A Conversation with Doug Tallamy

Okay, welcome to another episode of the Crime Pays but Bondny doesn't podcast.
I'm here with Doug tell me, who's the author of a number of books
and inspiration to any and all involved in the killer Lawn movement and learning about
their local ecosystems and ecology and just having a better and more aware of land
ethic in terms of the other life forms around you. So I don't know
where to start. Doug, how are you doing. I'm very fine,
pleasure to be here. Yeah, so thanks a lot for coming on this,
Thanks for being willing to do this, I guess for anyone listening,
because I know you're primarily on the East Coast, but you know you're you.
I just saw you do a lecture via zoom on South Texas. So
do you for anyone listening, do you want to talk about basically what you
do and how you got into it and just give just give a little you
know, crash course, and who you are? All right? Well,
I'm an entomologist, So I study insects at the University of Delaware, and
I've been there for forty two years, so I've been studying insects for a
long time. Yeah, I do I speak around the country, either in
person or podcasts, and what I talk about applies everywhere. So it doesn't
matter that I live in the East. A lot of my examples are from
the East, because a lot of my examples are from my yard, but
again they apply pretty much anywhere. What I do is we'll focused on conservation,
and it turns out that the way insects interact with plants is a central
part of that, and what we humans have done to the plant communities around
us are impacting those insects that run the food web that support the birds and
everything else. So that's what I've been studying for that's been more than twenty
years at this point. A lot of experimental, but a lot of it
is observational as well, and I'm sure we will we will get to the
details as we moved through this podcast. Yeah, so what I find,
what I find remarkable about you is that you came at this from entomology,
which to me is a new field. Entomology is something that I started to
become more fascinated with the more fascinated I became with plants in their ecology.
You know, I started off looking at a certain group of plants as many
people do, and I was kind of taken with that, and then started
seeing that all this stuff is connected, and then learned about the connection between
geology and plant life because I was in California at the time, and you
know, the serpentine syndrome for plants and how serpentine kind of causes plants speciation
is so remarkable to me, and that kind of tied it in. And
then as I've been especially when I when I came to South Texas, which
has got a ton of butterflies and a ton of pollinator activity and is on
the migratory route for butter for the monarchs. Of course, that's when I
started paying attention more to insects and realizing, Wow, this this shit is
pretty cool. There's something going on. There's host plants. You've got all
these checks and balances of insects that eat other insects that keep them in check.
I mean it really And that's and then, you know, being when
I started doing more East Coast stuff, that's when your name kept popping up
more and I was like, oh, wow, this guy's got some good
stuff. And I saw your one of your presentations where you listed like one
hundred different species of moths that that each one has a specific host plant.
It was so cool. I was like, God, damn, this is
amazing. This guy is really onto something. Well, there are about twelve
thousand species of moths in this country. For every species of butterfly, there's
nineteen species of moths. Wow, And both butterflies and bus or ninety percent
of them are what we call host plants specialists. They can only eat particular
plants. Yeah, monarch butterflies just you know, one of those, but
it's a good example. Everybody knows that can only develop on milkweeds. So
if you take the milkweeds away, you lose them. Monar, well,
you take take other plants away, as those other laws that create caterpillars.
It turns out the caterpillars are transferring more energy from plants to other animals than
any other type of planter. So if you design a landscape that doesn't have
a lot of caterpillars in it, it's going to have a failed food web.
And if we do that everywhere, then we have failed ecosystems. And
that's why this is important to humans, because it is ecosystems to keep us
alive. On this planet. They provide our life support, and we cannot
design a nature free planet and expect to survive. You know, way back
in nineteen eighty seven, Io Wilson said, insects of the little things that
run the world, and he listed what I mean. If we lost our
pollinators, we'd lose eighty percent of flowering plants, which would collapse, the
terrestrial food webs that support our amphibians and our mammals and our reptiles and our
birds, and they would all disappear. We'd also lose our decomposers that wrap
that they turn over nutrients, and all we would have is bacteria and fun
guy, So the earth would rot. So we lost insects, he says,
humans would last two or three months and that that's about it. So
it's I think some pretty important And what's what's ironic is that we humans have
waged war on insects right from from the start. So we're you know,
we're killing the group that keeps us alive on this planet, and that's got
to stop. Which really that's the basis of my research. How do we
how do we learn to coexist with nature, and that means co existing with
the insects, with the caterpillars, the things that that we historically have always
tried to kill right right to me. To me, what I think is
important too is is how do you change a culture? And I think it's
slowly starting to happen at least in this country, But how do you change
a culture to get them to have a reverence for these things, for these
things that they might because to me, there's just so much disconnection. I
mean, it's it's this mass, it's just massive ignorance of like why do
I want those who cares about insect decline? I see, I see the
newspaper articles about yeah, you know you drive through certain states, you don't
you know, your windshield stays clean. There's no insects out there hitting it?
And why do I care? Oh that's good. I don't want any
bugs in the house. I mean, how do you change that and get
people, even the people who are just have no interest in this stuff,
to see like why this stuff is important? You know, what's what's amazing
is how we changed to that viewpoint in the beginning. You know, eons
ago, we were all we were all quote indigenous people, and we respected
nature. We knew that it supported us. We worshiped it, but you
know, it was not out kill everything around you, because if you did,
then that was the end of your society. Yeah, so somehow we
got away from that and what the way we view nature today is. That's
an a barrant situation. Historically, it's it's been just the opposite. We've
always had a lot of reverence towards nature. So we really have to move
back in that direction. Yeah. Yeah, you said something really interesting too.
I mean you said we were all indigenous, uh at one point,
and that's because that's something that you know, that's become a talking point so
much like oh indigenous, you know, normally Native American and reference to the
American ways of viewing things. But I mean, really, before we ended
up in this, you know, so off the rails civilizationally speaking, in
this manner that we live now, I mean, every human that had a
that had to live on the land had a connection to it in that way.
And it wasn't this, you know, just the idea of wiping out
everything around you was that didn't directly benefit you would have seemed complete insanity.
You know. I just I think that's pretty remarkable to know, you know,
like even like in Europe, Like before these different empires and colonialism all
that there were, there were people that lived down the land and had a
reverence for the granted, they eventually got wiped out by by whatever or civilizations,
you know, civilizational events happened there probably eight hundred nine years ago.
But I guess yeah, that's and this is the thing is like, now
we've got this technology, but we can also you know, I mean,
we could almost if we wanted to live so much more in tune with everything
without destroying it, and we could help it thrive. You know. That's
why I yeah, that that is my basic message is how do we how
do we share our landscapes with nature? How do we coexist with it?
Give up this notion that humans are here in nature someplace sells because the reason
there is someplace sells. And the little bits of habitat that we've left here
and there are too small and too isolated to sustain the amount of nature that
we need to run the ecosystems that we depend on. We've got we've got
parks, and we've got preserves and they're doing the best they can. But
we are in the sixth greatest sinction event. You know the planet has ever
experienced, so obviously it's not good enough. Yeah, yeah, which means
the very simple solution is to start practicing conservation outside of parks and preserves.
