Tag Archives: Doug Tallamy

“Nature’s Best Hope”: Doug Tallamy’s visit, Sept. 13, 2021

tallamy

Doug Tallamy, a widely acclaimed professor in the Dept. of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Delaware, gave a talk at West Chester University on Sept. 13, 2021, to an in-person and online audience of over 200. (See the video here; he starts at 15:34; Closed Captioning recommended; don’t miss our board member Courtney Finneran’s preceding 10-minute illustrated introduction to our work. You can also view a talk by Tallamy elsewhere here; he starts at 5:37).

The reception before Dr. Tallamy’s talk was attended by Chester County political and business leaders, and the dinner following allowed Green Team and WCU leaders to network about ways to spread Doug’s message and work throughout the County.

Nature’s best hope, he explained, is at this point… ourselves! We, the human race, have disturbed the symbiotic balance between insects and plants, between those and birds and all other vertebrates. We destroy inter-species interactions at our peril, and if we continue to impoverish the living earth, our own food supply will perish.

What can we do as individuals? Welcome biodiversity to our own properties, by turning lawns into meadows, choosing native plants, shunning pesticides and herbicides, and nurturing organically rich soils.

The Green Team, through our Living Landscapes project, strongly supports Dr. Tallamy’s call for a “Homegrown National Park” in our collective back yards (and, of course, in the properties of businesses, non-profits, schools, and municipalities). We can all be part of restoring nature to the healthy, symbiotic state that evolved into the world around us.

In a promising sign of forward movement, the Environmental Advisory Committees of northern Chester County have been conferring with each other on such initiatives and will be meeting next week at the Welkinweir preserve with Chair of the Chesco Board of Commissioners Marian Moskowitz. The WC Green Team will also be represented there and it is hoped that countywide networking of all Chesco EACs will ensue.

As an organization determined to reassert the essential importance of nature and environment, the WC Green Team will strongly support a countywide initiative to reclaim natural areas, plant native pollinators, and create… a “Homegrown Chester County Park”!

Famed natural gardens expert Doug Tallamy to speak at WCU Sept. 13

Please let us know you are coming at Eventbrite.

Dr. Doug Tallamy will describe his plan for a grassroots call-to-action to regenerate biodiversity through native plantings in your backyard. Dr. Tallamy, professor in the Department of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Delaware, best-selling author, and an international expert on restoring health to the planet through plants, will visit West Chester University on Monday, September 13.

Prof. Tallamy will spend the day speaking to University classes and will offer a 5pm lecture to the community. Dr. Tallamy is the co-founder of Homegrown National Park, with the purpose to regenerate biodiversity, one person at a time, though a grassroots call-to-action that focuses on native plantings.

Please join West Chester Green Team and WCU Office of Sustainability, which are co-sponsoring Doug’s lecture, at 5:00pm in Emilie K. Asplundh Concert Hall at 700 S. High Street in West Chester Borough.

THIS EVENT IS FREE TO THE PUBLIC BUT REGISTRATION IS REQUESTED

Download the below flyer here.

Doug Tallamy, “Nature’s Best Hope”

Doug Tallamy, a widely acclaimed professor in the Dept. of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Delaware, is scheduled to give an in-person talk in West Chester on Sept. 15, 2021.

He gave this talk at the Virtual Siouxland Garden Show on March 26, 2021. His overall theme is that Nature is built from millions of specialized interactions, as between insects and plants, and that we destroy those interactions at our peril. In fact, people (and our food supply) are totally dependent on the very “ecosystem services” that we are threatening.

Here is his summary:

“Recent headlines about global insect declines and three billion fewer birds in North America are a bleak reality check about how ineffective our current landscape designs have been at sustaining the plants and animals that sustain us. Such losses are not an option if we wish to continue our current standard of living on planet Earth. The good news is that none of this is inevitable. Let’s look at simple steps that each of us can and must take to reverse declining biodiversity and explain why we, ourselves, are nature’s best hope.”

Being part of that hope means respecting nature: climate, water, air, plants, animals, and yes, insects. As summarized by the great entomologist E. O. Wilson: