Every year I add more native plants to provide food sources throughout the growing season for the hummingbirds and other pollinators. This summer fresh inspiration came from entomologist Doug Tallamy’s latest book, “Nature’s Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation That Starts in Your Yard.” With the pandemic confining us to home terrain, it’s an ideal time to consider inviting more wildlife into our lives.
A ‘Homegrown National Park’
Tallamy, a professor of insect ecology at the University of Delaware, calls for a shift from humans’ long-standing “adversarial relationship” to the natural world, warning that “we are winning our undeclared war against insects at our own peril.” Since 1974, invertebrate abundance globally has fallen 45 percent.