Call To Action: Say NO to Lawns
By reversing detrimental human changes to the environment, habitat restoration conserves biodiversity and promotes ecosystem functioning. Lawns are often not biodiverse and offer few resources to pollinating insects. Let native wildflowers bloom to help your pollinating neighbors! The team at Wild Wonder encourages you to build your own prairie, and if you live in the Potter-Walsh Neighborhood, we can help you build your own paradise for absolutely no cost.
Before Restoration:
Wild Wonder Community Prairie Garden Lawn
Private front yard Lawn
After multi-year Restoration:
Wild Wonder Community Prairie Garden
Prairie restoration in private front yard
This can be your front yard. Please email: wildwondergarden@gmail.com
The Decline of the North American Prairie:
The ocean of flowers painting the expanse of the North American prairie provide critical resources for pollinators, yet they are unfortunately North America’s most endangered ecosystem. Only 4% of the original North American prairie exists. Despite this, there is a lot of opportunity for prairie restoration in North America’s surplus of abandoned farmland, near roadways, and also residential property. Prairies were converted into agricultural and urban land. This large scale land-use change altered prairie seed banks and suppressed important disturbance regimes such as wild fire and bison foraging. Indigenous peoples’ hunting practices of bison in North America often involved fire, which also served to be a good management practice of the North American Prairie. The extirpation of indigenous people played a key role in the conversion and decline of this important ecosystem.
Reintroduction of keystone species like bison and disturbance regimes like prescribed burns are only practical in large scale restoration efforts.
Brandon Latorre administering prescribed burns at the Kellogg Biological Station Experimental Prairies
Insect Decline:
The need to restore ecosystems to promote animal populations, particularly pollinators, has never been more important. It is estimated that an average of ~1% of terrestrial insect species are declining yearly worldwide. Decreases in bee species richness are evident in GBIF occurrence records, with 25% fewer species in recent decades compared to before. Declines in insect abundance and richness will undoubtedly have cascading trophic effects on ecosystems and will compromise acquisition of various ecosystem services, including pollinator functions by pollinating insects.
Nutrition/Economic Insecurity:
Up to five billion people will experience decreased nutrition as a result of insufficient pollination. The worldwide importance of pollination is well known: ~90% of flowering plants at least benefit from pollinator services. Providing good quality habitat for these organisms is of high priority in the attempt to help mitigate biodiversity loss and secure food safety. Thirty-five percent of global food supply depends on pollinator functioning and the total economic value of worldwide pollination was estimated to be about 190 billion USD. Habitat restoration provides an avenue for recovery, and can be implemented locally.
More Educational Insights and References Cited
Chaplin-Kramer, R., Sharp, R. P., Weil, C., Bennett, E. M., Pascual, U., Arkema, K. K., … & Daily, G. C. (2019). Global modeling of nature’s contributions to people. Science, 366(6462), 255-258.
Samson, F. B., & Knopf, F. L. (Eds.). (1996). Prairie conservation: preserving North America’s most endangered ecosystem. Island Press.
Roos, C. I., Zedeño, M. N., Hollenback, K. L., & Erlick, M. M. (2018). Indigenous impacts on North American Great Plains fire regimes of the past millennium. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(32), 8143-8148.
Hallmann, C. A., Sorg, M., Jongejans, E., Siepel, H., Hofland, N., Schwan, H., … & de Kroon, H. (2017). More than 75 percent decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas. PloS one, 12(10), e0185809.
Ollerton, J., Winfree, R., & Tarrant, S. (2011). How many flowering plants are pollinated by animals?. Oikos, 120(3), 321-326.
Potts, S. G., Biesmeijer, J. C., Kremen, C., Neumann, P., Schweiger, O., & Kunin, W. E. (2010). Global pollinator declines: trends, impacts and drivers. Trends in ecology & evolution, 25(6), 345-353.
Van Klink, R., Bowler, D. E., Gongalsky, K. B., Swengel, A. B., Gentile, A., & Chase, J. M. (2020). Meta-analysis reveals declines in terrestrial but increases in freshwater insect abundances. Science, 368(6489), 417-420.
Wepprich, T., Adrion, J. R., Ries, L., Wiedmann, J., & Haddad, N. M. (2019). Butterfly abundance declines over 20 years of systematic monitoring in Ohio, USA. PLoS One, 14(7), e0216270.
Zattara, E. E., & Aizen, M. A. (2021). Worldwide occurrence records suggest a global decline in bee species richness. One Earth, 4(1), 114-123.
Gallai, N., Salles, J. M., Settele, J., & Vaissière, B. E. (2009). Economic valuation of the vulnerability of world agriculture confronted with pollinator decline. Ecological economics, 68(3), 810-821.
Queiroz, C., Beilin, R., Folke, C., & Lindborg, R. (2014). Farmland abandonment: threat or opportunity for biodiversity conservation? A global review. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 12(5), 288-296.
Suding, K. N. (2011). Toward an era of restoration in ecology: successes, failures, and opportunities ahead. Annual review of ecology, evolution, and systematics, 42.