12 Gifts for Nature
Nature gives us so much. Now it's our turn.
If you’re a frequent reader of this newsletter, these gifts to nature will sound familiar. In a good way, I hope. The way mantras and religious rites and Christmas carols gain power through repetition.
Speaking of Christmas carols, can you list the gifts in the Twelve Days of Christmas? You’ve heard it a thousand times, but unless you memorized the song for performance, there’s a good chance you can’t name them without cheating.
So it may be with these 12 gifts to nature. They’ll sound familiar, but they’re worth repeating. Let’s count them down:
12
Go electric.
According to EPA (as reported by Princeton), “gas-powered lawn mowers make up five percent of total air pollution in the United States” and “a consumer grade leaf blower releases more hydrocarbons than a pick up truck or a sedan.” That’s pollution that you and the animals you steward are exposed to.
And, while electric leaf blowers are only a bit less noisy than gas-powered ones, other electric equipment is measurably quieter and significantly less polluting.
At Puddock Hill, our utility vehicle, chain saws, and leaf blowers use battery electric power. And, while it might take a while to get the lawn service on board, I regularly remind them that I’d pay a bit more for a quieter and less polluting service.
11
Lock up the cat.
House cats allowed to run free do major damage to the environment. A paper recently published in Nature Communications found that the diets of free-ranging domestic cats consist of more than two thousand animal species, including “9% of known birds, 6% of known mammals, and 4% of known reptile species.”
If that doesn’t sound too bad, consider that a “total of 347 (16.65%) cat-consumed species were of conservation concern, listed as Near Threatened, Threatened (i.e., Vulnerable, Endangered or Critically Endangered), or Extinct on the IUCN [International Union for Conservation of Nature] Red List, with these tallies including 7.1% of the world’s birds of conservation concern, 4.9% of mammals, and 2.7% of reptiles.”
The sheer volume of birds and mammals killed by domestic and feral cats is staggering. In the United States alone, according to The Cornell Lab, these predators “kill 1.3–4 billion birds and 6.3–22.3 billion mammals each year.”
10
Support birds
Not to beat a dead cat, but if you stock a bird feeder and let your cat run free, you’re not doing a favor to the birds.
At Puddock Hill, we feed birds year-round using a feeder by the house and—much more important—by planting natives that provide seeds and berries to both migratory and resident birds. We also maintain more than a dozen bird houses to compensate for nesting opportunities lost to development.
As a further gift to nature, leave the seed heads on your perennials in fall and wait until early spring to mow your meadows. Unmown meadows provide both food and cover for birds. In winter, our meadows at Puddock Hill are full of sparrows.
9
Fight the worst invasives
Readers know I sometimes obsess over invasive plants—but for good reason. Invasives disrupt ecosystems by crowding out the native plants that indigenous fauna require to survive.
In the Northeast, find a way to banish white-tailed deer from at least a part of your property, as deer’s browsing habits discourage native plants and open up space for invasives.
You can go to your local agricultural extension service to find lists of bad invasives in your area, but the best way to know your enemy is by observing what predominates on your property and identifying it. Note, however, that lists of invasives on agricultural extension sites often include natives that are a nuisance to farmers but, with rare exceptions, should not be considered invasive to a backyard steward.
8
Leave dead trees
A healthy forest has two and a half standing dead trees (called snags) per acre. Dead trees feed insects, birds, and reptiles, and provide nesting sites for native woodpeckers, owls, bats, kestrels, wood ducks, and the like.
If a dead tree on your property does not pose a danger to people or structures, consider leaving it to nature. Once it falls down, let it rot. It will continue feeding and sheltering animals while replenishing the soil.
7
Limit plastics
It is nigh impossible to fight the ubiquity of plastics. Microplastics (and even smaller-particled nanoplastics) appear in soil on every continent and are components of air and rainwater in many places. We and other animals inhale them and ingest them. While studies of the exact health consequences are nascent, one has to assume negative implications for humans and wildlife.
As everyone knows, plastics are so much a part of the product stream that some things only come in plastic versions—or non-plastic alternatives are prohibitively expensive. When we renovated our patio and required a liner to go under the gravel, we discovered to our sorrow that plastic fabric was the only practical option.
So this is a battle that most of us can only fight at the margins. Still, it’s worth trying. Don’t use plastic for weed control (or, if you must, don’t let it disintegrate in the ground). Avoid plastic tree guards, plant stakes, and ties. We can all try to be better about this.
6
Avoid chemicals
I wrote a newsletter not long ago on why I find it inadvisable to deploy chemical fungicides, herbicides and pesticides in the garden, so I won’t rehash it here. In sum, there are known harms to humans and many unknown harms to soil biota.
