Dr. Douglas Tallamy will be featured during the Roger Tory Peterson’s Wild America Nature Festival at Panama Rocks July 29-30. Tallamy is a professor in the Department of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Delaware.

Editor’s Note: This is the fifth in a series of stories in advance of the Wild America Nature Festival to be held July 29-30 at Panama Rocks.

What if you could plant flowers, trees and shrubs that made your yard the envy of the neighborhood and created an ecosystem that helped protect local wildlife and attract birds and butterflies? Attend Roger Tory Peterson’s Wild America Nature Festival at Panama Rocks July 29-30 and you can learn how to Bring Nature Home in your backyard.

The Wild America Nature Festival is proud to feature the nation’s leading expert on native plants and biodiversity, Dr. Douglas Tallamy, is sponsored through a generous grant from the Chautauqua Region Community Foundation.

Dr. Tallamy is a professor in the Department of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Delaware where he has researched the relationship between insects and plants and how it impacts the diversity of animal communities. Tallamy won the Silver Medal from the Garden Writer’s Association for his book, “Bringing Nature Home: How You Can Sustain Wildlife With Native Plants” (2007), which has been among the top four best-selling books on Amazon in the Landscape category for the last 10 years. Bringing Nature Home has sparked a national conversation about the link between healthy local ecosystems and human well-being.

This region is rich with natural beauty; places that draw residents and visitors outdoors to enjoy scenic views and a myriad of recreational opportunities whether they be right in our backyards or a bit further from our residential areas; however, issues such as poor landscaping decisions, the distribution of non-native or even invasive species, and excessive use of pesticides and fertilizers have negative impacts on the plants and animals that keep our local ecosystems functioning. Our local biodiversity, the community of organisms and species that jointly form our ‘nature,’ depend on increasingly changed and impacted, developed areas.

Native plants and native insects have co-evolved alongside one another and have relationships that do not exist with non-native plants. If you don’t have the right host plants around you won’t see certain butterflies, such as Monarch butterflies whose caterpillars can only eat milkweed. Invasive plants such as Garlic Mustard, Common Reed and Japanese Knotweed, are widespread in our area but do more harm than good to local ecosystems because they aren’t used as food or shelter by native insects and animals while they crowd out valuable native plants. Our lawns fall in that category as well, as they provide little for native birds, bees and butterflies, but may attract less desirable visitors in large numbers (e.g. Canada Geese).

There are many benefits to planting and sustaining native plants, chief among them being a more resilient ecosystem. For example, a flower bed or planted berm with a variety of different plants that each extend their roots to different depths can absorb stormwater runoff much more efficiently than a lawn, which only roots a few inches below the surface. In addition, a variety of native plants and flowers provide shelter and food for a variety of different animals, many of which are often closely tied to a specific plant. In this manner, biodiversity generates more biodiversity.

Dr. Tallamy’s research has shown that the number of animals in an area such as birds, fish and amphibians is directly tied to the number of insects in the area because insects are an important food source for these animals. In turn, the number of insects in an area is tied to the number of native plants and biodiversity in an area.

Maintaining healthy habitats that support a wide variety of native species will benefit pollinators that help pollinate your backyard flowers, gardens and local farms. They provide birds with healthy, nutritious seeds and berries so they can better survive their arduous journey to their wintering grounds and return again to your backyard next year.

They absorb pollutants and potentially damaging stormwater runoff, absorb and sequester carbon dioxide and produce oxygen, and add to the beautiful complexity of a natural area that has benefits for your attention span, mental health and overall well-being.

At the Wild America Nature Festival, Dr. Tallamy will discuss how the specialized relationships between animals and plants are the norm in nature rather than the exception, why specialized food relationships determine the stability and complexity of the local food webs that support animal diversity, why our yards and gardens are essential parts of the ecosystems that sustain us, how we can use our residential landscapes to connect the isolated habitat fragments around us and produce valuable ecosystem services and what we can do to make our landscapes living ecosystems once again.

The Wild America Nature Festival will also feature guest speaker Michael Phillips, expert on holistic agriculture and author of “The Apple Grower: A Guide for the Organic Orchardist” (1998), “The Holistic Orchard: Tree Fruits and Berries the Biological Way” (2012) and “Mycorrhizal Planet: How Fungi and Plants Work Together to Create Dynamic Soils” (2017); 40-plus juried artists will participate in the festival’s Nature Fine Art & Craft Show; The White Carrot, Labyrinth Press Company, Reverie Creamery, Green Heron Growers, and Superfresh! Organic Cafe will serve locally-sourced food in the festival’s Local Food Cook-Off; RTPI, Jamestown Audubon, Wild Spirit Education, American Hawkeye, and the Erie Zoo will present live animals; Steel Rails, Davis and Eng, and Ellen Paquette will play original and traditional folk music; and there will be many more fun activities for all ages. Detailed information is available online at www.wildamericafest.com.