[MAIPC] Rebuttal of NY Times anti-natives oped by Klinkenborg

[kathi mestayer]

Here's the letter to the editor I sent last Sunday....in a huff.

Would that it were so....that the fact that our categories of "native" and "nonnative" have become fuzzy around the edges makes the distinction irrelevant.  Or that the arrival of europeans on the continent is the baseline.  The fact is that "native" plants are those that share an evolutionary history with other species (not just one or two) in a particular region or area.  It's true; nonnatives are not all invasive.  But none of them have the kind of habitat value that natives, as a group, have.  Native species are like environmental puzzle pieces; in a given area, each native is a piece of that puzzle in that place.  Nonnatives may be attractive, they may have some habitat value, and they may not spread out of control.  But they don't fit in the puzzle, and therefore, they don't contribute nearly as much as the puzzle pieces that fit.

I remember being at a conservation landscaping conference in northern Virginia a couple of years ago.  Someone asked one of the speakers what she should say when a homeowner asked, "Why is it so important to plant native plants?"  The speaker answered, "It's not because of what we know....it's because of what we don't know.  We can't possibly understand all of the ways that the species in a given area interact with, support, and predate, each other.  So we plant natives because we do know that they are going to fit right in to a very complex system."

Finally, the fact that there is little that we can do about it doesn't make it okay to do nothing.  This is a problem for people who fight battles even though they don't think they can really win.  It's because it's worth fighting anyway. 



Kathi Mestayer
KMA Consulting
105 Gilley Drive
Williamsburg, Va 23188
kwren at widomaker.com
757-229-6575
757-229-9396 (fax)

"There are 10 kinds of people -- people who understand binary and people who don't."
- Anon.


On Sep 14, 2013, at 2:57 PM, Stephen Hiltner wrote:

For anyone irked by Verlyn Klinkenborg's Sept. 7 oped in the New York Times, in which he argues against distinguishing between native and non-native species, I've researched and written a point by point rebuttal. I also mention two previous NY Times opeds dismissive of native plants, by George Ball and Sean Wilsey, and provide background information on the incident that prompted Klinkenborg's oped--the proposal to thin eucalyptus from a forest in San Francisco.

Does anyone remember a NY Times oped that extols the benefits of native plants and habitat restoration? Surely there must be some.

Steve
NewsCompanion.com
PrincetonNatureNotes.org
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