After we realized the activity we want to engage in while practicing awareness is capturing and sequestering carbon (these terms can get very complex, whereas we simply want to plant things that will keep the carbon in the ground rather than the atmosphere), it seemed as if I was finally going to be able to pursue a lifelong passion—bamboo. Apparently, bamboo is even better at capturing carbon than are trees. I was so excited. I love bamboo. Every type, shape, color, size—never met one I didn’t like. Dream come true!
However, that excitement was short-lived. I soon learned that there are no types of bamboo native to our part of Washington. Now, you can meet lots of people, plant people, really educated plant people, gardeners, organic gardeners who will assure a person that it’s not critical, not even necessary, to avoid non-native species. Yes, it is.
It’s true that a person can plant a mixture of native and non-native species and the non-native are not likely to “take over.” But that’s not the point. What we’ve learned is that pretty as they likely are, which is why increasingly people plant only non-native species, the insects, the butterflies, and the birds can’t survive with non-native plants. Everything in an eco-system has taken eons and eons to evolve. That insect, that caterpillar, that particular plant has very specific requirements. Birds won’t eat the insects living on an Asian ornamental plant. We see them all as insects, but to the bird that’s not food. If they nest in certain trees and all those trees are cut down, they have nowhere to nest. They can’t, like those of us who are privileged, just move to another neighborhood if the old one no longer serves. They die.
A horrifying example of this is the Monarch butterfly. From Wikipedia: The monarch butterfly or simply monarch is a milkweed butterfly. Other common names, depending on region, include milkweed, common tiger, wanderer, and black veined brown. It may be the most familiar North American butterfly and is considered an iconic pollinator species. Please read about this fascinating creature, truly a marvel of nature. Then consider what they—and we—are up against.
From the Wildlife Federation website: The monarch population has declined by approximately 90 percent since the 1990s. Monarchs face habitat loss and fragmentation in the United States and Mexico. For example, over 90 percent of the grassland ecosystems along the eastern monarch’s central migratory flyway corridor have been lost, converted to intensive agriculture or urban development. Pesticides are also a danger. Herbicides kill both native nectar plants where adult monarchs feed, as well as the milkweed their caterpillars need as host plants. Insecticides kill the monarchs themselves. Climate change alters the timing of migration as well as weather patterns, posing a risk to monarchs during migration and while overwintering. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service is currently reviewing the species’ status.
This is what we want to assist in interrupting. There’s a world of guidance on how we can assist, from digging up our lawns—horribly destructive on every leve,l from water usage and pollution to pesticides to taking up the land space native plants and pollinators need—to growing what our endangered friends need to survive to making different choices about what we purchase and eat. For all of us interested in this, we’re going to have a chance to learn more and begin to take steps, whether it is indeed ripping out lawns or planting containers on an apartment patio. As the new practice home develops, everyone wishing to can practice right along, all of us hopeful of a time when we can be physically together once again. Oh, and speaking of that, this place is about two or two and a half hours from the SeaTac airport on good roads!