Prospect Heights Natural Resources Commission

November 19th, 2020 - Dr. Doug Tallamy

7:00-8:30 PM - “Nature's Best Hope”

Please join us as we welcome the celebrated Author, Educator, Researcher and Naturalist, Dr. Doug Tallamy as he gives his presentation "Nature's Best Hope".

Recent headlines about global insect declines and three billion fewer birds in North America are a bleak reality check about how ineffective our current landscape designs have been at sustaining the plants and animals that sustain us.

Such losses are not an option if we wish to continue our current standard of living on Planet Earth.

The good news is that none of this is inevitable.

Tallamy will discuss simple steps that each of us can- and must- take to reverse declining biodiversity and will explain why we, ourselves, are nature’s best hope.

Photo by Rob Cardillo

Bluejay on the way home with dinner

To create landscapes that enhance local ecosystems rather than degrade them, we must add the native plant communities that sustain food webs, sequester carbon, maintain diverse native bee communities, and manage our watersheds.

If you do this in half of the area now in lawn, you can help create Home-grown National Park, a 20 million acre network of viable habitats that will provide vital corridors connecting the few natural areas that remain.

This approach to conservation empowers you to play a significant role in the future of the natural world. You are truly nature’s best hope!

Doug Tallamy is a professor in the Department of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Delaware, where he has authored 103 research publications and has taught insect related courses for 40 years. Chief among his research goals is to better understand the many ways insects interact with plants and how such interactions determine the diversity of animal communities.

His book Bringing Nature Home: How Native Plants Sustain Wildlife in Our Gardens was published by Timber Press in 2007 and was awarded the 2008 Silver Medal by the Garden Writers' Association. The Living Landscape, co-authored with Rick Darke, was published in 2014.

Doug's new book 'Nature's Best Hope' released by Timber Press in February 2020, is a New York Times Best Seller. Among his awards are the Garden Club of America Margaret Douglas Medal for Conservation and the Tom Dodd, Jr. Award of Excellence, the 2018 AHS B.Y. Morrison Communication Award and the 2019 Cynthia Westcott Scientific Writing Award.