Stewarding a piece of the earth: An interview with Doug Tallamy

Erin Garrett: 00:06

Welcome to another episode of the Everyday Environment podcast, where we explore the environment we see every day. I'm your host Erin Garrett.

Abigail Garofalo: 00:14

I'm your co host Abigail Garofalo.

Amy Lefringhouse: 00:17

And I'm your other co host Amy Lefringhouse.

Erin Garrett: 00:21

And today all three of us wanted to be on the podcast because we have a super special guest with us today. Doctor. Doug Tallamy is joining us. Doug is the TA Baker Professor of Agriculture at the University of Delaware, but many of you know him as an entomologist, conservationist, and author. Welcome, Doug.

Doug Tallamy: 00:41

Thank you very much. Pleasure to be here.

Erin Garrett: 00:44

Yeah. We're really excited to have you. We have had your name on a little sticky note on our planning for our podcast for a really long time, and we were excited to bring you on to the pod as we wrap up our fifth season of Everyday Environment, all about nature-based solutions. We figured you'd be the perfect guest. We were saving you for the right time, Doug.

Erin Garrett: 01:05

So thank you so much for being with us.

Doug Tallamy: 01:06

It's great to make sticky note status.

Erin Garrett: 01:10

Alright. Well, we have a ton that we want to talk to you about today. But before we dive in, I wanna take a step back and have you just tell us a little bit about yourself and the work that you do.

Doug Tallamy: 01:22

Oh, boy. Yeah. Starting when? I was born loving nature. So everybody says, you know, how did you get into this?

Doug Tallamy: 01:29

I mean, it was destined. I knew nothing about insects as a kid. You know, we weren't taught anything about insects, but I liked turtles and snakes. I was very typical that way. And it wasn't till college that I took a course in entomology from Dr. Bugbee.

Doug Tallamy: 01:46

And if you take a course in... From Dr. Bugbee, you have to become an entomologist. So I did. But I studied behavioral ecology, you know, how how insects... Why they do what they do.

Doug Tallamy: 01:58

What's interesting is how similar they actually are to humans. But it wasn't until my wife and I moved into our current home in the year 2000. It was part of a farm that was broken up into 10-acre lots, and we got one of those lots. That's when the whole conservation thing really started because the 10 acres was solidly invaded with Asian plants. It was my first

Doug Tallamy: 02:23

Experience with the problem of invasive species, particularly invasive plants. You know, I'm always looking for insects, so the first thing I discover is, hey. There aren't any on these plants. So what is that doing to the food web? What's it doing to the birds and everything else?

Doug Tallamy: 02:37

And that changed the direction of my research to what we've been doing ever since. People were interested in that, which was... That was interesting to me. I had done lots of what I thought were cool things like, you know, why do cucumber beetles choose the mates they choose and stuff like that. But you know what?

Doug Tallamy: 02:56

Nobody cared about that. People do care about their local environment. And so that was good. I was doing something people actually cared about. They wanted to read about what we were doing, and it was early on.

Doug Tallamy: 03:08

I hadn't written anything yet. So finally, I wrote Bringing Nature Home simply because people kept saying, we wanna read about this. So that became the first book. And it... And then, you know, I wasn't at all convinced that anybody would read that, but they have, and they're interested.

Doug Tallamy: 03:26

Their interest keeps growing. I think the feeling that there is something everybody can do, you can... As an individual, you can do something. You can see the results. It's the empowerment of solving these conservation issues that I think people are really attracted to.

Doug Tallamy: 03:43

So it keeps growing, and I keep writing, and I keep talking.

Abigail Garofalo: 03:48

I love it. That's the thing we all gotta keep doing. Just gotta keep writing, keep talking, man. Like, it's how it gets... Stuff gets done eventually.

Doug Tallamy: 03:55

That's right. That's right.

Amy Lefringhouse: 03:57

Absolutely. We learned last week, think, wasn't it, Abigail and Erin, that the more you keep talking about something over and over again, the more it sticks in a brain, right? We feel like sometimes we repeat ourselves, you know, oh, we've already done that, we've already covered that, we've already, like, addressed that topic, but you know, we were learning last week that just keep, just keep repeating, and at some point, it's gonna stick with more and more people. So we appreciate everything you do, of course. So...

Amy Lefringhouse: 04:26

And we know that you have spent decades, like you've said, you know, studying these relationships between plants and insects, and then just like from an ecosystem perspective. And then this season in our Everyday Environment podcast, we're focused on nature-based solutions. So thinking of that, what do you think that most people may still misunderstand about how nature actually functions? So if we're looking at nature-based solutions, we need to understand nature. So what do you see when you're in your talks and when you're speaking and teaching?

Amy Lefringhouse: 05:08

What do you think most people still misunderstand about how nature actually functions?

Doug Tallamy: 05:14

Yeah. It's so easy to simplify nature. Nature's really complex. And people still habitually think that nature is something, and we humans are something else.

Doug Tallamy: 05:31

We're not actually part of nature. So that's probably the biggest misunderstanding. We're part of nature. We absolutely depend on it, which means every time we destroy it, we're hurting ourselves. And that...

Doug Tallamy: 05:45

You know, if people truly understood that and embraced that, we would stop doing what we're doing because we would inherently know that down the road, it's it's gonna bite us. It's biting us already. You know, the loss of the species, not through extinction, but the loss of the number of individuals in each species, the defaunation that we're seeing everywhere, that is... That's more than the canary in the coal mine. I mean, it's step one in ecosystem collapse.

Doug Tallamy: 06:17

And that is a problem. The fact that we think perpetual growth is okay... I mean, look what's happening in the Southwest right now. You can't pick up the paper anymore without saying states are at each other's throats because there's not enough water in the Colorado River. Of course, there's not enough water.