And what's outside of parks and preserves, it's all private property. So it's
kind of happened on our private property, right and you know when you do
it, it's really rewarding. Yeah, that's what my wife and I have
done. Here. We've got ten acres in southeast Pennsylvania. It was part
of a farm that was broken up and it was mode for Hay. It
was the last thing they did. Well. We put the plants back and
we've gotten to watch the wildlife come back. You know, I am an
entomologist and I do follow what mods are doing because they are running the ecosystem.
So I've been counting the number of species of moths that now make a
living on our ten acres here, and I've been doing it for six years.
I'm up to two and fifty eight species that I've got pictures of so
far. It's fucking amazing that weren't here when we started. So that's the
good news. Nature's resilient. Yeah, build it and they will give you
exactly, they don't extinct, so we can't wait till then. But but
they are remarkably resilient. Why are there so many more moths? Uh?
You know, as you know, in proportion to butterflies. Butterflies are bad
tasting day flying moths. So it's one lineage of moth that just happened to
to branch off. They can fly during the day because they are bad tasting,
most of the birds won't touch them. So why it's just you know,
there's there's no direction that evolution goes. It's just what happened and and
any pretty so we get to enjoy them. So most moths presumably don't taste
that bad to the predators, that's right, most good? Yeah, yeah,
okay, well that makes sense. I guess you know, you're you're
out during the day, you're visible, you've got to you've got to Well,
you can do that because you've evolved this biochemistry or the ability to to
bioaccumulate you know, toxins and alcoloids from your host plant. That enables you
to go without you know, being preyed on too hard. Whereas you know,
mall's got to worry about bats though obviously right, they do. Well,
they've got to worry about a lot of things, you know, the
birds that people do like I say, we've got to co exist with insects.
I don't like insects, but they do like birds. Well, to
make one clutch of chickadees, it takes six thousand to nine just to get
to the point where they leave the nest. And after they leave the nest,
the parents continue to feed them catapults in another twenty one days. So
thousand of these caterpillars moth cataclysts to the point where it can reproduce successfully,
and we won dozens of birds. I mean, want to you know,
seven ten different species. Well, that's a lot of caterpillars that is required
to make those birds. So what do you need? Insects want birds?
Insects? M Yeah, I was. I was during one of your presentations.
I saw I think it was just one on YouTube, but I saw
you make that connection between how how vital moth caterpillars are for birds. I
mean, I think so many people are unaware of that. Like the caterpillars,
each one having a specific host plant you know, feeds a different uh
well, a wide variety of birds and then are there some species of birds
that only prey on certain moth species or what birds they're not as specialized as
the caterpillars are themselves. They're predators and they've got to be able to find
food all the time. There are a couple of groups like the cuckoos,
the yellow bill and black bill cuckoo that really like hairy caterpillars, and they'll
follow to follow gypsy moth, which is now the spongy moth populations around the
fall web worms and tent caterpillars. They eat a lot of the caterpillars that
people generally don't like. Yeah, but most birds are pretty generalized. They'll
take just spend any caterpillar they can because they've got to find so many.
You know, when you're when you're a chickeny and you're bringing back thousands of
caterpillars to the net, you've got to bring one back once every three minutes
for sixteen days. Oh Jesus. So they can't be too picky about what
they look for. I think, you know, I forget what presentation it
was because I love the reference that in this podcast, but god damn,
it was so I was just listening to it while I went for a walk
here and I was like, this is amazing, man, this is so
you do such a good job of tying all this stuff together, and then
also pointing out, you know, listen, you got these things in your
yard, these caterpillars, instead of spraying them, you know, which of
course is ridiculous, it's idiotic. You know, have not just have reverence
for them. Oh, they're part of this ecaism, they evolved here over
millions of years. But also realize those are feeding the birds that you actually
want around. I mean, you know, and there's a system you point
out so well, the system of checks and balances that I talk about all
the time. You know, people talk about, oh, you know,
why do invasives matter, blah blah, say, well, invasives, the
worst invasives come from other continents, are on the other side of the equator,
from these ecosystems that have been separated for millions of years. Each ecosystem
has its own system of checks and balances, innate, what's invasive here has
its system of checks and balances back home, whether it's in the form of
insects or funky. And that's why it's not so aggressive over there. But
over here, you know, on the other side of the Atlantic, for
instance, it doesn't have any of those checks and balances, and it gets
out of control. I mean that really, you're so good at pointing out
those that system of checks and balances, which is just ecology, which so
many of us, you know, so many of us are just blind to
and I can't you never taught it. Yeah, right, but you're right,
I mean that is that's the crux of the problem with with these non
native plants that escape. They're invasive when they displace native plant populations, and
so many of them have they're very poor at supporting those caterpillars that drive the
food webs, and that's because our insects have not co evolved with them.
They don't have the physiology and the behaviors to be able to counteract their chemical
defenses. So there's that they're here, they're displacing the plants that do support
our caterpillars. And then we've got the the interaction with deer. You know,
in most places we've got a real overabundance of white tailed deer, and
they don't like the non native plants either, so they eat our natives.
They leave the invasives alone, and that tips the competitive balance against our native
plants. So it's not that the invasives are such super plants, it's just
that nothing is controlling them, whereas the deer, which are too many of
them, are just clabbering our natives. So a little any little oak that
pops up, you know, gets eating right away, and that's really taking
that imbalance and you know, really revving it up so that you end up
with an understory that's almost entirely automolive or buckthorn or bush honeysuckle. Burbwurstonbergie is
another bad What was out there? Yeah, we were, We were out
there. We were just out in your neck of the woods onlike the DMV
the DC Maryland Virginia area. I know you're in Pennsylvania, but we were
out there filming Killer Lawn and we were just you know, we did like
four episodes there and just driving around. I mean, I you know,
looking at satellite maps and being like, wow, there's just not that much
habitat left. It's all roads. It's this car culture, right, So
you're trapped in a car most of the time. It's kind of like a
giant chain of suburbs surrounding d C. And you've got this deciduous force,
this beautiful deciduous forest, and then the understory there were just these you know,
there was a lot of invasives out there. I was surprised, you
guys don't have our buckthorn yet. You don't have our EU you don't have
the Chicago European buckthorn yet. That's the bad invasive in Chicago. Just but
we've got we've got stilt grass and porcelain berry and other things that't worry.
It makes up for it. Yeah, that that wavy basket grass to that
wavy yeah, that's yeah. Yeah. But so anyway, so talking about
the insect decline, I know that in one of your presentations you said,
you know, neo neo nix, neonicottonoid pesticides are not the biggest driver of
insect decline, at least not in that that region. It seems like the
biggest driver is habitat loss and you know, eradication of host plants. I
guess could you talk more about that, like what's what's going on with neo
nix and what what is the biggest driver of insect decline right now? Well,
you know, Dave Wagner at the University of Connecticut says, it's it's
death by a thousand cuts. There's so many things that are clapboring our insects.
