The cover of the New Yorker in my hands showed artwork by George Booth, a cartoon Santa’s face and beard with big blue eyes looking sideways at you. As Christmas was disappearing rapidly in the rear-view mirror I considered recycling the magazine, even though I hadn’t looked at it yet. I stayed my hand though and I’m glad I did, because inside this pre-Christmas issue (Dec 19,2022) was the very interesting article by Dorothy Wickenden, Second Nature: How rewilders in India are working to reverse environmental destruction. I read it and re-read it, and I keep coming back to it. It’s fascinating.
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Wickenden tells of being in India visiting with Pradip Krishen and others who are working on ecological restoration projects, “restoring biodiversity to ravaged places”. India has such challenges, a huge still-growing population, and much poverty, but it’s heartening to know of the Ecological Restoration Alliance (ERA) of India, an ambitious group of biologists, ecologists, farmers, and other enthusiasts, working to change how India and Indians relate to the environment.
I was intrigued when she mentioned that in addition to inspiring landscape size projects they also employ “tiny forests.” Tiny forests snagged my attention in passing, as it rang E.O. Wilson bells in my mind. Wickenden explains “The practice began in the nineteen-seventies when a Japanese botanist named Akira Miyawaki started creating small, tightly packed groves of native saplings, shrubs and grasses…”; “…his forests, some no bigger than a tennis court, attracted butterflies, bees, and birds, and provided islands of shade and quiet in ever-hotter, more congested cities.”
This reminded me of the bit in E.O. Wilson’s address given at the National Zoological Park in 1987: The Little Things That Run the World (The Importance and Conservation of Invertebrates) where he talked about how conserving even small areas can make a difference:
“Reserves for invertebrate conservation are practicable and relatively inexpensive. Many species can be maintained in large, breeding populations in areas too small to sustain viable populations of vertebrates. A 10-ha plot is likely to be enough to sustain a butterfly or crustacean species indefinitely. The same is true for at least some plant species. Consequently, even if just a tiny remnant of natural habitat exists, and its native vertebrates have vanished, it is still worth setting aside for the plants and invertebrates it will save.”
My own life-long bias towards vertebrates is moderating, and I have a growing appreciation of the importance of native plants and the invertebrates they support. They are the foundation on which all vertebrate life rests, after all.
Wilson’s words are particularly encouraging for the reassurance that even small pockets of native plants can make a real difference. Parks and yards and gardens can make a difference not only to a city’s livability, but also to conservation, even when too small to support vertebrate populations.
This is exactly what Doug Tallamy finds when he visits New York’s High Line, where he is surprised and delighted to find native leaf-cutter bees nesting and monarch butterflies nectaring on flowers (Nature’s Best Hope, 2019). This is what he is promoting with the Home Grown National Park idea, encouraging landowners to reduce lawn areas and plant essential native plants to support native insects and ecosystems. Even small areas can make a difference. And many small areas together can add up to make a big difference.