We only use chemical treatments at Puddock Hill in small targeted quantities and as a last resort—some years none at all.
If you’re a backyard steward, keep in mind 1) that the purpose of planting natives is to feed the insects that feed everything else, so insects are most often your friends; 2) that insect infestations usually subside given time and most plants will survive them; and 3) that invasive plants can be set back using mechanical means, presuming one is persistent.
Give this gift to nature: swear off chemicals.
5
Protect wetlands
We are fortunate to have four wetland communities at Puddock Hill: two ponds, a wet meadow, and a wet woods.
Wetlands foster unique communities of plants and animals and provide a number of ecosystem services such as limiting stormwater damage, filtering sediments, pollutants and excess nutrients, and beautifying the landscape.
Ducks Unlimited notes that “Between the 1950s and 1970s…more than a half-million acres of wetlands were being lost every year. By the mid-1980s, the nation had lost over half its original wetlands.” As a result, “In total, the United States has lost approximately 16.8 million acres of wetlands since the mid-1950s and more than 2 million acres of vegetated wetlands just since 1986.”
If you have wet areas on your property, don’t fill them, don’t drain them, don’t mow into them, and don’t redirect water away from them. Do fight invasive species but for heaven’s sake don’t use chemicals in wetlands. They are even more sensitive to disruption than other parts of the landscape.
4
Mow less
Lawns may have their place in moderation very close to the house, but keep in mind that they are barren of most life. They do nothing for our natural communities that other forms of landscape don’t do much better.
Especially on slopes, lawns accelerate stormwater runoff, promoting erosion and potentially depositing harmful nutrients in streams and wetlands.
An article in Science Alert profiled the case of King’s College, Cambridge, which replaced a portion of its “iconic” lawn with a wildflower meadow, attracting insects, birds, bats and other animals. In addition to supporting wildlife, “Researchers estimate meadows could save about 1.36 tons of carbon emissions per hectare per year, mainly from the loss of mowing and a lack of fertilizing.”
If you want unwooded open space, as a gift to nature consider replacing some lawn with meadow or native planting beds. If they can do it for an iconic lawn in merry old England, you can do it too.
3
Add to the understory
If you live in a populated area of the East, it’s likely that the forests and woods around you have become impoverished by over-browsing and buck rubs from white-tailed deer. The understory—saplings, smaller trees and the shrub layer—is now less robust or even nonexistent in many places.
Understory plants are a critical part of the forest. The shrub layer and smaller trees provide nesting sites and berries for birds, as well as supporting arthropods. Saplings are the forest’s future.
Give a gift to nature by planting small trees, shrubs and saplings in your woods. You can protect saplings and smaller shrubs by making a ring of wire fencing—the taller, the better—to discourage deer browsing. Once the trees or shrubs have outgrown the browse line (that is, the maximum height a deer can reach to eat), remove the fencing and loosely wrap a portion of it around exposed trunks to prevent rubbing.
Alternatively, of course, you can use tall fencing to keep deer out of larger portions of the woods. If you do so successfully, you will likely find that the seed bank will provide volunteer understory plants. If you keep an eye out and have the resources, supplement with native shrubs that seem to be missing.
2
Plant native trees
Trees, as we know, provide a host of ecosystem services. They store and recycle carbon, limit erosion, filter water, and feed and house countless animals.
Douglas Tallamy, whose principles we try to follow in our backyard stewardship efforts, says oaks promote more wildlife than any other trees, but all native varieties have their roles to play. In our area, the Penn State Extension lists thirteen tall native tree species or varieties, nine smaller trees, ten shrubs, and six vines for supporting wildlife, but there are many others.
As a gift to nature, look for opportunities to plant trees on land you own or control. If you have the space, plant a variety of trees to avoid losing too many down the road to the latest plague. (Lately, ashes, red oaks, and American beech are under siege in our area.) Do not select trees growing on the southern end of their range, since these may be more vulnerable to climate change in future. In fact, you might experiment with a few trees that are near the northern end of their range, as they may thrive in a changing climate.
1
Leave things alone
Sometimes, the best gift we can give nature is leaving it alone.
Resist the urge to clear trees or move earth when you can. Let natives go to seed. Limit pruning of plants not near the house. Leave dead trees where they fall. Don’t chop or remove dead leaves in autumn. Ignore your first instinct to treat every “problem” with fertilizer, pesticide, or fungicide. Don’t molest wild animals just to satisfy your own curiosity.
Nature gives us respite and sustenance and recreation and beauty. This holiday season, consider returning the favor.
Red berries on an American holly by the big pond:
Yellow berries on this holly by the driveway may indicate it’s not native:
Dried goldenrod (Solidago spp.) (mostly) by the small pond:
The small pond looking northeast:
