This was a very interesting interview Jay. I have already gone onto the website for Native Plants and will try to incorporate some of them into my landscaping.

@scienceoutside

2 жыл бұрын

That's awesome! I'm doing the same on my property.

I wish more scientists were as good and/or interesting and/or humourous at conveying very important information on some of the best things we can do to save the planet...in our backyards as a hobby.

@scienceoutside

2 жыл бұрын

Couldn't agree more!

@msheart2

10 ай бұрын

While they spray the atmosphere with aluminum, barium, silver iodide, sulfur, dissected blood, molds for weather and climate engineering and the planet is enveloped in VLF, ELF and increasing daily. Ignorance is bliss, especially when that is coupled with blaming people and their gardens to pump an net zero agenda.

One of the things I work on is what Dr.Tallamy touched on a bit - teaching people to think about the 2nd Order Effects and getting them interested through their own selfishness. Dr.Tallamy mentioned tending your own ground or helping someone else tend their's, and that's true., but equally important is to think about your votes and your dollars. Think not about what you do today, but what comes from it tomorrow and a decade from now. As a blacksmith, I get to study history through the lens of the Traditional Trades that were once commonplace and are now gone. Why are they gone? Because people didn't stop to think about the long-term ramifications of their actions. When past generations voted for something like the minimum wage laws, they didn't think about how that would drive out the small businesses that could no longer afford to stay open. We tend to think about the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back, but not the million straws that came before it and how all that weight prevented the camel from doing camel things. The minimum wage laws, OSHA, the EPA... regulation after regulation, tax upon tax, law heaped on law... next thing you know, it's impossible for small businesses to operate in the land. And, yet, the things those small businesses used to make are still being made. Only now they're being made on the other side of the planet and shipped all the way around the world to get to you. How is that good for the environment? In the 1950's, for example, hedge-laying in England was still going on, but it was dying out because all the laws and regulations and taxes constantly drove up the costs. It used to be that a home-owner would have someone come by to dress up the hedge every year, but as the costs went up, it soon became every other year. Finally, it became cheaper to just tear down the hedge and put up barbed wire fencing. And now, generations have gone by, all the traditional knowledge has been lost, and people are realizing that those hedgerows were a critical part of the ecosystem. They only see it as a great environmental loss and don't see all the millions of jobs lost as all the small businesses that went with the hedges had to shutter. The bodgers and woodwrights, the blacksmiths and tinkers, all had to go away because folks didn't think about the 2nd Order Effects of what they were doing. Can we change that? Yes. The first step is just talking about it. We need to remind people that there are costs to everything, and some are worse than others. Something as simple as buying a wooden rake made by a local craftsman, from local woods, will do far more than most can imagine. It cuts down on pollution, sure, but it also gives people a reason to be in the local environment taking care of the trees because they need the trees for their livelihood. It provides jobs, keeps the land vibrant and healthy, and opens the doors to a whole host of opportunities. As DrTallamy says, we are part of nature and need nature. It's not just about having something pretty to look at or being nice to the birds. We can benefit greatly from supporting the craftsmen who make willow baskets because those baskets are better than plastic buckets or mass-produced canvas sacks people use to do their grocery shopping. Local work for local customers cuts down on the fuel needed for transport, so less pollution is going into the air.... but you can't make that happen if local people aren't actively looking for ways to support their local craftsmen and grow those cottage industries back up.

Please make more videos similar to this one. This is a concise and strong message by Doug Tallamy.

@scienceoutside

2 жыл бұрын

Thank you! We have a couple in the works!

NJ has Jersey Friendly Yards for native plant resources. Looking forward to seeing Dr. Tallamy at Mercer County’s Master Gardener’s Symposium in March 2024🌺

@scienceoutside

8 ай бұрын

Sounds great! Enjoy!

Love this interview with Dr. Doug Tallamy! I am thrilled to hear what he has to say and look forward to reading his books.

@scienceoutside

2 жыл бұрын

Thanks, Mary!

Doug does not mention that buying from a nursery that imports plants from other areas have been implicated in the rapid spread of invasive plants, diseases (fungal, bacterial, and viral), insect pests, non-native slugs, crazy worms etc. I realize this is very threatening to the whole field of horticulture, and it is a tragedy that is resulting in a lot of push-back. That area is an important part of our economy. Science is not convenient...but nature does not come from, nor is it sustained by the big box or hardware store. We need to live (all around) with MUCH fewer "products" and more modestly...we cannot survive as the only species on the planet. I am 60, and compared to when I was a child, it is rapidly getting pretty lonely out there....

@scienceoutside

Жыл бұрын

All very good points!

Professor Tallamy is absolutely right about the need have functioning ecosystems full of native species where we live. That said only half the story about invasive species because the story isn't black or white, its grey. Invasive species are invasive because they becoming intergrated into the local ecosystem they are invading. Degraded, disturbed sites call out for hardy pioneer species to take root. The native pollinators visit the invader's flowers. Native birds and mammals feast on the invader's fruit. And so the invader spreads/weaves itself into the local ecosystem. Another very important point is that invasive species are new native species in the forging. Evolution works. And it can work surprisingly fast. There are native Hawaiian insects that are specialists on plants that arrived in Hawaii with the Polynesians. In otherwords new species have emerged in no more than centuries. This can be seen in mainland North America as well. Garlic Mustard has been an existential threat to certain species of butterflies that depend on native toothworts. But recent studies seem to show that some of these native butterflies are evolving to use garlic mustard as a host plant. Evolution works. Invasive species are creators as well as destroyers and that fact needs to be taken into account.

@threeriversforge1997

Жыл бұрын

Except that's not exactly true. It's nice to think that non-native species are just a part of the whole wheel of time rolling forward and things will work out as the birds and insects adapt, but you're forgetting that this adaptation takes place over eons and comes at the cost of thousands of species dying - us included. There's never been anything like what we're seeing since the 1950's, so suggesting that it will simply work itself out is a bit disingenuous. While I don't want to be bombastic, it's a bit reasonable to suggest that only a meteor strike is on par with the damage we're seeing being done. The only difference is that the meteor strike is faster. When we talk about the "ecosystem" the key word that so many people forget is "system". We don't understand the "system" because there are so many parts that we're still just starting to learn about, so it's only logical to say that we need to be very careful about introducing or removing any one part. If it's a super-complex system built up over eons, what kind of arrogance does it take for us to say we are certain of the ramifications of anything? In the video, they mentioned Kudzu, but we can also look to the Zebra Mussel and the Chestnut Blight as other examples of incredible ecological damage done through sheer ignorance. Yet, we still haven't learned? The Chestnut Blight completely changed the world and we cannot say that we're better off for it. How many millions of acres have we lost because of the Kudzu that was introduced? We can't even accurately tally those costs because there are so many 2nd Order and 3rd Order Effects.

@tadblackington1676

Жыл бұрын

@@threeriversforge1997 You can say invasive species can have disruptive and negative effects. Yes they can, but that is not the whole story and we are not going to be a positive force in this field until we get our heads around the shades of gray involved. This sort of situation has happened before in recent geologic history. A few million years ago the Isthmus of Panama formed and the island continent of South America joined the world continent's far eastern peninsula, North America. Waves of extinctions rippled up and down the continents, especially through South America, as the biota of both mixed in a massive wave of invasions occured. But both continents ended up more biodiverse than they started out. Beyond that we say invasives are bad. So what? What are we accomplishing with this outlook? The invasives are here. Do we drench the landscape in carcinogens (glyphosate etc) to try and drive back some invasive plants? And if we disrupt vegetative succession by killing a few invasives are they succeeded by another batch of invasives because the site is disrupted and in need of weedy species to grow before something else will. Why tear up one patch of invasives if it just prepares the ground for another patch of invasives? On North Brother island in NYC native species, even some rare ones, have begun to advance through a highly disturbed site covered in invasives because the site has just been ignored and succession has had time to work. Time is treatment we are loath to use but its one of the most effective. One last note, you mentioned systems of ecosystems and have we considered how disrupted the ecosystems are that the invasives are spreading in? Its apparent we have torn up massive areas of soil for arable agriculture, moved mountains for minerals, wrapped the landscape in asphalt and concrete and doused it in a vast number of chemicals. All this changes the what should be growing in these areas. And this disruption of ecosystems isn't a recent thing. Would kudzu form such large monocultures if bison, horses, mammoths, mastodons and ground sloths still roamed the landscape? All the megafaunal species that were lost were undoubtedly keystone species and this needs to be realized when we are thinking about the problems we face.

@threeriversforge1997

Жыл бұрын

@@tadblackington1676 You've demonstrated exactly the problem - myopia. By your own argument, you're looking at eons passing and then suggesting it's just natural evolution at work. Okay, so explain then all the ramification to us. That's the point of understanding. If you can't honestly say that you understand all the inputs and outputs of a system, you cannot honestly say that we're on a good track or bad. All that we know for sure is that the system that was in place is what evolved over millennia and worked. That's the known. You're not suggesting that the unknown is just as good, but you can't know that. The problem is that you're trying to justify what you want to do, what you want to believe, and intentionally ignoring the downsides because it doesn't fit with what you want to do. Kudzu is a prime example of what happens when you introduce another species without understanding the whole system. To you, it's perfectly okay that millions of acres were lost, family wealth destroyed, species driven out or extinct, etc, because you believe that eventually, hundreds or thousands of years down the road, things will magically work out and nature will create some bug that eats up the Kudzu. Sounds great, but why go through that mess when you don't have to? You had a system that was working, and you ruined it. Now, instead of working to get back to the system you know worked, you're suggesting that we just continue doing the same thing again and again and again. That's the definition of insanity.

@tadblackington1676

Жыл бұрын

@@threeriversforge1997 Now you really are being bombastic and you are crediting me with vastly more power and malice than I possess. Raging about how things ought to be is useless. We must look at the world as it is. We can compare the world of the past to the world of today for clues as to how to proceed but there is no going back to the world that was. Even with rewilding we are moving forward to a world that echos the one that was but the exact "original" script is beyond our grasp. We need to embrace a future that is a hybrid of native and introduced/invasive. It might even be sprinkled with proxy and assisted migrant species. Embrace and support native species but loose the talk of "eradication" when it comes to invasive species. Work to make the hybrid work.

@threeriversforge1997

Жыл бұрын

@@tadblackington1676 Except that you can't simultaneously "embrace and support native species" while also doing things that kill those native species. You forget that the natural ecosystem operates at a geologic pace, with plenty of time for things to adapt.

I need wild flower seeds

Who brought invasive plants in, know it alls with lots of money, and pull, like this man. Who filled California with is fill the South with Arborgen gmo trees which do not belong there, trees which help spur fires?

MAGA2024!!!