{"id":29728,"date":"2017-04-18T12:15:24","date_gmt":"2017-04-18T16:15:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/huntsville.dopperonline.ca\/?p=29728"},"modified":"2017-04-18T17:25:14","modified_gmt":"2017-04-18T21:25:14","slug":"native-plants-for-native-pollinators","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/doppleronline.ca\/huntsville\/native-plants-for-native-pollinators\/","title":{"rendered":"Native plants for native pollinators – Commentary"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Heather Van Duuren<\/em><\/p>\n

We’ve all heard that pollinators are in trouble. Most of us know about colony collapse and the dwindling monarch butterfly population but did you know that there are over 4000 species of native bees that are also at risk if not already deemed endangered? That is a very large number of diversity in a single species facing extinction.<\/p>\n

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Many people are unaware that “colony collapse” is for the most part referring to the non-native European honey bees that farmers rely on for mass crop pollination. Is this news still important? Of course it is, but for the purpose of this letter I am going to focus on native species.<\/p>\n

What is native? Native refers to plants and animals that are indigenous to a given area in geologic time. Pollinators rely on plants that they have co-evolved with for millions of years.<\/p>\n

We rely on an intact ecosystem to grow our food to feed ourselves. Not one of us can avoid the reality that we are a part of a food chain that is in peril due to our appetite for progress. Creatures everywhere are finding themselves increasingly facing starvation in man-made food deserts.<\/p>\n

How many times have you travelled the roads to come across a new subdivision or strip mall in place of a mature forest or an old forgotten meadow? Imagine now how a migrant song bird might fail to raise a new batch of birds upon returning to a familiar land left vacant of food and nesting grounds. How a queen bumble bee might struggle with starvation after emerging from hibernation to find the land stripped of all the spring flowering plants she relies on. Trout that didn’t spawn because they were affected by massive amounts of silt from poorly managed stream diversion. When that Monarch butterfly finally reaches Ontario and flutters on tattered wings into your beautifully manicured front lawn and all she finds is some non-native turf grass, shrubs and perennials, what is she to lay her eggs on? She has but one species of host plant that her young can eat and without milkweed you can’t help her.<\/p>\n\n\t\t