I'll just go down the list. You can start with light pollution.
Look at the map of the US at night taken by the Space Shuttle.
It's all it's all lit up, and every one of those lights is drawing
in nocturnal insects, particularly mods, and most of them never leave. So
you know that's a one way trip. You do that every every single light
of the year, and you do it everywhere, no wonder you've got insect
decline. Uh. The good news about that is there's an easy solution,
and that is to switch to yellow lights or even red would be better.
But because those wavelengths don't attract nocturnal insects, so it does provide light.
We can still get around when we when we need it, and the badman
will come and all that stuff, but it won't be killing everything. Oh
wow, I didn't know that. What what? What? What wavelength is
that? How many nanimeters do you know? I don't want it. I
don't want to give you bad information. I always have to look at it,
but just the warm, the warm wavelengths, you want to avoid the
cool wavelength and so those don't those don't attract moths and insects. Huh right
right, God, is easy. It's that easy. Why are we not
doing that? That one is that easy? Well, some people, you
know, go to the hardware start. They've got these yellow bulbs. They
call them bug lights. It's miss because it suggests if you put it in,
it'll come and kill all your bugs. Everybody wants to kill their bugs,
but it actually saves the bugs. And that's what this was. Oh
wow, what and so what what colors attract the bugs? The blue lights
or what? Blue? Blue and white? Right? Yeah. The mercury
vapor lamps are the very worst. That's that's what people use. That's what
entomologists use. When they're put out a muss sheet. You put a mercury
vapor light in. Everything comes. Yeah. Yeah. A friend of mine,
a friend of mine got me into mothing. My friend Damon tie David
Yeah, David Greenberger and Damon tie back when I lived in Oakland were always
there like, oh, let's go mothing. I was like, what the
hell really? And then I went with them once and I was like,
holy shit, this is amazing. You got like fifty different species. And
then I did it once in the Sonora in the state of Sonora in Mexico
with all these entomologists and lizard nerds out there, and we were getting such
incredible, incredible insects, man, incredible moths. It's addictive. Yeah,
all right, so really going to an insect decline. Light pollution is one
of the causes you mentioned neonicketsenoids. Yeah, it's a serious one and it's
underestimated every bit. When you plant something these days, you plant corn,
you plant soybeans, you plant wheat, the seed is pink or purple,
and that pink color is neonickets image. It's a seed coating. It's not
even counted as an insecticide. So it's not measured as as you know,
tons of insecticidber putting out there, but it's it is out there. Only
five percent is taken up by the plant. The other ninety five percent washes
off into our watershed where it's really persistent, or it blows away on dust
where nobody's been measuring anything. And it's seven thousand times more toxic to insects
than DDT wes. So it's one of the reasons that this band in Europe
and people people, I think they're underestimating the impact of neon nickeotsenoids on on
insects. There's there's a woman in Montana who keeps emailing me. She says,
I don't have any grasshoppers anymore. She says, there's no agriculture anywhere
around me. Nobody's using insecticides. I should have a vibrant ecosystem like I
used to. And she says, I think it's nea nicotino. It's blowing
in with dust from Idaho where they're growing a lot of potatoes. And I
cannot tell her she's wrong, that's crazy. It's a tough, tough experiment
to do. But geez, what if she's right? What if it's blow
them all over the places? Because I can tell you right now, I
don't have any grasshoppers either. When did this? When did they become so
widespread? Like? When did this idea? Seems so insane to me.
So this is a synthetic nicotine analog, which of course is you know,
nicotine is an alkaloid that members especially if solenacy, have evolved to you know,
basically to fight micro orbivery to kill insects. But when did it become
so widespread that we just doused everything, like eighties, nineties, Like when
did this become Yeah, I think nineties, two thousand. It's been here
thirty years for sure. It's insane. That's totally insane, Like why would
you just it's it's such a sledgehammer when you're looking for a scalpel, you
know, because you're because we're looking for insecticide alternatives, and they say,
well, it's not toxic to vertebrates, which you know, that's debatable.
There's there's good records of miscarriages in mammals, particularly deer and other things.
I've measured them, but you know, who knows what's happening with humans.
I don't want to talk beyond my knowledge. But it's it's always exciting when
you come up with a new product because we know the old ones are bad.
Here's a new one. It's probably not so bad, but over the
years you find out, well, it makes the bees crazy if it doesn't
kill them out right, and it's a really toxic step that's very persistent.
It's as persistent as DDT used to be, so it's yeah, because it's
it's systemic, so it's absorbed by the plant and then becomes you know,
emitted and all the plant tissues and the pollen in all the cells. I
mean, it's it just seems everything. So the whole plant stays alive but
turns into a poison for insects. Yeah, so that's another cause. Who
knows how it ranks. But and certainly the loss of habitat every time you
build a house or you pave a road or you know, anything we do
is eliminating the places where insects can live. But of course that's what I'm
talking about. We've got, what do we have one hundred and thirty five
million acres of residential landscape in this this country, and we've always assumed that,
well, nothing's going to live there. Nature will be simplace else.
That's what we've got to turn around, because lots of things can live right
with us, no problem. So we have to change. That's that's part
of the cultural change that we're talking about. We've got we've got forty four
million acres of law which is the size of New England, Yeah, which
is it's dedicated to an ecological dead s case it's just a status symbol.
It's useless. And it also it just doesn't hold. I mean that was
something we focused on, you know, in that region when we were when
we were in d C, was how little lawn does to hold soil and
retain water. And you know, the soil should act like a dry sponge
where it soaks up moisture. You got a dry sponge on a granite countertop.
You're pouring water out of a picture around to it. It's you know,
slowly, it's got that whole sponge. It's become saturated before it runs
off the onto the countertop. Well, the lawn doesn't do that. The
roots barely go deep at all, you know, whereas perennials bunch grasses,
the roots go very deep. I guess I wanted to bring up too,
you know EO. Wilson, who I love man. I read that guy
in my when I was a teenager, before I was even interested in botany,
and you know, he's got that book Half Earth, and his whole
premise there is we should set aside half the Earth for the rest of the
biosphere because it supports us, even if you know, opposed to just taking
everything. And I'm always amazed, like why don't we do that? I
mean, I could see why. It's that that would be the trademark of
an enlightened species. That's something that enlightened species would do. We're not there
yet, We're far from that. We're still these primates who you know,
recently born int discentians think that, you know, we're cocky. We think
we're better than the the land that gave gave rise to us, that supported
us, still biting the hand that feeds. But I guess just I'm always
amazed at how much development continues to go on, like pristine land being demolished
for everything from solar farms to you know, especially tract house developments, these
suburban you know, automobile developments, automobile dependent developments. It's do you think
it's ever gonna stop at some point? I mean, or we just pay
everything. No, it's gonna stop because it's a finite planet. Yeah.
