Stewardship as Radical Action
Puddock Hill Journal #82: What’s happening out there only makes what happens in here more urgent.
When I look out past my yard, it can seem that my stewardship efforts amount to nothing in the grand scheme of things.
A few neighbors limit their lawns and promote native plants, but not very many. Invasives such as porcelainberry, Amur honeysuckle, and multiflora rose line more than a few roads. In warmer months, I regularly spot trucks filled with pesticides—many of them infuriatingly tagged with names that mislead the uneducated into believing their services are natural. Climate change continues apace. The incoming federal administration promises to gut agencies that enforce environmental regulations.
One might easily ask the defeatist question, Why bother?
Instead, for me, what springs to mind is the concept of the garden as sanctuary. Often, this phrase has been used to describe green space as emotional or spiritual escape from the cares of the outside world. More broadly, backyard stewards attempt to create a place of refuge not just for ourselves but for wild creatures and, of necessity, the ecology they need to survive.
The list of challenges in the first paragraph above is not exhaustive, but it is exhausting to contemplate. Against these forces, backyard stewardship becomes an act of radical defiance.
I recently subscribed to a new Substack newsletter from northwestern environmental attorney Rebecca Wisent. Emulating the historian Heather Cox Richardson’s daily missives, Wisent aims to “take notes” on environmental actions (or inactions, I suppose) that will take place over the next four years. For an environmentalist, it can be discouraging reading, but she also shares good news. For example:
In the United States, the Fish and Wildlife Service has proposed to protect 1.6 million acres as critical habitat to benefit the endangered rusty-patched bumblebee [Bombus affinis]. Their range has shrunk by 90 percent…because of agricultural intensification, including pesticide use and diseases spread from domesticated bees. Habitat in six states is up for protection: Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Virginia, West Virginia and Wisconsin.
After a pair of lawsuits brought by environmental groups, the agency listed this once-common bumblebee as endangered (in imminent danger of extinction) in 2017, making them the first bee species listed under the Endangered Species Act. But the previous Trump administration declared in 2020 that protecting critical habitat for them was not prudent, because protection would provide no benefit. That is clearly a ridiculous claim, and after yet more legal wrangling a judge agreed. This month’s proposal is the outcome, and thanks are due to a group of nonprofit advocates for sticking with this fuzzy friend through years of litigation.
The designation for the bee would require federal agencies to ensure their actions within the protected area do not damage or destroy habitat that is necessary for the species’ survival. The region under consideration is roughly equivalent to 2,500 square miles, about the size of Delaware.
Ecologists at Colorado State University studying the bumblebee’s genetics say that since the 2017 listing, programs to restore their habitat have sprung up, and they’re seeing encouraging signs that the species can find and benefit from pollinator-friendly home and community gardens (i.e., those that abstain from the use of pesticides or herbicides and provide native prairie plant species such as bee balm).
I can easily imagine the Trump administration once again backsliding on this federal effort. Can’t you?
But what also strikes me about this story is the suggestion that actions by “pollinator-friendly home and community gardens” are already bearing fruit. Overall, consider how little land the FWS thinks is required to protect this insect from extinction. There are 2.4 billion acres of land in the United States, including over 40 million acres of lawn. In that context, protecting 1.6 million acres seems doable.
I’m glossing over a lot here, of course. The territory of the rusty-patched bumblebee does not stretch over all fifty states—or even all of the Lower 48. The proposed preservation effort doesn’t even include my state of Pennsylvania or neighboring Delaware.
But the rusty-patched bumblebee’s native range does include Pennsylvania and Delaware. And the scale involved in the proposed preservation effort speaks volumes about our ability to address the fate of this bee and other native species. Approximately 80 percent of Americans live in homes with a lawn. That means there are tens of millions of us who can make a difference one plant at a time.
Here is a graphic that shows how much wildlife a single native plant, in this case Virginia creeper, supports:
Regardless of what comes out of Washington, each of us has the power to act in our own backyard. String those backyards together, and we build landscapes. Combine the landscapes and we have expanses. Add up the expanses and we see ecosystems.
Alone we can’t control the daily weather, but we can electrify everything at home and tap renewables to limit our contribution to climate change.
We can’t stop the world from using pesticides and herbicides, but we can keep them from our tiny piece of the ecosystem.
We can’t avoid plastic pollution, but we can stop contributing to it.
We can’t stop others from planting exotics—even invasives—at the expense of natives, but we can continue to educate our neighbors and lead by example.
If each of us builds a sanctuary, no matter how small, we may all be saved.
I finally got around to cleaning out the birdhouses at Puddock Hill. Thirteen of seventeen had been occupied.
This nest along the driveway looks super-comfortable. It likely housed a chickadee or titmouse family:
Sadly, the bluebirds in one of the birdhouses by the barn meadow abandoned their nest and eggs, which I placed intact on the ground when cleaning:
This bluebird nest near the raised-bed garden was more successful. I think it was usurped by another species after the bluebirds fledged, which may explain the “stickier” construction:
House wrens or Carolina wrens occupied this birdhouse under the big sycamore out front:
