Doug Tallamy delivers message to Media

We are Nature's Best Hope!

Doug Tallamy, the ecologist, entomologist, and environmentalist visionary, delivered an empowering message to the residents of Media and vicinity yesterday afternoon.

Speaking to a full house in the conference room of the Media-Upper Providence Free Library, the internationally renowned author and lecturer explained to a rapt audience how they can transform their own yards into ecological preserves of biodiversity. By replacing lawns and non-native, non-contributing ornamental plants and trees with native covers, plants, and trees that support insects, birds, and other wildlife, Tallamy posited that individual property owners—as part of a conscious network of home-based ecologists—can help to maintain and restore the food web that is essential for sustaining human life on our planet.

Doug Tallamy is the co-founder of Homegrown National Park, a grassroots movement that is catalyzing a collective effort of individual property owners, land managers, and farmers to repurpose 20 million acres in the United States as havens of biodiversity.

While focusing on the power of individual initiative on privately-owned lands, Tallamy also presented examples of how municipal policies can encourage biodiversity projects and called for municipal action to save the rapidly dwindling woodlands in our towns and cities.

“If you have a local woodlot that needs protection, you gotta protect it,” exhorted Tallamy. “That’s where all the local species [of wildlife] are hiding out and we need to let them continue to hide out there.”

The lecture was organized by Keep Media Greenand co-sponsored by theMedia-Upper ProvidenceFree Library, Transition Town Media, and Terra Donna Gardens.

To watch a video recording of the lecture, click here. (Video credit: Emma Medina-Castrejon of Transition Town Media)

After the lecture, about fifty people attended a garden party and book signing with Doug at the home of Tu Packard that was a fundraising event for Keep Media Green.

Despite the gentle spring rain, the nature-loving partygoers stayed dry under awnings and canopies and enjoyed the community fellowship, good food and drink, Tu’s lovely native-transitioning garden, and the opportunity to spend one-on-one time with Doug Tallamy, a national treasure.