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Trying to Get Data on How an Ecosystem Functions.

buy Lyrica mexico An interesting article on the importance of native plants for wildlife.  The logic is obvious – animals need energy, and they derive it all ultimately from plants, and they have evolved with certain plants and need them – no bamboo, no pandas.  No eucalyptus, no koalas.  There is plenty of anecdotal evidence as well.  It’s hard for me to argue with the “native plants mean a more intact and complex and ultimately richer ecosystem” claim because I spend so much time at Catskill Native Nursery.  The owners, Diane Greenberg and Francis Groeters, told me that when they started the business they had various goals, but there was one they felt they completely achieved: they wanted to take their few acres of land in the Rondout Valley and make it into a kind of wildlife preserve.  This they have done: in fact, I feel certain that there is not a more biologically rich three acres in all the Catskill region.  Their website catalogs some of the wildlife that they have seen in the nursery, and what they have put online is just a tiny fraction of what they have photographed, and what they have photographed is just a tiny fraction of what is there.  They have problems selling birdhouses because birds will use almost any nesting site they can get in the nursery – including birdhouses which are for sale.  Birds will even use houses right next to the sales area, where people come and go all day long.  And there really is no doubt as to why they have these animals and their near neighbors do not: they have the plants.  And plants are the key to all life in an ecosystem.

thriftily But getting data on this is very difficult.  Hence the article notes that scientist Doug Tallamy was trying to find out how many insects it takes to raise a brood of chickadees – 4800 is his conclusion.  And he has good data that many of those insects absolutely require certain native plants in order to complete their life cycles.  But of course you can’t make people plant native plants by telling them they’ll have more bugs around the house if they do.  You have to put it in terms of charismatic megafauna.  But we apparently don’t really know what insect species even the common songbirds in our area consume – our knowledge of our own backyards is so scant.

But looking at those pictures from the nursery does give me hope.  We really can do something just with our backyards.  You don’t have to get elected senator or something impossible like that.  You just have to give the animals the plants they need to live.

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