it came in after we moved in, wasn't here in the beginning. But it is, I don't think you guys have it, but it it's a per it's an annual. Does well in the shade, does well in the sun, you know, it can get get four feet tall and then lays down and and kills everything. and it and it spreads by the wind. So the seeds spread by the wind. So it it also. Yeah. Well, I I

 

Chris Lee: Mm-hmm. Yep, man. Yeah. R really great strategy. Yeah. Yeah. So that's a

 

Tallamy: well I just discovered. Weed whacking. You know, I can go into four foot stand of this stuff and I can whack it down in five minutes. And I said, I'm gonna whack the whole ten acres, you know, and I'd I'd never done that before. So just f stumbling on these on these techniques can

 

Chris Lee: Yeah.

 

Tallamy: can help it, but

 

Chris Lee: So y you mentioned the the mowing cadence and you know, mowing heights and stuff. So that leads me into another question that that Ryan sent me was are there model ordinances or policy changes maybe that a municipality can apply that says something that changes their mowing height requirements or you know, native seed mixes for right of ways or invasive species bans that you'd point to that are high impact, immediately applicable, that municipalities could adopt. Have you seen municipalities somewhere that have done ordinances that seem to be pretty effective?

 

Tallamy: You know, I can't name any for you right now, but in New England the bobelink conservation of the bobble link is is a big issue. and they they will nest in the the grasses that are mowed for hay, right at the time when they want to mow. So there are there are ordinances there might even be some some incentives to delay mowing. Let them nest and and get out of there before they do it. And I think there's there's places where that is is working. Changing the mowing schedule on our roadsides is a no brainer. It most of the time it doesn't have to be mowed at all. We're mowing it because we always did, not because it needs to be. once a year. And not not at the beginning of the fall when all the seeds heads are there that are gonna feed the birds all winter long, but mow it in in early spring before, you know, when all the seeds are already gone and and You can you can get rid of all that that duff and then then it can replace itself. So there are there are logical ways to manage mowing that have ecological benefits. Are they gonna fight the invasives as well? All I can say is mowing doesn't fight the invasives. It puts them back, but it doesn't kill the rootstock and some other technique is gotta come up. You know, and people say, we can't use herbicides. Well, we can. It's it's a valuable tool in our our toolbox. There's I liken it to chemotherapy. And I call these I call these plants ecological tumors. They get going and they just keep spreading. Well, if you have a tumor in your body, you take chemotherapy and you gotta kill it. And yes, you have to manage that chemotherapy correctly, because it can kill you. That is correct.

 

Chris Lee: Ness area.

 

Tallamy: but if you don't, you die. If we don't manage these things, we have killed the ecosystem. so So it's a a valuable tool and I hear people saying, No, I'm I'm swearing off I'm not gonna touch it. The benefit of using herbicides far outweighs the cost of not using them, in my view. In my view.

 

Chris Lee: Yeah. Yeah. That's a it's an interesting way of putting it. I I had never really thought about it that way. And again, it's the it it gets back into that binary thinking. You either use herbicides or you don't. Like herbicides are either good or they're bad. But again, everything lives in that in that gray area and properly applied, strategically applied, intentionally applied. to a specific thing for a specific purpose, not just blanket applied to the entire property or sprayed all over where the kids are going to be playing. Like

 

Tallamy: Right. Right. Right.

 

Chris Lee: that it's it's you know, I mean it it's the same thing like with chemotherapy. It's it's it's intentional. It's a it's applied towards a particular end. And once the end is accomplished, then it stops. And I really like that. I I I I hadn't really I hadn't framed it that way because I'm I'm kind of very much of that camp, like I don't want to use herbicides here on my property. And the fight has just been like and I've tried the organic stuff, like the the the vinegar, you know, to as just as a broad spectrum weed control. And I mean it it works for a week and then the stuff in the seed bank just comes back up. It you know, 'cause now I've created more light to get to that spot. So now it comes back even more angry and just a little bit of roundup would go a long way. Yeah,

 

Tallamy: You know, you can kill yourself with vinegar too, but

 

Chris Lee: exactly.

 

Tallamy: Yeah.

 

Chris Lee: Yeah.

 

Tallamy: no, I sympathize I sympathize, but much of our reaction to herbicides has been created by the the media, you know, the whole roundup controversy. you have to use it properly. That's what the label's for.

 

Chris Lee: Right.

 

Tallamy: there are for smaller properties, there are other techniques. A matic is great. You whack out those roots. You can get a pretty good size automal of whack, whack, whack, and it's and it's gone. no herbicides. If you have just a few, you can cut it off at the base and put black plastic over the stump. And in a year you will have killed that plant because you're blocking the light. So, you know, if you want to go to all that trouble, there are alternatives.

 

Chris Lee: Yeah. Yeah. I have been very impressed at the effectiveness of just a sheet of plastic. And you know, a a a colored or black sheet of plastic over an area. Like you want to eliminate weeds in your in your gravel spot, throw some plastic down, anchor it and leave it for a few weeks and it'll be I mean, the couple spots in my yard where my kids had their slip and slide and then just left it out for a few weeks. I I don't know. It's been all summer and the grass still hasn't come back. So

 

Tallamy: Cool. Great. Yeah.

 

Chris Lee: so just a couple more questions here. If I had say one acre in a thousand bucks. What's the highest impact thing I could do for biodiversity?

 

Tallamy: Where do you live? Because

 

Chris Lee: Let's say Iowa.

 

Tallamy: again, I would say I would say put in a mosaic of of oaks and and black cherries and hickories with the prairie

 

Chris Lee: Mm. Mm-hmm.

 

Tallamy: plants underneath. Let the prairie plants come in on their own. So you'd plant those plants. That's you know that's cost-free. You wouldn't have to touch your thousand bucks. You do have to protect them from deer. So you you spend 20 bucks getting a wire cage at Home Depot.

 

Chris Lee: Yeah, so Bison fencing, yeah.

 

Tallamy: then with that mowing schedule, you could allow the the native plants to come back. or you can you can spend your thousand bucks and get get some plugs and get get going. And then they start to seed in themselves. That's what I would do.

 

Chris Lee: I I I like this concept of just like let the prairie plants come in. It reminds me of and I I cannot remember where this was, but it's somewhere here in Iowa. a a guy said, I'm gonna take one acre and I'm gonna stop farming it. And it'd been farmed for years, generations. And he said, I'm gonna I'm gonna take this this one acre square and I'm just gonna stop farming it, I'm gonna see what happens. And you know, and at first he had some weed stuff come in there, but after a few years, the native species that came up in there, he started collecting the seed. And then grew an entire native seed company out of this entire concept. And a

 

Tallamy: Wow. Wow.

 

Chris Lee: few years back at one of our fall conferences, we we toured that place and it's just a fascinating story. I cannot remember the the name of it, but that's stuck with me ever since of like he just just stopped putting what didn't belong there and just let come and it was pretty neat.

 

Tallamy: I I have a similar story. There was a guy in Michigan who he had eighty acres. He was trying to restore it, was a farm. He wanted to put the prairie potholes back on his property, so he got a backhoe and he dug out he dug out one and he just piled the dirt along the edge. and then he left. What he did was expose a seed bank that had been covered for a hundred years. And Leatris and all of these prairie plants came right back on

 

Chris Lee: yeah.

 

Tallamy: that seed bank after a hundred years. It was incredible. Yeah.

 

Chris Lee: Wow. Yeah. It it the the resilience of that seed bank is astounding.

 

Tallamy: Yeah. Yeah.

 

Chris Lee: I so I I know you're a big fan of oaks and and and I am too. In fact you've got an entire book about about oaks.

 

Tallamy: Yeah.

 

Chris Lee: what is it about oaks that that what is it that sets them apart from all the other species out there?