Doug Tallamy: 06:35

We've taken it all. We've got too many people using it. You know, a third grader could put that together. You just can't keep growing, and we're not getting any more water. As a matter of fact, through climate change, we're getting less.

Doug Tallamy: 06:47

So those very simple connections, the fact that people aren't putting it together automatically, always surprised me. And when you get down to the nitty-gritty of how different trophic levels work, you know, you got plants making the food that all animals need. You gotta get that food to the animals, or you don't have any animals. If you don't have animals, you don't have a functional ecosystem. That's where the whole native plant connection comes in because native plants are much better at passing on the food that they've created from the sun than nonnative plants.

Doug Tallamy: 07:21

So it's not optional. It's not just a matter of aesthetics. It's the... These things are essential to have ecosystem function, and ecosystem function is essential to have humans. So those basic connections that are actually pretty complex are what we still struggle with on a daily basis.

Doug Tallamy: 07:39

And it's not that we're stupid. It's just that we... It was never part of our education from kindergarten on up. You know, the average person cannot identify any trees at all. That should be that should be...

Doug Tallamy: 07:53

You know, learning right along with the ABCs in kindergarten, identify the trees in your yard. Oh, you don't have any trees in your yard? Put some in. You know, those basic things from the smallest child on up, we were never taught that, especially my generation. Wasn't part of it.

Doug Tallamy: 08:09

I think we're a little bit better at it now, but the movers and shakers in conservation now are baby boomers because they are... Most of them are retired, most of them have some money, and they all have time looking for something to do before they lose their health. So that's a really powerful group if we can get them... Get the essential nature of conservation on their minds. And that's what we keep working on.

Erin Garrett: 08:34

Mhmm. Yeah. It makes me

Abigail Garofalo: 08:36

think about, like, I... My, like, background is in, like, youth education a little bit, and it makes me think about when we teach youth, we wanna simplify things a little bit to help them understand, but it's almost like we haven't taken that next level up. Right? Like, it's like, okay. Let's understand trophic levels, but then there are those intricacies and complications that, you know, we're making sure are in the basic science, but never make their way up to adulthood and older education and secondary and things like that.

Abigail Garofalo: 09:04

And it makes me wonder, I'm like, how can we teach that a little differently in that aspect to, like, help shift that culture and understanding and also put ourselves within those pieces? I also feel like we talk about it in youth as well as, like, these are the ways that animals function and how plants and animals interact, not necessarily how we interact with them and putting ourselves into that ecology space.

Doug Tallamy: 09:29

Yep. And how those interactions impact us. Yeah. That's a tough one. Yeah.

Doug Tallamy: 09:33

Especially when the downsides of our behavior... When I talk about ecosystem collapse, it's not something that happens in one day tomorrow, which means it's so easy to ignore it. You can look at places around the world where you definitely have ecosystem collapse. We've got desertification. We...

Doug Tallamy: 09:50

You know, all these terrible things happening. The US is a really rich continent in terms of North America in terms of resources. So we're one of the last to see these impacts. So it's just...

Doug Tallamy: 10:05

It's a harder sell when you're really talking about the future.

Amy Lefringhouse: 10:09

Yeah. I think too, Abigail, you talked about youth, and Doctor. Tallamy, you talked about baby boomers. And just thinking about the life path that we all take is, like, sometimes when we're kids, we learn about these living things, right, and whatever. And then, you know, you might go outside in the schoolyard.

Amy Lefringhouse: 10:33

You may have some connections there. Then you like go to school and go to college, figure out what you're gonna do, then you like, you know, kind of get really busy, right, in your career or your family, and then like you get very disconnected away from I think like nature and being outside. Maybe just, you know, kind of, like, not on purpose, but just because you're busy. And then coming back to the baby boomers, we see that I feel like a lot in the Master Naturalist program where we do have a lot of older volunteers, and it's almost like reconnecting them back to those younger years, right? You're like, Okay, wait, hang on.

Amy Lefringhouse: 11:08

Remember, we learned our trees. Remember, we learned our insects. Remember, we learned our rocks. And so you're kind of like bringing them back to that again and reminding them of our connections. And so I love that you have brought that up many times about that generation is kind of one that's ripe for working on this kind of movement, this native plants and plant choice.

Doug Tallamy: 11:37

Yeah. I'm not so old that I can't remember what it was like when I was in my twenties and the kids were little and were trying to build the career. It's a very busy time. And to say, oh, by the way, you should go save the world at the same time. It's a lot to ask.

Doug Tallamy: 11:53

But, again, you know, the... My group, age group now that's retiring, they're looking for something to do. A lot of them are floundering. What's my goal? What's my goal?

Doug Tallamy: 12:02

Hey. Save the world.

Amy Lefringhouse: 12:04

Yeah. Absolutely. Also, evolution. I'm... See, I was just talking to a 4H-er, and he did, like, a sport fishing project.

Amy Lefringhouse: 12:12

Right? And the evolution of yourself as a naturalist or as, like... Or even just, you know, whatever, an outdoor-interested person. He, you know, first was like, I just, like, fished. Right?

Amy Lefringhouse: 12:23

I didn't even look at my lure. I just fished. Whereas, like, I think personally, I was like that too with my own yard. Like, I just planted plants. Right?

Amy Lefringhouse: 12:32

I didn't know. I, like, just did what my parents told me to do, or I liked this plant or that plant, or I went to the store, and I bought this plant or that plant. And now, like, evolving through, and now I'm like, oh. Now I'm thinking about it more.

Abigail Garofalo: 12:47

There's definitely research on that of, like, where you place yourself and your relationship to nature as opposed, like, as you kind of evolve through that, like, I use it more consumeristically. Now I'm, like, a part of it. Now it's, like, you know, like, a like a reciprocity kind of relationship. I can't quite remember, and I'd have to look up the studies and see... I'm sure there's, like, an environmental interpretation or literacy researcher who knows more.

Abigail Garofalo: 13:14

But, yeah, there's, like, some language around that that's, like, we have this journey and, like, the way that we kind of... I think of the two circles, like, a Venn diagram, and, like, those who see the circles as the same versus like, nature and people versus like people who see the nature and people's circles completely different. And those can shift over time, which is pretty cool.

Amy Lefringhouse: 13:37

Doctor Tallamy, if you had to explain why biodiversity loss matters to someone who feels kind of disconnected from it, like we were talking about, what would you say to that person?

Doug Tallamy: 13:49

Okay. I would say that you are alive on this planet because of the life support that nature provides. It's providing your oxygen. It's providing your clean water. It's providing all the resources to keep you alive.

Doug Tallamy: 14:05

And the interactions that create those resources require lots of species. There was research, way back in the fifties, by Robert MacArthur who was wondering what made ecosystems resilient, what made them stable, and what made them productive. In other words, what made them produce what we call the ecosystem services that keep us alive? And he theorized... He said, well, the more species that are in an ecosystem, the more productive it is and the more stable it is.

Doug Tallamy: 14:38

And as you start to take species away, the less productive it is and the less stable it becomes. Well, he actually died tragically very young. He had... It was pancreatic cancer or something. But...

Doug Tallamy: 14:50

So he never actually tested that. But over the decades since, many people have tested it. It's very difficult. You have to measure ecosystems. That's hard.

Doug Tallamy: 14:59

But they all agree that Robert McCarthy was absolutely right. As you increase the number of species in an ecosystem, it becomes more stable and more productive. And that is why we need biodiversity. That's what biodiversity is. It is the living things that we share this planet with.

Doug Tallamy: 15:14

And as we lose it, the life support that keeps us on this planet diminishes. So it's... And people say, well, what good is a housefly? What good is a mosquito? What good is this?

Doug Tallamy: 15:26

What good is that? We need as many species as possible. So they're part of that stability and that productivity. We can't pick and choose which ones we wanna keep. We want them all.

Doug Tallamy: 15:38

And the more, the merrier. And not just a few individuals. We want healthy, large, stable populations of these things. I used the word defaunation earlier, I think. We worry about extinction.

Doug Tallamy: 15:52

And, you know, we certainly don't want things to go extinct. But we have a lot of species out there that are not extinct, but their numbers are now so low they're not performing their roles in their ecosystems. So let's talk about the rusty patched bumblebee. You know, not long ago, it was one of the most common bees in this country. And now if you see one, it's a really special thing because there are so few of them.

Doug Tallamy: 16:13

So it's functionally extinct. The American chestnut, which was the dominant tree in the Appalachian Forest, is functionally extinct because it's essentially gone. You can find individuals here and there, but they're no longer performing the roles they used to perform in running our ecosystems. So it's the loss of individuals that we have to watch against, not just when the last one disappears. And it's all...

Doug Tallamy: 16:38

You put them all together, that's what biodiversity is. So it is absolutely essential. If I said we're losing oxygen on this planet, and pretty soon it's gonna be gone, I think people would get it that that's not good. Well, the biodiversity is just as important as oxygen, and we can't afford to lose it. The good news about defaunation is they're not extinct.

Doug Tallamy: 17:03

They're still here, and we can increase their numbers. That's called conservation. It's called restoration. That's the future right now, think, is restoration, putting it back. And we have to get more serious about it than we are right now.

Abigail Garofalo: 17:20

Yeah. Well, and taking that seriously too, this season, we're all talking about nature-based solutions, ways that we can address certain challenges with, like, ecological principles in mind, which I may have just answered this question myself. But what does that phrase, nature-based solution, mean to you in practical everyday terms?

Doug Tallamy: 17:44

Well, let's say you try to control a pest, whatever a pest is. You know, nature... Usually a pest is... It's an artificial condition created by humans. Usually in agriculture, where we mass-produce exactly what one insect loves to eat.

Doug Tallamy: 17:59

We make a million acres of it and wonder why we have an outbreak. A nature-based solution is natural control of that particular problem. You're talking about a complex community of predators and parasites. You know, right now, we have a huge industry of mosquito fogging, mosquito control programs. There's, like, 70,000 mosquito control companies around the country that are trying to control mosquitoes in the adult stage.

Doug Tallamy: 18:32

All the research shows you can't control them in the adult stage. You control them in the larval stage. But it makes people feel good to have that backpack sprayer guy come to your yard and put down barrier spray. What he's doing is soaking everything- your house, your fence, your plants- with pyrethroids that then stick to it. And any insect that crawls across that after that is gonna die, including about 40% of the mosquitoes, which rebound very quickly.

Doug Tallamy: 19:01

But the honeybees, the monarchs, the natural enemies, all the things that keep things in balance are dying too. We're wrapping up a paper right now that shows that even thirty days after a barrier spray, everything that comes in contact with it dies. So they're all non-targets. We're not trying to kill them. But people think, well, it's worth it because we have fewer mosquitoes.

Doug Tallamy: 19:24

It's not worth it. You know, here's a good example. There are caterpillars. I think I'm talking about the spring cankerworm in the DC and Virginia area. There are outbreaks of that.

Doug Tallamy: 19:37

And, you know, they start to eat the leaves, and they make little poops, and people get all upset. They're really... You know, the... In terms of killing trees, very little of that. But the reason we're having these outbreaks is that we've killed the natural enemies that keep them controlled.

