Silent Spring in China and USA - Let's Lose the Lawn

I was just reading in ASLA that Under the Dome is a new Chinese documentary film that exposes the extent of environmental pollution crisis in China. Reviewers call it to China's version of "Silent Spring." The fact-based documentary points to a corrupt government for turning a blind eye and a taking a weak stance where environmental laws are concerned.

After I read it I wondered, why are we pointing fingers at China when we are causing environmental destruction of an unprecedented scale in this country? I guess because we can say our heightened regulations have made our air cleaner than China's air, but what about our water and soil?

Harbin City in China                                                            Photo from Reuters

At least China does not allow GMO food while the United States does. GMO crops were engineered to withstand massive amounts of herbicides compared to traditional crops. Glyphosate, is one of the ingredients in most herbicide formulations, and may be not the most toxic ingredient, but certainly the most studied one. Recent studies have found that glyphosate is a "probable carcinogen" because of tumors and mutated cells that form in mice and rats after exposure. In our country, Monarch butterfly populations (90% less from the Xerces Society) and numbers of songbirds have plummeted, some species by 94%, since these crops have been grown. I am not suggesting a straight cause and effect, but clearly we are doing things wrong environmentally and GMO crops are contributing.

Neonicotinoid use on hundreds of millions of acres of US croplands have also affected honeybee, insect, and native bee populations. Once these chemicals run off into soil and streams they kill invertebrate populations, which are the base of the food chain for all animal life in this country.  China may be a disaster environmentally but WE are also having a Silent Spring here in the United States. The film questions the protection the Chinese government has given its people. When will OUR government protect the health of our natural resources and its people?

What can we do besides throw our hands up in despair?

We can do something.

Think about what typical suburban landscapes look like. Most contain lots of lawn and trimmed, non-blooming and non-native shrubs (see below). There is not much here of any value for bees, butterflies, or any organism that needs nectar and/or pollen to live. Birds would have a difficult time too since the insects they need in the spring to feed their babies are not here. There is cover here, to be sure, but not the cover native birds evolved with, and these are not the plants they need to thrive. Our birds, our bees, and our native plants species evolved together, and are closely linked. By not planting natives or high wildlife value plants, the reproductive fitness of subsequent generations of birds, bees, and butterflies will suffer.

Wildlife Wasteland

It also goes both ways.

As native bee populations dwindle, so do certain native plants that require specific species of bees to pollinate them in order to produce seeds. Take, for example the specialist squash bees, in the tribe Eucerini, Peponapis pruinosa and Xenoglossa spp. These bees are efficient pollinators of members of the squash family or Curcubitaceae. Widespread collapse of pollinators makes us in danger of losing some native plants to extinction. Ecosystems are a series of interconnected species and when you remove a species or severely impact it, other species will always suffer through either direct or indirect ways.

Peponapis pruinosa on squash                                                                                                                   Photo by Sharon Reeve

A paper by Cristina Milesi et al. 2005 estimated there is potentially 40,475,860 acres of lawn (163,800 sq. km) in the United States. It is estimated by the U.S. Census that 1.6 million new homes are added, on average, per year. A national gardening survey by B. W. Butterfield in 1999 found 47% of households had lawns. American Housing Survey found an average lot size of 5,227 ft2 in urban lawns, which are the smallest size compared to suburban lawns and lawns of larger country homes. Using this smaller estimate, we can extrapolate that if 1.6 million homes have been added per year since 2005, then in 2015 we have, conservatively, 41,378,496 acres of lawn in the United States. According to the EPA, in 2012, 914 million acres, of land in the U.S. is farm land. Farm land acreage is trending down, while home development acreage is trending up, so these figures are easily greater for the lawn acreage.

The size of our collective lawns makes up an 18th of the size of our farmland. It is difficult to grasp just how big almost 50 million acres of lawn is and just how influential it could be to saving our native flora and fauna. I can kind of visualize one to ten acres, but 50 million? It is hard to wrap your head around a number that big. In square miles this is 78,125 square miles which is roughly the size of the State of Minnesota.

Total lawn area in the US is roughly the size of Minnesota

To give you some idea on the value of native plants, Doug Tallamy, a highly respected entomologist from UC Delaware did an informal study in his backyard comparing two species of trees. This is a small study of n=2, that was repeated for verification, but the results are compelling, and make an excellent case for substituting natives for non-native plants. Dr. Tallamy counted the number of caterpillars at head height on a native white oak and a non-native Bradford pear of roughly the same stature. The next day he repeated the experiment with two new trees, again a white oak and a Bradford pear. The experiment was simple but the results were astounding! He found, on average, 321.5 species of caterpillars on the the oak while only one on the non-native tree. I trust the veracity of his data, even on small relaxed studies such as this because he has authored many other more formal, and statistically robust scientific studies.

It is well documented how valuable native oaks are to many species of wildlife. They seem to trump all other plants in the scope of species they support, whether through sustenance, or through providing sites for lodging, or nesting. In my own backyard I have one 25 year-old native live oak, Quercus agrifolia. I have many other larger and non-native trees. I am always astounded by how the birds all seem to chose the oak. Just the other day, I saw a Nuttall's woodpecker pecking the bark, many hummingbirds hawking insects among the branches, and a pair of bushtits busily constructing their hanging nest. I saw all of this within 5 minutes. There is no such comparable activity in my non-native trees. Oaks create their own ecosystem.

This brings me to the main point of my ramble, if you want to help correct the downward spiral of species loss in the United States--lose your lawn. Here are some photos demonstrating how much more visually interesting, and certainly more active with wildlife, the front of your house could be when planted with native plants.

Before Natives

After Natives

Theodore payne Garden Tour 2015

Garden by Stephanie Blanc                                                                                                             Photo by Steve Gunther Sunset Gardens

Waterwise Landscapes

LA Times Blog

These examples are all typical urban or suburban front yards, and while not all of the plants are native, most have value that offers something to wildlife in the garden beyond a trimmed monoculture of lawn grass. Unlike lawns, and to compound the benefits of planting native plants, they typically require less water and zero chemical inputs. Ideally, the most benefit comes from a palette of locally abundant native plants that are found naturally in wild places nearby. Imagine the difference we could make if every yard in America had at least one locally found native plant! My new slogan is, "A Native Plant in Every Yard." Or better yet, "A Native Oak in Every Yard!"

Together we can make it happen by losing our lawns. Together we can bring back the wildlife.