What has to stop is human population growth and very empop other subject, particularly
with the economists where you have a you know, our our capitalistic economic model
is a Ponzi screen. You have to grow forever, right, you can't
grow forever on a finite planet. So yes, it will stop. So
how do we actually reach a steady state where you have a no growth economy.
There's lots of models out there where you can do that, but then
you don't have a few super super super rich people and everybody else with very
little. Yeah, it'd be good. That would be a good subject to
explore us. What is an alternative to this? To this? Because this
lifestyle we're living in right now, you can tell it, especially in America,
it's not making a lot of people happy. It's causing a lot of
suffering or just like gradual decline in people's mental health and physical health, et
cetera. I mean, what would a no growth economy look like? I
often wonder, you know, you need to you need to talk to you
know what you know Paul erlik Yeah, yeah, his daughter is an environmental
economist. You should You should talk to her someday, get her to explain
some super interesting subject. Yeah. Yeah, And I think you know,
with population growth too, I mean, economists hate it, but you also
get you know, I've I've encountered a lot a lot of resistance on the
left. They're like, oh, that makes you an eco fascist. It's
like not really, No it's just nothing is sustainable. We're not talking about
killing people. You lower birth rates by providing you know, uh, education
opportunities for women. There's a number of ways to do this, by providing
things we already you know, most of us support and want. You know,
this is not people I hat people get up and leave my talks.
One guy stood up, he said, which one of my kids shouldn't I
have had? I say, well, which which one of your kids?
Do you want to starve to death? I mean there are limited resources,
and that's I just can't can't grasp that. Yeah, but you know,
go to go to northern Africa, go to the Gaza strip right now,
and look at the resources. It's it's a dead zone. It's not just
because they're killing each other. You have to import everything there because it's it's
it's just extremely low carrying capacity desert where you've got millions of people. Nothing
there is sustainable. And so what are they doing They're killing each other,
you know, they're none of resources. So yeah, yeah, it's yeah,
and I think about that in every you know, we need to design
things better and more sustainably, and not just with this idea of what makes
the most money, this short term game, long short term game game,
long term loss strategy of modern capitalism, but also just you know, have
sensible policies in place. And also when you bring people up out of poverty,
birth rates naturally decline. You know, yeah, unless you're Mormon,
I guess. But regardless, you know, it's still there's there's ways,
there's ways to do. It's just something it's not worth just sweeping under the
rug because it's an uncomfortable conversation. There's ways to do this that makes sense
and are really you know, basically embraced policies that are really good on their
own, you know. Well, but but all right, So we were
talking about habitat loss, and as long as we continue to grow, we're
going to continue to degrade habitat. We can share our spaces though, so
that's that's a partial solution. Another major cause of insect decline is it's our
our misuse and overuse of insecticides. The mosquitoes. Mosquitofogging is one of the
very worst. We talked about me and nicotson ize, but how about mosquitofogging
that it's it's it's a nationwide epidemic really that does not control mosquitoes, but
it does kill everything else. Yeah, that's insane, that's still I mean,
you can go to you can go to big box stores where I live,
and you can buy these just broad scale insect foggers. It's fucking madness,
man. Yeah, well it's it's false advertising, and I don't know
why they're aloud to get get away with say it only kills mosquitoes, so
naturally people buy it and they feel good about it. It doesn't. It
kills I've got pictures of people holding piles of dead monarchs in their hands after
a mosquito fogging event. It kills all the pollinators, it kills all the
insects that it comes in contact with. Why do they think something that's strong
enough to kill a mosquito is not going to kill another insect. I mean,
it makes no sense. And of course when they fog it goes absolutely
everywhere. They say it's a natural product, so it's okay. Yeah,
it's pyrethroids from from chrysanthemums, right, yeah, so let's talk about that.
So that's that's phyto chemistry. That that chrysanthemum, which is an asteracy.
The sunflower family evolved and then we're basically what pyrethrins are is basically synthetic
analogus to that that structure, that chemical structure. Correct, Yeah, it's
an insect a side that plants emil, So it is nicosie. How does
it affect mammals? Is it toxic? Toxic to mammals too, isn't it?
It's toxic to I know that lest they're very sensitive to it, right,
right, But it's probably who knows if it's mildly toxic to people or
if it builds up as a carcinogen or what. Yeah, who knows,
is right, don't I don't know? Yeah, so what is it?
But the interesting thing is it only kills between ten and fifty percent of the
mosquitoes, and you need ninety percent killed to get it control if you're attacking
it at the adult stage. The way to control mosquitos is in the larval
stage. And there's a good alternative, particularly for homeowners. This is what
I wanted to ask you about because this was fucking brilliant and I saw you
talk about this. Yeah, so what's the best way to handle mosquitos in
your yard? You get a bucket and you fill a col of water and
you put in a handful of straw or hay or maybe some dead leaves.
You put it out in the sun for a couple of days, so it
builds up a population of algae and diatoms, and that is what mosquito larvae
eat, so it becomes a really attractive brew for the female mosquito in your
yard that's gonna lay her eggs. She will preferentially lay her eggs in your
bucket, and you go to the hardware sturning by a sheet of mosquito dunks.
That's bacillistheringiensis. It's a natural bacterium that only kills aquatic Diptera dipterin'es are
flies. So the only aquatic dipterne in your bucket is a mosquito larva.
You put in a dunk and you kill the mosquito larvae. If a dragonfly
gets in there, doesn't hurt it a bit. If your dog drinks it
doesn't hurt it. It's totally targeted. Only kills mosquitos without killing anything else,
and it's cheap, and if everybody did it, it really would make
a difference. So you're kind of luring them in and just knowing that because
a lot of people don't know that mosquito larva eat algae. So diatom's photosynthetic
single celled organisms, right, other algae that would pop up. I mean
though, it's that's what the mosquito larva are eating in that stage, right
wow. And so you're baiting them in and then you throw one of those
dunks in there, and that bacteria doesn't affect is it specific to It's only
specific to diptera then to flies basically right that that formulation, so it's BT.
Now there are other formulations that are only specific to caterpillars and others that
are only specific to beetles. So it's a natural bacterium, one of those
diseases that helps keeps insects in check. Wow, that's brilliant. So you
you basically set a mosquito trap, get them to lay eggs, and then
just dunk them, just dose dose them with BT. Wow. And so
will dragonflies eat eat those two? Do? They eat mosquitoes rather not the
larvast balls, but the flying staves are well eat the They eat mosquito larvae
when they're naiads in the water, and when they're adults they eat mosquito adults.