Doug Tallamy: 19:53

There are gall outbreaks in the St. Louis area. I think it's called the horned gall. Galls are little wasps that lay their eggs in the stems, particularly of oaks, and then the gall forms around it. Well, we did a couple things wrong.

Doug Tallamy: 20:11

We planted monocultures of pin oaks, and then we do mosquito fog, and it kills all of the parasitoids that control the gall wasp. And then you wonder why you have a gall wasp. That's that's nature based control is is really stay away from the pesticides so that the natural enemies can do their job and create an environment. If you don't have natural enemies, you've got a serious issue. What is killing your natural enemies?

Doug Tallamy: 20:38

You can't just have a plant and the things that eat the plant. You've gotta have the things that control the things that eat the plant. Those are the balance... That's the balanced trophic levels we're talking about. And if you don't, there's something wrong.

Doug Tallamy: 20:49

You have to figure out what it is and get those natural enemies back.

Erin Garrett: 20:53

That reminds me of... I have a vegetable garden in my backyard and we have a ton of wasps around our house like a lot of wasps and one I was out with my broccoli plants and all the little cabbage worm, caterpillars were eating those plants and I saw a wasp come and pick up a caterpillar and take it off with it and I went, it's working the balance, like I have the outbreak of the pests and then I have the control that's coming in and so I was like you know the wasps worry me sometimes because they're all where we like to sit but with that bigger environment right you got to kind of let it work itself out and find that balance and I feel like a lot of times we don't wanna... We take that one piece out. Right? And then the other pieces all are out of whack.

Erin Garrett: 21:44

So it really is letting that whole, like, system, like, work its way out and do the checks and balances.

Doug Tallamy: 21:52

The cabbage white caterpillar/butterfly is a particular problem because it's an introduced pest. It's an invasive species. Mhmm. So it is here without the net... Most of the parasitoids and diseases that would control it.

Doug Tallamy: 22:07

I guess it comes from Europe. So the generalist wasps do pick them off. Mhmm. But never in enough numbers. So that's why they're a problem in your garden. You certainly wanna keep the wasps to do so that they can do that.

Doug Tallamy: 22:19

But that's another problem we've created by bringing in insects without their natural enemies, bringing in plants without their natural enemies. It throws everything out of whack.

Erin Garrett: 22:30

Mhmm. Mhmm. One of your main messages that you talk about a lot of times is that private landowners can play a huge role in conservation. So when we talk about, you know, individual actions, sometimes it's easy to get discouraged and think, well, what can I really do on my own? How big of an impact can I make?

Erin Garrett: 22:50

But how powerful is that collective impact really when we look at it across a lot of people?

Doug Tallamy: 22:58

Well, my message has been that it is the most powerful impact that we have out there in the world of conservation. And I say that because most of the country is privately owned: about 78% of the lower 48 states and 85% East Of The Mississippi. So if we only did conservation in areas that are not private property, we're gonna fail. We're working on areas that are way too small. We need to address this just about everywhere, and that makes the private property owner the future of conservation, the most important operative in conservation.

Doug Tallamy: 23:31

If we refuse to do conservation on private property, we will definitely fail, and that's not an option. So that's what I say. The property owner is the hope in the future of conservation, which is what Homegrown National Park is all about. It's to convince people. It's to get that message to all those property owners that this is not only...

Doug Tallamy: 23:51

You're not only the hope and the future. It's your responsibility. If we claim to own a piece of the earth, we're also owning the stewardship that is necessary for that piece of the earth. And that's a new message. People haven't thought of it that way.

Doug Tallamy: 24:05

Oh, I have a responsibility. I thought that was a conservation biologist. It's everybody who owns a... Well, it's everybody, but particularly landowners. Because you're manipulating the ecosystem on your property, you can do that in a way that enhances local ecosystems or detracts from them.

Doug Tallamy: 24:24

And for the last hundred years, we have landscaped our private properties either for agriculture, rangeland, or where we live and, you know, where we work. And those areas are landscapes for aesthetics. None of them have been landscaped with ecological function in mind. They all could be. It doesn't mean we're not gonna do agriculture, but we can improve the ecosystem function on agricultural lands tremendously without reducing yield at all.

Doug Tallamy: 24:55

We certainly could improve rangeland because most of the country's overgrazed. And we can certainly improve our yards because we've, you know, just used plants as decorations rather than part of functional ecosystems.

Abigail Garofalo: 25:09

When you mentioned agriculture and how we're, like, stewards of the land, a lot of the time when you talk about, like, family farms, they talk about the land in that way. This, like, grand connection, this familial connection. People who have farming in their blood, like I have farming in my family lineage, and, like, we often talk about that, like, the, like, the urban suburban homeowner, like, doesn't, like, the... There's kind of, like, this almost, like, fight, especially in Illinois, about, like, you know, the urban Chicagoans and then, like, the farmers.

Abigail Garofalo: 25:42

Right? Like, this, like, agrarian community. And that, like, mindset of, like, the farmers are usually vilified for the way that they treat the land. But, like, in my experience, a lot of, like, the local family farmers is, like, this is their lifeblood; the productivity of their land, their soil, is so incredibly important, and they're going to do the things that need to be done to help support that. And so it makes me think about, like, you know, I think we're all going for the same thing here, and I actually think, like, us, you know, smaller landowners, like urban suburbanites, need to borrow that mindset a little bit from our, like, our agrarian neighbors.

Abigail Garofalo: 26:21

Right? Of, like, this is... We all... I'm getting chills a little bit talking about it now, my... For myself.

Abigail Garofalo: 26:26

But just like we all have this responsibility. It's our land too, just because I'm not using it as my, like, quote, livelihood. I own this. I need to be responsible and think about the productivity of it for biodiversity. So, yeah, I don't know.

Abigail Garofalo: 26:42

I just never made that connection before in my brain about the mindset of farmers versus the mindset of urban, and how we can borrow from farmers with that.

Doug Tallamy: 26:52

Good point.

Amy Lefringhouse: 26:53

One thing that I was thinking about too, and I've heard you talk about, Doctor. Tallamy, is the resilience of nature, and also we're thinking about insects too, like they can rebound really quickly, so just like one little bitty action, you know, planting one plant and just adding, I think that's just so, I don't know, positive, hopeful, I guess, or whatever, how nature can forgive us, right, fairly quickly, and I just think that's a cool message to put out there, that you've been putting out there.

Doug Tallamy: 27:30

Yeah. It's... We've got a lot of serious environmental issues. We've got climate change, and we're draining our rivers and all these other things. But if you plant an oak tree in your yard, you get to see the results almost the first year.

Doug Tallamy: 27:48

So this is an environmental issue that you can do personally. You don't need any government help to do it, and you get to see the results. If I said, I want you to address climate change and really make a difference by the end of the week, you know, you can put up solar. You can stop driving your SUV, and those are good things to do. But you won't see any difference.

Doug Tallamy: 28:11

There's no positive feedback other than you're just feeling good about it. But if you put the plants in there, you immediately see nature come back. And that's that positive reinforcement that makes you wanna do it again. It makes you realize you are making a difference. Even if it's just a, you know, a flower pot on your porch, you're making a difference.

Doug Tallamy: 28:30

When that migrating monarch stops by and has something to eat, it's headed to Mexico. You have made a difference. That's, you know, that's a good feeling. It's not just a good feeling. It's a good thing.

Doug Tallamy: 28:42

You've helped that monarch get to Mexico.

Erin Garrett: 28:46

All three of us have been working on our native gardens at our homes and continue to add year after year, and we always nearly half, I'm gonna say, of our everyday observations that we share on the podcast are cool things that we've seen in our own yards since we've been adding in those native plants. And so it is really fun to just, I don't know, take a stroll through your garden and see something new nearly every time we go out there and just take that moment to stop and pause, and it is really exciting to see, right, how fast it happens and how quickly we can, you know, see the results of what we're doing.

Abigail Garofalo: 29:23

So we were kinda talking about, like, on our own landscape where we can do these things. We're also broadening out too to looking at, like, how these make impacts on a community level. How can any, like, municipal planning or policy amplify the kinds of changes that you're advocating for that happen on the household level?

Doug Tallamy: 29:43

Well, you know, financial incentives go a long way, and there are examples popping up. So for example, Minnesota has had a cost-sharing program for years now, which the state will help you reduce the size of your lawn and replace it with appropriate Minnesota prairie plants and pay to do that. I mean, that not only makes it easier to do, but it also gives you social permission. If your neighbor said, "What are you doing?" Say, hey.

Doug Tallamy: 30:13

I'm getting paid to do this. You know? All of a sudden, that's okay. In California, you get 3 to $5 per square foot rebate for every square foot of lawn you replace with a xeriscape planting because they don't have the water to deal with it. So a little bit...

Doug Tallamy: 30:29

You know, little financial incentives like that go a long way, mostly because they give you social permission. I visited Marco Island off of Florida this past February, and there is a remnant population of the Florida burrowing owl there. Now Marco Island is completely developed. There are vacant lots here and there, just a few, though. And that's where the owl was hanging on until Western Everglades Audubon said, "We're gonna save this owl".

Doug Tallamy: 31:01

And they... They've essentially made the owl a status symbol now. You get $250 if you allow an owl to burrow in your front yard. And I mean front yard. These are small little lots.

Doug Tallamy: 31:16

It's Bermuda grass, and the owl cannot burrow through the Bermuda grass. So they start... Have these starter tunnels where the autobahn will dig out the tunnel, and then the owls come and colonize it. They put up a little crossbar, a wooden stake, and the owl sits right there. They're diurnal, and they're com...

Doug Tallamy: 31:34

It's like they're completely tame. Everybody comes to see the owls. So there's now 400 breeding pairs of owls on Marco Island, and it's a... It's an ecotourism thing. And then so they've changed it.

Doug Tallamy: 31:47

The... It used to be that the developers would run over them, trying to get rid of them because it hampered their nest building. So that's, you know, that's another great example of us learning to live with nature and appreciate it. And what's really interesting is it's gone from hindering development to being a status symbol. Everybody wants an owl now.

Doug Tallamy: 32:11

So I call it shifting from sticks to carrots. You know, if the Endangered Species Act had been written with carrots so that, oh, you have an endangered species on your property. We're gonna pay you to take care of it. Everybody would want an endangered species. It wouldn't be an issue; rather than fine you if you use your property.

Doug Tallamy: 32:30

There are invasive plants like Callery pear that they put a bounty on it. St. Louis, Missouri, and North Carolina, and Fayetteville, Arkansas. If you take out a Callery Pear, you get a free tree replacement. So, again, it gives you social permission to do this.

Doug Tallamy: 32:47

So these little bit of financial incentives would help if we did it on a bigger scale.

Abigail Garofalo: 32:53

That makes... They have bounty programs up here for, like... Usually, they're more local for, like, plant sales, but sometimes some towns will be like, yeah, if you tear down your barberry or you find any buckthorn and you, like, you send us a picture, we'll send you a tree. And I'm like, yeah. Yeah.

Abigail Garofalo: 33:09

I could use a tree.