 

Tallamy: I talk about the four ecological goals that every property has. You've got to manage the watershed, support pollinators, support the food web, and sequester carbon. And oaks do that better, at least three of them better than any other tree. And so the three of they're they're sequestering the most carbon, they're managing the watershed with their big, big root system. They're by far, you know, oaks across the country support a thousand species of of caterpillars, much more than any other other plant genus. And they even help pollinators because when they're dropping their their catkins, you I got pictures of it. The bees are going to those catkins, they're not pollinating the yolk flowers, they're just using the pollen for their own reproduction. So they're they're helping spring pollinators. so that's what sets them apart. They they do it all and on top of that, they're pretty, they fit into our culture without, you know, without a big big problem. So

 

Chris Lee: They they are by far my favorite tree. And I mean, they always just had been, but then after hearing you talk about just how big of an impact that really is, I'm like, holy smokes. Like it it we have a preserve that we manage here and it's been very hands off and the oak hickory forest is giving way now to maple basswood. And it hurts my soul to watch that happen. And but you know, the The alternative is we go in and we do a clear cut and we you know we manage for oaks

 

Tallamy: Yeah.

 

Chris Lee: and that that's just not gonna fly in this preserve and Exactly

 

Tallamy: That's that's fire management because it used to be, you know, oaks were fire fire climax species and we stopped it. So Yeah.

 

Chris Lee: Yeah. Exactly. And we and we removed fire from the landscape and and you know, we let them silly maples come in in the shade and they just take over it. But anyway, off on the tangent again. Okay. I I always end with this question. If you could get one message out to parks and conservation leaders, maybe a a quote on a billboard or a message out to everyone that works in the parks and conservation industry, What would that message be?

 

Tallamy: You are doing God's work. I mean y you are you are literally saving life on planet Earth. and you're discovering the ways to do it do it the most efficiently. it's hard. we we appreciate that. I I wish the rest of the world did. so stick with it is is would be my my message. You're you're a vital workforce.

 

Chris Lee: Well, thank you. That I like that.

 

Tallamy: Yeah.

 

Chris Lee: because oftentimes we don't hear that. You know, we're we're out there telling people to to plant natives and get more bugs in their yard and and so to hear that,

 

Tallamy: More in the

 

Chris Lee: Doctor Talmud, I I do really do appreciate that. if someone wanted to find out more about you, connect with you, or Homegrown National Park, where would you send them?

 

Tallamy: Homegrown nationalpark dot org. It's all one word. It's all there on that website.

 

Chris Lee: Excellent. And I will put links to that in the show notes. It is homegrown at National Park. If you Google it, it it comes right up. It's they got some really great resources on that website. And there's a whole bit on there about Dr. Talamy and his books. Dr. Howie, thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me today. It's it's you bring some great insight. Thank you for bringing this ethos to the world and and popularizing this idea of of homegrown national park. I I really think there's some traction to this and I can't wait to see where it goes in the future. I know my own community is is looking at adopting some of the ideas from it and I've even seen it take take shape in some places. So Thank you for what you're doing and thank you for being here and I look forward to seeing ya at the conference.

 

Tallamy: Thanks for the opportunity. It really helps a lot.

 

Chris Lee: Absolutely. And for everybody listening, thank you for what you do. As Dr. Tellamy said, we are doing God's work. So keep it up and I'll talk to you next time. Take care. Wait, wait, wait. Don't go yet. Don't start that next episode. I've got something for you. The Parks and Restoration Better Meetings Field Guide. See, most meetings just suck. And I'm going to wage war on crappy meetings. Go to parksandrestoration.com, enter your email into the next level leadership community mailing list, and you'll get access to the free PDF download, which is the Better Meetings field guide. It will walk you through what meetings to get rid of, how to make the standing meetings better, and just all around get things done and not just sit there twiddling your thumbs and wondering why. Did I get myself into this? The Better Meetings Field Guide from Parks and Restoration. Go to parksandrestoration.com, join the next level leadership community, get the download. See you at the next episode. Take care.