There Were No Fences

Since publishing his book, Nature's Best Hope , this quote by Dr. Doug Tallamy has made its rounds seemingly everywhere on social media and on various internet sites devoted to native plant landscaping.  I find it to be too simplistic though I agree whole-heartedly that we as a species need to make deep changes to how we approach the landscapes that we live and work in.  Landscapes of non-native plants, chosen only for their aesthetic attributes, has brought great harm to the rest of the living world, those forced to share this planet with us. For far too long, we have looked at plants only as window dressing; they add monetary value to our property, advertise our economic status to our neighbors, and make our homes and offices "look good."  For some reason, we have divorced them from the living world.  We fail to make the connection that wildlife live where they do because of the plants that also live there and that the foundation for all of the life we may have emp...

We often view ourselves as the top of the evolutionary ladder; we see ourselves as the most important species and the rest of the planet is here for our pleasure. The truth is - we are likely the least important to the overall scheme. We're an afterthought to the whole creation process and nature will continue onward just fine if we are removed for the remodeling.  In most creation stories, we were placed here well after every other part was present. Life on earth functioned just fine without us. It was after we were inserted that things began to unravel. If we accept what we've learned from science, life of some form or another has existed on this planet for several billion years. For most of that time, there were no creatures even remotely similar to humans. Life evolved, was occasionally beaten back by some kind of extinction event, and was reassembled into new communities. At the end of the Age of Dinosaurs, 66 million years ago, mammals themselves mostly consisted of small...