More than four dozen people, from Newtown and beyond, tuned in to C.H. Booth Library’s riveting two-part online program with author and ecological expert Douglas Tallamy on the evening of March 14.

Tallamy’s book Nature’s Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation That Starts in Your Yard is a New York Times Best Seller.

He has also authored 111 research publications, taught insect-related courses for 41 years, and is currently the T.A. Baker Professor of Agriculture in the Department of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Delaware.

The first portion of his library program began at 6:15 pm. Randy Walker of Nature’s Book Club and Pootatuck Watershed Association moderated a talk with Tallamy about his work and the Homegrown National Park initiative.

Homegrown National Park encourages homeowners everywhere to turn their yards into conservation corridors that provide wildlife habitats.

An initiative to support Homegrown National Park in Newtown will be launched in late April by several conservation-minded organizations including Pootatuck Watershed Association and Protect Our Pollinators.

In-Depth Lecture

At 7 pm, Tallamy led an in-depth lecture on how ineffective landscapes have contributed to global insect declines and the loss of three billion birds in North America. The good news, he said, is that through personal experience and from testimonies from others, it is possible to create landscapes that enhance ecosystems regardless of where someone lives.

C.H. Booth Library Adult Programmer Kate Sasanoff started off the latter event stating she was “incredibly honored and pleased that he has graced us … I’m thrilled that he’s here, and I’ve never seen anybody that attracts so many people.”

Tallamy welcomed everyone from his home in Pennsylvania and jumped right into his discussion, which lasted more than an hour.

“Let’s talk about my idea of nature’s best hope — and I’ll give you a spoiler: My idea of nature’s best hope is you! You are nature’s best hope, and I’ll spend most of my talk telling you why I think so,” he said cheerfully.

For some background, he shared what Harvard professor and author Edward O. Wilson, who wrote Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight For Life in 2016, thought was nature’s best hope: biodiversity.

“He had one simple message [that] if we are going to save life anywhere on planet Earth we are going to have to save nature on at least half of planet Earth … or we will lose it everywhere,” Tallamy relayed.

Tallamy said that while it was helpful information, Wilson did not describe how we can accomplish it.

“The problem is half of terrestrial earth is already in some form of agriculture, and we’ve got eight billion people along with all of our roads and houses and detritus in the other half, and we don’t have a third half to put aside for nature,” he said. “So how can we actually do this?”

Tallamy explained that a new approach is needed to accomplish Wilson’s vision.

He shared a variety of examples to highlight some of the countless specialized interactions between insects, plants, and animals, including the relationship between blue jays and oak acorns, as well as the need of pileated woodpeckers for carpenter ants.

“We have about 4,000 species of native bees in this country and over a third of them can only reproduce on the pollen of particular plants,” Tallamy added.

Even though there is such a need for biodiversity, he reported that only five percent of the lower 48 states comes close to its original pristine ecological state.

“And those are typically mountain tops,” Tallamy said. “That is because we have logged the country repeatedly, we have tilled it, we have drained it, we have grazed it … and we have paved it or otherwise developed it.

“We have straightened our rivers and dammed them — you can spell that anyway you want,” he noted. “We have polluted our skies and changed our climate for centuries to come. We have drained our aquifers. We have introduced more than 3,300 species of plants from other continents, many of which are running amuck in our natural areas.”

As a result, he said, the country has carved out isolated remnants of nature that cannot sustain what it needs to.

“It is nature that keeps us alive on planet Earth,” Tallamy said, before noting that Wilson emphasized insects specifically are crucial.

Tallamy shared a slide that detailed the flow of what would happen without insects: First, most flowering plants would go extinct, which would change terrestrial habitats, then cause the rapid collapse of food webs, the biosphere would rot, and humanity would not survive.

The cure, he said, will take small efforts from everyone and it will deliver physical, psychological, and environmental benefits to all people.

Landscaping Changes

Tallamy voiced that parks and nature preserves are not enough to sustain conservation. Individuals need to change the way they landscape.

“Not only is living with nature an option, it is now the only viable option that is left to us … we need to find ways for nature to thrive in human-dominated landscapes,” he said.

Since most of the land in the United States is privately owned, he said it is a crucial place to start to create functional ecosystems.

Tallamy recommends focusing on nature’s most important species that contribute to the most ecological function.

“Most vertebrates do not eat plants directly. Most vertebrates eat something that ate plants. That something is typically an invertebrate, typically an insect — and not just any insect. It turns out that caterpillars are transferring more energy from plants to other animals than any other type of plant eater,” he said.

Caterpillars are desirable for birds because they are soft, large, nutritious, have a low percent of chitin, and are the best source of carotenoids.

“We vertebrates cannot make our own carotenoids. Only plants make carotenoids … we have to get them from plants because carotenoids are essential parts of vertebrates’ diets,” Tallamy said.

Carolina chickadees rear their young exclusively on caterpillars and forage only about 50 meters from the nest. It takes 6,240 to 9,120 caterpillars to rear just one clutch, or the total eggs a bird lays per each nesting attempt.

Landscapes without caterpillars have failed food webs.

“Most plants do not support a lot of caterpillars … Most insects are host plant specialists,” Tallamy said and gave the example that monarch caterpillars need milkweed.

He explained that there are three kinds of plants: contributors that support local food webs, such as an oak; non-contributors that contribute little to food webs, including Ginkgo biloba from Asia; and detractors that degrade food webs, which are any invasive ornamentals.

“Plant choice matters,” Tallamy said. “If we are going to rebuild the ecosystems where we’ve destroyed them, the ecosystems that we need to rebuild for our own well-being, we have to have functional food webs and that is not going to happen if we don’t choose the right plants.”

He highlighted how he transformed his home on ten acres in Pennsylvania to a functioning ecosystem.

He began by planting Meadow Rue for Canadian owlet caterpillars. His work grew to add Bidens aristosa for goldenrod stowaway caterpillars, Celtis occidentalis for hackberry emperor caterpillars, and he continued this specialized process over and over for many caterpillars.

Tallamy now has 1,199 species of moths and 60 species of birds have bred on his property.

Not everyone needs ten acres to make a positive difference, he said, citing specific examples of how people have transformed their yard on less than an acre in the suburbs of Missouri and urban areas near Chicago’s Kennedy expressway.

Homegrown National Park

Tallamy pointed out that there are more than 40 million acres of lawn nationwide. If property owners could dedicate just half of their lawn to plantings that would be 20 million acres.

“We can create a new national park that I’m calling Homegrown National Park … It will be bigger than the Adirondacks plus Yellowstone plus Yosemite plus Grand Teton National Park plus Canyonlands plus Mount Rainier plus North Cascades plus Badlands National Park plus Olympic National Park plus Sequoia National Park plus the Grand Canyon plus Denali, which is huge, plus the Great Smoky Mountains. Add up all those parks and it’s less than 20 million acres,” Tallamy said.

Homegrown National Park would help people of all ages develop a personal relationship with nature on their own time and own pace.

Children, who he described as “suffering from nature deficit disorder,” can greatly benefit from a personal relationship with nature.

“They are the future stewards of the planet,” Tallamy said.

He recommends people read Nature Play at Home by Nancy Striniste for helping children connect with the natural world.

Homegrown National Park also lets people know about the importance of not spraying pesticides and limiting light pollution.

“There is a lot that one person can do,” Tallamy said. “We want to convert hope into action. Hope is good, but action is even better.”

At the end of his presentation, he answered audience member questions. Tallamy was also frequently thanked for his informative lecture and inspiring work.

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Reporter Alissa Silber can be reached at alissa@thebee.com.