Amy Lefringhouse: 33:10

Doug, you've written several books that are super easy to read, very accessible to folks, and we here at Everyday Environment are really interested in how to communicate messages and allow people to understand what we're talking about and just getting those messages out in a simple way that folks can remember. How important is storytelling in changing how people relate to nature?

Doug Tallamy: 33:41

Yeah. It's really important. It's the way humans communicated for thousands and thousands of years, way before we had written language. We told stories. That's how we passed on culture.

Doug Tallamy: 33:55

I do tell stories. I tell stories in my talks, and I tell stories when I write. And I do it because it's fun for me, and I get positive feedback for it. I'm not sure why that makes people listen more, but I think it does. So you just relate it to something that happened to you personally, then people can then relate it to their own lives, which is, you know, the farthest thing from scientific writing that there is.

Abigail Garofalo: 34:26

You know what's funny though, Doug? That's... According to, like, the scientific research of, like, adult learning andragogy, like, that is how people learn is, like, relating it to their own lives and hearing the story. So, like, maybe not scientific research, but it is rooted in science if that's what we do. Mhmm.

Doug Tallamy: 34:45

Science papers are so dry and boring and filled with statistics. And, you know, I understand that, but it means nobody's gonna read them. That's for sure. So

Erin Garrett: 34:55

That's why we need Extension. We take what's in the research, and then we add some other fun things like everyday observations, which I think is our favorite part of the podcast sometimes because we just share all our stories and then talk about, well, why do you think that was? And maybe this is the reason, and let's look it up, and we'll report back. So, yeah, it definitely is that getting that connection to people, I think, is really important and finding what is important to them and then connecting what you're trying to teach to what they value. Right?

Erin Garrett: 35:25

Yes. Mhmm.

Doug Tallamy: 35:26

Well, another advantage I've had is when I give a talk, there's always a a q and a afterwards. And from the earliest talks, I got to see what people understood and what they didn't understand and what they wanted to learn more about. So they were really directing what I was writing about and talking about because I did want to fill in the gaps, and they were very clearly telling me what the gaps were.

Amy Lefringhouse: 35:55

And I think folks want, you know, answers to questions, and that's your new book, How Can I Help? Is kind of responding to that. And they want to hear, I feel like whenever I'm at a talk or even at a conference, they're like, Well, what do you do? How did you solve this problem? And they see that you've had success with it, or they see something like a field day and something that has been done, and they're like, okay, now I feel empowered that I can do this by listening to their story and seeing the results.

Abigail Garofalo: 36:34

I also think, like, we also try and share our failures sometimes. Like, we're like, Mhmm. Yeah. Don't plant this plant. We learned why.

Abigail Garofalo: 36:42

We replaced it with something that's almost exactly the same. And so I think that's just a helpful tool for us to... For people to hear, like, oh, yeah. Like, even people who have intimate knowledge of ecology are still learning and growing, and maybe I can do it too. So...

Doug Tallamy: 37:04

Yeah. Like, string fish line around your garden and the deer won't go in. No. They go right through it. They go right through it in minutes.

Abigail Garofalo: 37:15

They're like, oh, that was a fun little game. That's good. Well, you know, when we're talking, I'm sure you come across some controversy when you're telling something or when you're telling people "Try this new thing", "try something else", or this is this whole new idea that we're trying to shift culturally to what our landscapes look like. So what's one of the most, like, controversial or, like, pushback-inducing ideas that you've put forward, and how have you responded to it?

Doug Tallamy: 37:46

Yeah. I actually ran into this just the other day, and it's a good point. There's a point in one of my talks where I compare a ginkgo tree to a statue. And I say, well, you know, it's just a statue. It's not part of the food web, and that is true.

Doug Tallamy: 38:03

It's not part of the food web. Well, I got an email from an urban forester that said, well, you know, these non native trees are performing ecosystem services. They are sequestering carbon. They're managing the watershed. They're lowering the heat island effect.

Doug Tallamy: 38:17

And for you to compare it to a statue that does nothing, you know, you're really doing them a disservice. And and she had a she had a good point. She's also saying, well, people are yelling at us because Doug Tallamy said Don't use these plants.

Abigail Garofalo: 38:31

You're like, I'm powerful.

Doug Tallamy: 38:33

That's one of those nuances. She's absolutely right. They do do things. And a tree is better than no tree as long as it's not invasive. So when I say it's a statue, I'm talking about in terms of the food web.

Doug Tallamy: 38:45

And I have to, you know, I have to add that nuance, make the talk a little bit longer. But the the... I guess the point I always wanna make is why don't we choose plants that do everything instead of just some of the things? And I know, again, there's there's... There are...

Doug Tallamy: 39:04

Ginkgo's are really, really resilient trees. They can grow in in pretty terrible places. So they say, well, Erin, just no native plants that can grow here. Okay. That's true some of the time.

Doug Tallamy: 39:13

Our native plants are a lot better than we give them credit for growing in tough places. But... And there is room for compromise. It doesn't have to be 100% native. But that's a pushback.

Doug Tallamy: 39:24

That is... You know, it's... That's a good point. And I have to, I do try to simplify in my talks because, first of all, I only have an hour. And if you focus on the exceptions, that's what people remember, and they miss the main point.

Doug Tallamy: 39:38

So, you know, it's a dance. We just go back and forth.

Abigail Garofalo: 39:43

Yeah. That's a good point, though, thinking about, like, we only have so much space for things. Like, when... Like, they're always talking about, like, oh, there's only so much space to put this planting here. It doesn't need to function for these things.

Abigail Garofalo: 39:54

Well, then pick the tree or the plant that's gonna serve as many functions as possible, and I think some of the, like, ecological function gets lost.