So yeah, dragonflies are in natural mosquito control. Bats are a natural
mosquito control. Most of the of the insects that live in ponds, their
major source of food is mosquito larvae. So people think if you have a
body of water in your yard, it's going to breed mosquitos. If it's
a permanent body of water, it won't because everything it's in that body of
water eats mosquitolary. If it's temporary and dries up periodically, then you don't
have the predators, and that is what creates a lot of mosquitoes. So
if you have a pond and particularly to have fish in there, man,
that's what they're eating, mosquitolarry. Yeah. What you don't want is a
tire track or a you know, an empty can half filled with water,
because that's where the mosquitoes go crazy. How often the mosquito larva take to
mature about a week or two or what? Yeah, it's very fast,
I don't know, nine ten days. Yeah, that's awful. Yeah,
so this is yeah, I saw that in another you know another point you
made one of these presentations too, is you know, because that's something you
hear at least, especially in the East, is that if I plant my
my yard full of native plants, I'm going to get mosquitoes and ticks only
seeing the worst. That's all a lot of people think nature is, if
they don't get exposed to it is it's just a source of pests. I
don't want it, you know, But ticks and mosquitoes having an abundance of
those, that's the result of an imbalance, right. Well, I don't
know where they get the idea that that mosquitoes like native plants. Mosquitos are
aquatic. I mean, they have nothing to do with native plants, So
that's you know, that's totally bogus. Ticks. We have an over abundance
of ticks. And it's not just ticks. It's the black legged tick,
it's the deer tick because we've got an over abundance of deer because we got
rid of the deer predators. So we either become deer predators or we bring
the predators back. But that is why we have too many ticks, and
that's why we have lime disease. It's not native plants. You can have
a lot of ticks, but non native plants too. They like humidity,
So when you create a landscape with humidity in it and you've got a lot
of deer, you're going to have deer ticks right right, So the best
way to fight those is to lower deer populations or exclude them from an area.
Obviously, if you live in an area that's pretty donce already, you're
not going to have a lot of deer and you're not going to have a
lot of ticks. If you're in the you know, the wilde lander of
an interface in the suburbs somewhere you got a patch of woods behind you,
you might have more ticks. But again, the way to control for those
is keep the deer out. I wonder if there's some sort of like,
I mean, I know this is ridiculous, it's not the way to do
it, but if there's some sort of treatment they could give deer that would
you know, kill kill ticks or keep them tick free. I mean,
what do they do for cattle? You know, yeah, you know,
I haven't heard of it. Approaching from the deer. The third part of
that that life cycle for the for the deer tick is mice, particularly white
footed mice, and there is a product called Damonex where it's it's essentially cotton
that's soaked in pyrethrites. The same thing is going to kill the mosquitoes.
And the mice go and gather this up and they put it in their nest
and so they're sleeping in it and it kills the ticks that are on the
mice. And apparently that's that's pretty pretty effective. Yeah, that would work
great. Yeah, I mean, I just the whole mentality that I don't
want to plant native plants because of ticks and in mosquitoes. It's like,
well, okay, yeah, so you want to want to just live in
a parking lot, just nuke everything, get rid of everything. You can
just live in a parking lot have that nice heat island effect, you know,
because that's that's that's the other thing too I want to talk about with
that. I mean, and I notice this especially where I live and you
know, in the Western United States, where I spend most of my time
learning botany and ecology, was that these these huge parking lots we have for
all these strip malls and all these office parks, and they are just giant
batteries that get charged with the sun during the day and then radiate heat late
into the night during the warm season, which I mean in a place like
Phoenix that's year round, so and to not be aware that that raises so
it never cools off at night in some of these places, And then we
wonder why it's you know, ten twenty degrees hotter than it's ever been.
I mean, in addition to climate change, you've also got these these massive
heat batteries that we've got because we have this car dependent lifestyle, that's often
all we're offered. You know, they don't build cities with you know,
for walkable walkable streets or density or public transit. We've just got parking lots
everywhere, and minimum parking requirements. When they build a new target or some
other you know, uh, car culture slum, uh you know, retail
strip, you've got minimum parking requirements. So you've got to build a lot
that's maybe four times bigger than you'll ever need. Now you've just created a
huge, you know, multiple football field sized heat battery. But that can
be an opportunity too. I was at the Cincinnati Zoo, IM pretty sure
it was the Cincinnati Zoo, and they had covered their parking lots with solar
panels. That's yeah, I've only seen that done once in this country.
It's insane. They so now you park underneath it, your car's in the
shade, and those those solar panels are generating electricity in the entire entire zoo.
If every parking lot in the country had solar panels over it, we'd
be much better shape. Instead, now we're putting these giant solar farms out
in the middle of the desert, which are you know, they're highly diverse
systems. It's insane, it's insanity. They just demolished one of the most
It was private property owned by some like locally connected politician, not surprisingly in
Star County, and they demolished. There was peyote there, there was star
cactus there, there was a wealth of I mean, it was just like
a virgin, intact piece of South Texas thorn scrub. And this guy,
I guess leased at the BP or sold at the VP or something and so,
you know, British Petroleum. So they just built this massive solar farm
over it. It was just heartbreaking to see. I mean, it's it's
just insane. I mean, they demolished so much first, and then you
know, forty miles to the east, they've got these massive parking lots,
you know, like entire like a square, you know, a mile long
strip of parking lots. Because these strip malls are all connected bordering the you
know, frontage roads on the freeway. And it's just why not do that?
I mean, all those cars just heat up to during the day.
It's they're miserable to walk and that, you know, I don't know,
I don't know, we're not doing it. Why are we not doing that?
Do you haven't any insight? I mean, is it just lack of
Oh, it's who owns the property. So it's it's this concept of private
property ownership. You get to do whatever you want with it, right,
Yeah, that's a religion in Texas, man. Yeah, oh yeah,
I think I think it's ninety five or ninety nine percent of Texas is privately
in Yeah. Well I want to I want to know. In Rhode Island,
they're cutting down oak forests to put in solar panels in Rhode Island.
So they're cutting down natural solar panels to put in solar panels. That's insanity,
Like it's just for for being twenty twenty three. It's so like,
I don't know why we're still here. I mean, these are things,
these are these are things you'd expect to see in the nineteen fifties, like
just completely what were they thinking, Like just the most shit for brained things
that I don't want to ridicule it. I mean I'd like ridiculing it,
but obviously that doesn't change I want. I want to be constructive, you
know. I mean, there's got to be a way to change this.
There's got to be a way to approach some of these politicians. I mean,
this is why it's so important to change the cultures because like maybe and
especially with kids like you get like younger kids like in their twenties, you
know, maybe you know it's the kid of one of these locally connected politicians.
It's like, wait, why are you doing that? It starts putting
slowly throwing these ideas at their parents and and you know, you eventually becomes
more widespread and maybe this stuff stops happening. But it is insanity to me.
I mean I was just up in Austin a couple of days ago,
visiting a friend like Edwards Plateau west of Austin, incredible habitat Limestone Limestone Hills.
You know, Cretaceous limestone, eighty million year old limestone, very thin
soils, just incredible plant communities, a ton of plant endemics. You know,
plants that only grow in this narrow area. You look at their distribution
on a naturalists they're only found in this area, and they're just demolishing it.
They're murking it to build more tracked house, car dependent sprawl, no
sidewalks. I mean, to grow up in those areas. I feel so
bad for some of these kids, man, Like, how do you you
have to own a car and you're trapped in a car, trapped in your
car or trapped in your house. You know, but anyway, go ahead,
Sorry, what are you gonna say? It's just pretty depressive. You
said, why are we doing this? Why are we still here? That's
the bottom line. We're not gonna be still here if we don't get her
act together. And I know that's a hard cell, but believe me.
Yeah, And I think a lot of people, you know, especially in
some of these areas, just have no idea what's coming. I mean,
where I live, the water reserves in South Texas are really really low,
and there's still you know, my neighbor just put in a sprinkler system for
his launch. Great great cut down a huge, beautiful ebony tree and put
in a sprinkler system. Why would you cut down a beautiful native shade tree
that can take this heat, especially once they're established, when you get one
hundred and five degree temperatures for six months of the year, it just just
boggles the mind. So anyway, well, anyway, okay, we don't
have to talk about the pressing stuff. I want to talk about some of
your books, because you got how many three major books out there, right,
Bringing Nature Home and then a book you just put out about oaks.
What's the other book you got? Yeah? Yeah, both the original version,
now there's a version for kids called the Young Reader's version. Yeah.
I mean, my my friend Lily, she's lilyan bird. She's in Florida
with the Florida Native Plant Society. She was she always talks about you,
as you know, that guy inspired me to get into all this stuff.
I mean, he was such an inspiration to me as all my heroes.
I mean, I forget what book it. I think it was Bringing Nature
Home she read, But it's really good in lightning stuff, and you talk
about how fulfilling this is. This isn't just something you do because oh it
feels good. It's you know, you put on your resume. I did
a green act because that doesn't work right. I don't even talk about,
oh it's green, it's it's environmentally friendly. I talk about how fucking fun
it is. Like you're creating a classroom in your yard where you can learn
about the native plants, the native insects around you. You're basically, you
know, you to have a field trip about your local regions ecology. You
just go to your front yard, you create all this stuff. All this
stuff comes back, you know. I mean you said, you said it
feels good. You're absolutely right. It lowers your blood pressure, It reduces
your stress hormone, your cortisol. When you have less stress, you do
everything better. You do feel better when you interact with nature, even for
just fifteen minutes a day, and if anybody have to do it every day,
and the only way to do that is to live with it, right.
And there's there's good data on this too. I mean, there's a
number of research papers on how having even just a park or at a little
garden nearby, like makes even just to be exposed to it for twenty minutes,
like they take up there at work, they take a break, they
go into the courtyard of their office building whatever, and there's a native plant
garden there or whatever. It makes them feel better. It's a nice spot
to relax and see what's going on and focus on, you know, what's
blooming, what's producing seed, what insects are out there? What did you
see a new bird come by? That kind of thing. Yeah, it's
we can do it from a selfish perspective. You know, it's going to
make us happier, it's going to make us healthier. It's going to give
us a longer period of the residency on this planet. Like you say,
why wouldn't we do that? You know? Yeah, yeah, it's it's
good stuff. Man. Well, anyway, so I want to talk about
the most recent book you put out right. That's the Oak Book. Is
that correct? That's right? Yeah, The Nature of oaks. Yeah,
and so why did you focus on oaks? Because they a lot of people
don't realize how many species there are, how much diversity there there is,
and also why they're so important ecologically. That's why I read the book,
right, right, So let's talk about that. Why are they so important
ecologically. What's going on with oaks. You know, there's something we call
keystone species, and so that's the species that has an outsized effect on its
local ecosystem. Oaks or keystone plants because they are they're passing on more energy
to the local food web than any other type of plant, and they're doing
that by supporting more species of caterpillars than any other type of plant, over
nine hundred and fifty species nationwide. So in I live in the Mid Atlantic
States here where oaks support five hundred and fifty seven species of caterpillars compared to
a toolip tree, which is a good native plant, but it only supports
twenty one. So there's there's a huge difference between the keystone plant genera and
all the others in terms that just fourteen percent of our native plants are making
ninety percent of the caterpillars that run our food web, and oaks are the
number one caterpillar producer in eighty four percent of the counties in which they occur.
That's one of the things they do. They also they protect the watershed
because they've got huge root systems, they've got big canopies that keep the ground
from being compacted by heavy rain. There's sequestering more carbon than other plant,
so they're helping climate change. And they even pass on their pollen. They're
wind pollinated. But there are bees, even so specialists, bees that only
reproduce on oak pollen. Oh my god, I had no idea. Yeah
I didn't either. You write a book, that's something need to learn about
these things. So out of the four things every landscape has to do and
that support a food web, support pollinators, sequestra carbon, and manage the
watershed, oaks do it three of those better than any other plant. And
they're still helping the pollinators. So people like you say, people don't know
that. So you know, the real reason I wrote the book is because
my wife told me to you need to write a book about oaks. You
really, I mean someone needed to. I remember, you know, I
was obsessed with oaks twelve years ago when I was living in California. I
first got into plants through conifers, and then I really nerded out on native
cypress species because California is like twelve different species of cypresses, and some of
them are geologically constricted, so they're endemic to a certain geology and I think
there's a couple that have cool butterflies, you know, like Takaate cypers a,
the Takati cypress and Sergeant cypress, especially if you know their they're host
specific for their butterflies. But but then I got into oaks because everywhere I
would go to look at cypresses, they were cool. Oaks in California has
a ton of cool fucking oak diversity too, like really narrow ones. You
got that Corcus tomentola that island oak, which is just fucking gorgeous. Man
Corcus crust with that yellow fights. But anyway, so but I couldn't find
a good book on oaks. There weren't any. This is ten years ago.
So when did this come out? When the ones you just wrote right
come out? Oh? Got I gotta get you got an audiobook version two?
I do? Yeah? Is it? Is it you? I shouldn't
say it's timber Press. It has yeah? Yeah, Oh timber Press is
good? Wait is it you reading the audiobook? Though? No, they
wouldn't let me do that. They hired a guy. He's good. He
did a good job. Is that me? Okay? Anyway, so sorry,
what were you going to say? Just now? I disagree with your
caraful. California's got some some super oaks. Next thing, you have to
get into the galls that are on California oaks. Oh my god, they're
the coolest in the whole country. Tell me about those water that what makes
they look like? Well, galls are made by little wasps in the family
synipity uh, and there are worldwide, there's about a thousand species of snippis
making galls on oaks. But in this country, you know many hundred.
You can have a single tree with seventy species of galls on it. So
snippets get on a few other plants, but it's it's really a relationship with
with oaks. And they're opterans basically like the rym, a little wasp,
and when they lay an egg in the bud, they're injecting that Along with
the egg, they're injecting that bud with plant hormones that create the the It
directs the growth of those they're essentially stem cells. They're aristomatics in the bud
and they can go in any direction. So the gall that results is a
compromise between the plant hormones that the okhaz and the plant hormones that the snippets
injecting in, and it's a species specific shape and color, so you can
look at the at the gall and know exactly what the species of gall are
inside it. Good man, you are you're going to send me down a
wormhole. This is this is amazing. I had no idea because I would
see those I'd see those galls all the time, and they're just especially on
Quircus lobata, you know, the valley oak, you know, with those
pendent branches, and and I would just be like, what that you know?
And I know, okay, it's a gall, but I didn't know
how cool and intricate this relationship was. Well, yeah, it's even cooler
than that because galls host more species of parasitoids other types of wass than any
other type of insect. Oh my god, they're clobbered by these things.
If you if you get a gall and you rear out, whatever's going to
come out of that gall, nine times out of ten it's not the gall.
It's a parasitoid that hit that galler. So all the things that gallers
do to avoid being parasitized are really clever, and one of them is to
make their goals hollow, so they're in the very center of it. Then
there's this big space between where they are and the outside of the gal and
that space has to be bigger than the length of the ovalpositor of the parasitoids
that are trying to reach them, So that explains the gall morphology. Or
they'll have a whole bunch of vacant chambers. So in a single goal there
could be twenty chambers and the goal galler is only in one, but the
parasitoid doesn't know which one it's in. This so this is the result of
this evolutionary arms race space. There's been an evolutionary arms between the parasitoids and
the gal wasps themselves. Right, so much diversity, man, that's so
cool. Do you get them? Do you get I mean, but you
get goal wasps all over the all over North America. Right, It's just
that California has a lot of diversity. Yeah, for some reason, California
is gulls there. A lot of them are pink or red. They're really
pretty. Yeah, we've got pretty gals too, but it's you know,
it's not as cool as the California gals. There's a guy named Tim Boomer
in California. Who's He's got a website where he's taking pictures of California galls.
He keeps doing it. You should go and check check that out.
They're really fantastic. How do you spell his name? Boomer b o O
M E R Okay, just like it sounds and so and so nipid wasp
You spell C Y N I P I D for anybody that wants to look
it up. Right. So all this stuff, I mean, this is
I mean, there's again you're creating a classroom in a in a yard,
in a native plant guarden. I mean, what would be in terms of
designing cities like I've always wondered about, why don't they just I mean the
ideal city for me would be one with a ton of public transit density.
Uh, you know, cars can still get in, trucks can still get
in to make deliveries. But it's you know, it's it's the streets are
not given over to them, you know what I mean. It's not just
a refail for cars. It's more inviting the bikes, pedestrians. And then
you know every three or four blocks there's like a native plant garden or a
park or just even like you know, say turf for people that want to
play sports or something. I mean, things could be so much different.
And this is what you see in Europe's you know, if you go to
Europe or certain countries in Europe. I just do you do you see this
ever coming to an end? I mean, I know it will at some
point, but do you ever see it coming to a hopeful end where you
know, cities realize that this is not the way to do it. Maybe
the younger generation, I think, knows how bleak this this car landscape can
be. You see it. I think we're moving in the right direction.
The needle's not moving very quickly, but it is headed in the right direction
right now. In a typical US urban center, cement is the default landscape.
So that makes it really hard to get around. So we've we've got
to minimize the amount of cement were using. There are studies that show very
clearly prime goes down when you have trees in your city. So it's not
a place where the badman's going to hide behind. There's simply fewer bad men.
You know, they're they're they're not not feeling bad, So getting not
only do the he of heat island effect. But it's lower crime, lower
social stress. Lots of things are are good. Things are happening when you
get plants back at the city. So how do you how do you do
that? You know, the old model is you hire a horticulturists. The
city planner is, you know, the all the plants are picked by horticulturists
and they're trained to pick exotic plants from China. So that's part of this
culture change to realize there's this this urban legend that native plants won't grow in
cities. Well, we've made our city conditions so rigorous. You know,
they're they're really hot, they're really dry. You've taken what often is acidic
soils and turn them highly basic. Say, see, our native plants won't
do that well. There are native plants to do well in basic soils,
and there are native plants that do well on cliff sides and things. It
probably won't be the plants that was exactly on that site when you built the
city, but we still can have a native dominated landscape that does support the
life that would welcome the birds in. We did. My granddaughter and I
just walked around Portland, Oregon. Portland Oregon the greenest city in the country,
at least they say they are ninety two percent of the trees. And
Portland, Oregon on the street trees are non native. That's crazy. So
you know, it's they just don't know. They don't. It's part of
this culture change of getting to recognize that plant choice matters. It matters on
all levels. It matters in public spaces, it matters in private spaces.
And when this becomes part of our culture, these transitions will happen more quickly,
and they are starting to do you know, don't give up right right.
I always tell people too, like the native thing is just about ecology
and appreciating where you live, not trying to pretend to you're someplace ells,
not trying to pretend you live somewhere else. You know, in California for
instance, you know, and even down here in Texas you always see people
planting palm trees, not never the native palms. There's one species of native
palm here in South Texas. There's one you know, washingtoni ifilyff a native
in southern California. There's always this idea, we're gonna pretend we're in paradise.
Why do we plant palm trees. They don't see quest so much carbon,
they don't provide much shade, but you know, they they they they're
emblematic of paradise, right, Why not plant the natives? I mean,
when I lived in Oakland, there was you know, I was going around
planting cypresses. They were native to the state, not immediately native to the
region. They weren't obviously local ecotype. But I'm not I don't think that's
that important. I think it matters depending on what species, but regardless,
but natives. You know, these these native cypresses would grow fast. They
were they were tolerant of the Mediterranean climate, the the you know, rainless
summers, and I would plant those. And then I looked at the plant
list once in Oakland and none of the plants were native, like they ginkos,
like all these things that need summer water. I was like, who
have fuck designed the plant list for the city of Oakland. It's so backwards.
It's like out of a nineteen seventies, you know, horticulture class at
a community college just totally tone off to natives. I imagine that's changed a
little bit, but blew my mind, not too much. You know,
a lot of people live in the San Francisco area came from the east.
So what do they plant Eastern trees? Yeah, sweekam in sycamore and all
these things that you know. Yeah, they're native to North America, but
they they are outside of their ecosystem, right. Oh yeah, it's okay.
We can just water them. We'll just water them a lot, you
know. Yeah, but they're also not doing they're not doing what they would
do in their native range. We compared what red oaks are doing in Portland,
Oregon, in terms of supporting those caterpillars versus Pennsylvania where they belong.
You know, in Pennsylvania one of the top producing trees in Portland. Nothing,
absolutely nothing uses them. Oh god, same same species. So it's
plans drest. Like you say, appreciate where you are. When I fly
into Denver, it looks like Philadelphia because of all the Eastern trees that everybody's
planet. Yeah, that's nuts. And they don't have the water. They
don't have the water to do it. It's it's it's crazy to me too,
because when you do that, you're depriving kids that grow up there of
learning about what that land is and what it was like for millions of years
before they were born and what evolved there. I mean, you're depriving them.
You know, that whole theory of shifting baselines where the generation coming up
has no idea that what they're missing out on. They think what they're growing
up with is normal. And then we wonder why people are so disconnected from
nature, and you know, anxiety and depression are so rampant, et cetera.
So anyway, do you got do you got recommendations you'd like to give
people for killing their law, for basically doing what you did. I'm going
to I'm going to change the language a little bit. I I We've got
forty four million acres of law. I'd like to start by cutting that in
half. So, yeah, you got to kill half of it. But
lon is you know, we're trying to blend in with the culture. We
don't want to be thrown out of our neighborhoods and everything else. And law
is a great queue for care. It's a perfect plant to walk on because
you walk on it without killing it. So I'd say start by cutting the
area of lon in half. You don't want Thomas Reener says, you don't
want to wall to wall carpeting of lawn. You want area rugs and the
law that you retain. You're going to mow it, and it's going to
be you know, it's going to convince your neighbor that you know, you
get it. You're you're not a rebel here. You're just going to have
more plants when we get when we when we really reach that that twenty million
acre halfway mark, then we can cut that in half. But right,
I assue what you're saying. So, yeah, water it down a little
bit. Get that gets people into it more slowly, not the you know
I mean, because I tend to be pretty loud and somewhat aggressive about it,
and that works for me. But also there's people we want to reach
everyone. There's people we want to want to reach. Everyone might not be
they what am I going to do? They don't you know, And it's
a new concept too, So just start small, maybe develop a little bed,
a little eight by four bed. I was at a a woman's house
in the suburbs of Chicago, real, like, you know, a place
that like I'd get run out of basically you know, real uh relatively you
know, higher class, and but she had even you know, she was
a native plant enthusdays. She just killed a little mattress sized bed and filled
it with a diversity of native plants, super dense native prairie plants, and
it was so cool. I was like, this is a perfect this is
a perfect gateway for someone who's not ready yet, who doesn't you know,
doesn't have much time, probably doesn't want to hire a landscape. You just
kill a little bit, remove a little bit, put natives in there,
and then bit by bit, you know, they'll see that all the cool
insects come back, et cetera, and they'll be like, oh, maybe
eventually they'll it'll start spreading. But I like that of easing, that idea
of easing people into it, you know, right, pocket prairies, Yeah,
a pocket prairri Yeah. And it's still it still does a lot.
So well, anyway, how much you got it? You got some time
still because we can I mean, we could keep going, but I can
tell you kind of you got to get going or what. Yeah, I've
got I've got a whole bunch of things coming up this afternoon. We can
do it again. Sometimes this is probably a better better alternatives. Yeah,
I'd love to, I'd love to pick your brain more about entomology related stuff
and you know things you've noticed. But anyway, I really appreciate your time.
And I guess where can people check out? You got a website or
what? Yeah, one thing we didn't talk about is we've got a small
nonprofit called Homegrown National Park. So you can go to Homegrown Nationalpark dot org.
And the idea is to get the message that everybody is responsible for good
earth stewardship because everybody needs good earth stewardship. We want that message to go
viral. So this whole nonprofit is designed to reach what we call the non
choir. You know, no people like you and me who already are bought
into it. We want to reach the person who doesn't have a clue.
And that's a challenge. So you know, you need social media, you
need all these things. But Homegown Nationalpark dot org will be our website and
it's a it's a source of the information you need to actually do this stuff.
And by the way, you can join Homegow National Park for free.
So why not. This is a nice This is a nice website. Get
on the map, that's great, and do you for resources for native plant
sources through you know, native plant nurseries, growers stuff like that throughout the
US. You got any uh, you got any recommendations? Do you have
something like that on the site or what we have We have the beginnings of
that. It's not what we want to do is create an exhaustive county by
county resource list, and we're a long way from doing that. But you
might check out Native Plant Finder on National Wildlife National Wildlife Federation website because they're
trying to do the same thing. We want people to be able to get
to uh a local grower easily. Uh and and so that information is becoming
more and more available. But you know, the Google is great. Just
put in native plant nurseries in your county and they will pop up. Yeah,
yeah, yeah. And I think you know what's cool too about the
native plant movement is is just backyard growers are how so many nurseries have started.
You know, some guy got interested, some person got interested in native
plants, grew a bunch in their backyard. As demand grew, they expanded
their operation, and eventually it becomes you know, they open up a retail
shop or just the mail order or something. I mean, it's I always
tell people to. Another thing to do is, uh, just go on
I Naturalist and just you know, type in, use the explore feature,
type in you know, plants or whatever for the the uh in the in
the tax on field, and then you know your local county uh in the
location field and just see what comes up. And you know you'll get some
non native invasives marked on there too, because there are what have been observed,
but you'll see all the natives as well. So this is a great
thing, really nice looking website. Man, this is great, so good.
Nice and you got a number of talks online too, people can watch
on YouTube, all of which I recommend. So great, great man.
All right, well thanks a lot, Doug. I appreciate it. Okay,
good luck to you. Okay, take care, bye bye bye.
Kay. I was gonna wait to give the sign out until he hung up,
so I don't offend him. You know, I'm really glad he was
even willing to come on the podcast, which seems a little low brow for
him, but still, uh, fucking great dude. Check out his stuff
if you get a chance. You know, they got a lot of YouTube
presentations you can go look up you listen to those. You know, got
an hour, hour and a half long of these presentations, he talks about
all this stuff and goes more in depth about it, so, uh,
you know it's it's certainly been making me more of an entomologist anyway, Thanks
for listening. Sorry was only an hour. Wish it could have been longer,
but dude's gotta go and I do as well. So that's all I
got if you want to. Oh yeah, I'm I'm selling shirts. I've
been screen printing in a garage, in a sanctity of the garage. I
got some of those Payote Botanical illustration shirts, I got kill your Lawn shirts,
and I got a number of other designs. Let's see, I got
that Mico Heterotrophy Mico Heterotrophy T shirt, just the regular Crime Pays T shirt,
et cetera. So I think they're selling mostly for thirty two bucks.
Each comes with a couple of stickers. If you want me to draw something
like a little like golf ball size drawing on a back somewhere somewhere inconspicuous,
you know, kind of like a little autograph or doodle or whatever the fuck,
just let me know. Just you can venmo me or just email me.
Crime pays a bot and he doesn't it Gmail. I'll give you the
deets on that, but it sure does help support me and this podcast and
all this shit that I do. And you know, they're nice. They're
nice looking shirts screen printed by me in the saying the tea at a garage.
So and if you don't want to do that, Bonfires got them too.
Uh. They got a lot more designs up on the Bonfire website,
which I think is just Bonfire slash Crime Pays a bonding, doesn't. I
don't fucking know who knows what it is. And then I got those those
heavy embroidered killer Lawn shirts. Look at his howking all the merch like a
sleeze, like a salesman. Those heavy, heavy, oversized tied I with
the embroidered killer lawn and yellow is on the Crime Pays website too. There's
a link on air. So anyway, that's all I got. Thanks for
listening to Heavy the rest of your day, even in the morning. Whatever,
fuck go fuck yourself by