Doug Tallamy: 40:04

Well, it's never been part of the criteria, but it's starting to be now. So we've made progress.

Erin Garrett: 40:10

Well, kind of looking on the opposite of Abigail's question. When we look forward, we know there's a lot there's a lot of things that worry us. Right? We've talked about a lot of them today. There are a lot of problems when we look ecologically at what's happening.

Erin Garrett: 40:24

But what gives you the most hope right now, looking forward?

Doug Tallamy: 40:29

Oh, that's an easy one because, you know, I've been talking about this for more than twenty years now, and I can see the public response. And what gives me the most hope is that the public is starting to really feel empowered. The interest is not falling off. This is not a fad. It's growing almost exponentially, and that gives me hope because it is gonna be...

Doug Tallamy: 40:52

It is... It... It's a grassroots solution to the biodiversity crisis. So the fact that more and more people are interested and more and more homeowners are recognizing that responsibility I talked about. They're acting on it.

Doug Tallamy: 41:10

I could see with Homegrown National Park; I can see the number of members growing. And my wife always talks about, oh, you're getting the message out. Well, the message is getting out, and that gives me hope. And it's not just me. It's all...

Doug Tallamy: 41:24

You know, look. It's you folks. It's all kinds of people doing this. So the social explosion of the need for conservation, the role of native plants in that conservation movement, it just keeps growing. And that...

Doug Tallamy: 41:39

That's positive. That gives me hope.

Abigail Garofalo: 41:42

I think I just saw a New York Times article that was like, companies that are like Zillow listings and things like that are looking at like a toggle for native plantings because that is something that people are looking for, and people who sell as well are like, I want someone to take care of this property.

Doug Tallamy: 42:01

You did see that. That was in the New York Times real estate section. So right away, it's to the non-choir people who are not thinking about native plants. And the message was, it's becoming... It is enhancing your sale value rather than degrading it, which is a total switch.

Doug Tallamy: 42:19

And the real estate agents are starting to recognize that rather than telling you, hey. You gotta rip out everything and put in a lawn, or you'll never sell your house, which there are still agents that do that. But that article was great. We're quoting that all the time because it's a threshold. It's a milestone that I think we passed.

Doug Tallamy: 42:37

There are enough people that want nature-based; they want conservation landscapes that it's gonna fuel the movement even more.

Erin Garrett: 42:46

That's one of the concerns I had when we moved a few years ago because I had put in a bunch of native plants and I made some detailed charts of all my plantings and all what all the different plants were before I left. But that was kind of for me when we moved I either wanted something that had native plants in it or a kind of a blank slate that's kind of what we ended up with was near a half acre of a blank slate and we've been slowly adding in native plants as we go. But, yeah, it's really exciting to see that. I know when I'm around the neighborhood, always scope out and see other people that have their native plants, and it's really fun to see and exciting to kind of see it spread over time, for sure.

Doug Tallamy: 43:26

Yeah. That's our vision at Homegrown National Park is that conservation landscape becomes the default. It's what everybody has. And if you wanna change it, okay, that's up to you. But you buy a house, it's already gonna be there.

Doug Tallamy: 43:39

The developer will already have installed it. That's the vision.

Amy Lefringhouse: 43:43

Yeah. That's really cool too because I teach some, like, freshman, sophomore students, and we talk a lot about place, and we talk about the place triangle, and Erin and Abigail, you've heard me talk about this, but we have ecology, economy, and culture, and those three things kind of coming together. And sometimes, you know, when we're talking about the real estate, Zillow and those types of listings, that's like the economy starting to like come together, which kind of can push culture, which we're already like trying to, you know, talk about ecology, so kind of it's a good thing that we're shifting those things over and realizing that place isn't just economy, making money and the value, but then yet, if we do put value on that economically, then that might shift the culture. So I didn't realize that that article is out there. That's great.

Doug Tallamy: 44:44

It was just like last Saturday or something. Was brand new.

Amy Lefringhouse: 44:48

Awesome.

Abigail Garofalo: 44:48

I'm in the right algorithm.

Amy Lefringhouse: 44:50

Yeah. Well, looking ahead to the future, Dr. Tallamy, what does success look like for you? Like, ten to twenty years from now, if we all, you know, truly embrace this movement, homegrown national park movement, kind of like nature-based solutions thinking, what does that look like? What does success look like to you?

Doug Tallamy: 45:16

Well, real success is reversing the trends that we see. It's getting enough plants in our landscape that we're actually sequestering more carbon than we're pumping into the atmosphere. That 44,000,000 acres of lawn we have out there is gonna be reduced so that it's... It becomes part of the solution in absorbing carbon, saving the biodiversity, reversing the defaunation we talked about so that populations are now growing instead of shrinking. All of those things are measurable, and they all would be signs of success.

Abigail Garofalo: 45:52

The dream.

Erin Garrett: 45:54

I know. That's the dream, but we're making our way there, right, every day. And so we're moving in the right Alright, well thank you so much Doug for sharing all of your knowledge on natural resources, ecology, and how we can address kind of the grand challenge of increasing biodiversity.

Erin Garrett: 46:13

We're gonna finish with our everyday observations where we highlight the mundane and normal of our environment that's actually really interesting. So Amy, I'm gonna pick on you first.

Amy Lefringhouse: 46:24

Well, since we're talking about native plants, of course, my everyday observation is a native plant, so I guess story. It's not really a story, but I did plant. I have a teeny tiny home, like, lot. I have about 2,500 square foot of, like, green space. It is so small.

Amy Lefringhouse: 46:49

But I put... I planted a bur oak maybe two years ago, possibly, and it was pretty small in diameter, like maybe it was like three foot tall, maybe like an inch in diameter, maybe. This year it doubled, doubled in height, probably not double in diameter, but doubled. I mean, it has established its root system, and it's ready to grow, so I'm so excited just to see and watch and just observe it over its lifetime. But, you know, I always think of oaks as like, oh my gosh, they're slow-growing trees.

Amy Lefringhouse: 47:32

I'm gonna have to wait forever, you know, to see anything. But it's proving me wrong, and I'm happy about it.

Erin Garrett: 47:39

I love that. That's awesome, Amy. Doug, do you want to go next?

Doug Tallamy: 47:44

Yeah. I'll share an everyday experience that I'm lucky to have experienced. It was right in my yard, right near the drain spout. I went in. Was outside.

Doug Tallamy: 47:57

I guess it was... I don't know what I was doing. But walking by, there were a pair of black rat snakes mating. So it's cool to see a black rat snake, but here were two, and the male was on top, and his head was, you know, he was kinda tickling the female. And it took him a while to succeed, but I watched them.

Doug Tallamy: 48:16

And it was, you know, something I never thought I would ever see, but I did right there next to my house. So That's cool.

Abigail Garofalo: 48:24

Very cool. I love that.

Amy Lefringhouse: 48:26

That takes you back to your, you know, snakes and... What did you say? You were like snakes

Abigail Garofalo: 48:31

and frogs. Yeah. Yeah.

Erin Garrett: 48:35

Love it. Abigail?

Abigail Garofalo: 48:37

Alright. Well, I'll just keep moving around the different types of natural resources. So I'm looking at birds today. I think my season's all gonna cover birds for some reason. But I...

Abigail Garofalo: 48:52

Longtime listeners of the pod will know that I'm, like, obsessed with sandhill cranes when they come through our area. I was born and raised in Springfield, Illinois, Central Illinois area, and we never had them migrate through. When I went to school in Champaign, we never talked about them. Then I moved up here, and I worked at the Morton Arboretum, and it was, like, the thing to know in the natural resource community. And so this is coming out in October, right around when migration would be happening around Chicagoland.

Abigail Garofalo: 49:19

And so if you hear, like, that, like, like, cooing, you know, like, up in the sky and you see, like, they're re... They fly really high. So if it's not as a clear day, you won't see them, but I will, like, literally, like, be in mid bite and just drop whatever I'm doing and walk outside, and, like, try and gather as many people around as possible to just observe this crazy cool phenomenon, and sometimes whooping cranes will be higher up. And so just just really, really cool way to observe, and they're like dinosaur birds, like they're huge. Maybe not something I would feel super comfortable encountering like in a forest myself, by myself.

Abigail Garofalo: 50:00

I would give them their space and respect, but up in the air flying, I think they're so cool and just so pretty and just like a really cool phenomenon, I think, for this area. So...

Doug Tallamy: 50:12

And it's a great example of nature's resilience because they were almost gone. And conservation- putting aside wintering grounds and stop shooting them, it's all they needed. They come back in big numbers. It's great.

Abigail Garofalo: 50:25

Yeah. There you go. Samuel Crane, story of resilience. Alright, Erin. Take us home.

Erin Garrett: 50:33

Okay. Well, I'm gonna wrap up with an insect observation. So we all had something different today. But I was sitting in my house the other morning and just happened to look straight ahead of me at one of my windows and saw a luna moth on the window, which was so special. I've only had...

Erin Garrett: 50:52

It's the first one I've seen at this new house, this new yard that I'm in. I've seen one at my previous home but just kind of looking up their like host plants that they need right it's gonna be a lot of our native trees which we have. I have some in my yard so I'm gonna just say oh it's cause I have them in my yard but you know they're around the neighborhood and it was just really exciting luna moths are always so fun to see so it was just really special to get to see it up close and it let me take a thousand pictures of it and it was just just beautiful and again that that message of hope I see the luna moth as as yes continue continue on and and they'll continue to to be in the area so really fun to see.

Doug Tallamy: 51:33

Do you have any sweet gum?

Erin Garrett: 51:36

There are some in the neighborhood. I have hickories in my yard, and there's a walnut right nearby, which I know they'll use. But... Yeah.

Doug Tallamy: 51:43

Sweet gum is their favorite.

Abigail Garofalo: 51:45

So

Erin Garrett: 51:45

It is. Okay. Okay. Well, it wasn't... Probably wasn't mine then, but, you know, that's good.

Doug Tallamy: 51:50

You can plant one and make it yours. Yeah.

Erin Garrett: 51:54

I'll add it to the list. I have... We lost both of our oaks. We don't need to get into that, but we lost both of our oaks, and so now I have kind of a blank slate so we're slowly adding in some trees I have another oak on the list but yeah we'll see about a sweet gum so beautiful in the fall. I love them so much

Erin Garrett: 52:16

Alright. Well, thank you. Again, Doug, it's been really wonderful to chat with you and, just get the chance to have you on the podcast. Like I said, it's been a long time coming.

Erin Garrett: 52:27

Thanks a lot. Thanks a lot.

Erin Garrett: 52:29

So we are gonna wrap up this episode of Everyday Environment. Thank you to all of our listeners for joining us this season to learn all about nature based solutions on the home landscape. We hope you've enjoyed listening in and learned some new things along the way, And so we will see you next season in the spring.

Abigail Garofalo: 52:51

This podcast is University of Illinois Extension production, hosted and edited by Abigail Garofalo, Erin Garrett, and Amy Lefringhaus. Marketing and communications are by Emily Steele.

Doug Tallamy: 53:03

University of Illinois Extension.