Our Challenge: Restoring Habitat

Restoring Habitat On Long Island

The Long Island Conservancy is dedicated to restoring habitat wherever we can. Long Island\’s environmental future depends on it. Native species of fish, amphibians, reptiles, and birds are seeing their populations collapse as each year there is less and less native habitat. As invasive plants threaten to engulf Long Island (Bamboo, Japanese Knotweed, English Ivy, Wisteria, Oriental Bittersweet, Japanese Honeysuckle, Burning Bush, Norway Maple, Privet, Multiflora Rose, Garlic Mustard and Mugwort to name the more pernicious), we must take a stand in every community, in our open spaces and in our yards, and replant the natives that properly belong there.

Global Extinction and Local Response

We are living through the Sixth Mass Extinction, human caused. Over a million species are in the process of vanishing as we destroy their remaining habitats. But here there is something we can each do: Help our local animal populations to weather it by building habitat for them where ever we can right in our community. We know what happens when we give Nature the chance to reestablish itself. The more native habitat we can create on this crowded island for local nature, the more livable Long Island will be in the coming years for both humans and wildlife.

Restoring Habitat

will take all of us, in every community, every business, municipality, and every homeowner.  It will take an army.   It will take decades.   But we can and must build a future we’d want to live in.  We must each start today, though, for the problem gets exponentially worse the longer we wait when it comes to invasive plants at least.

Taking matters the other way, give Nature a chance to reestablish itself, it returns tenfold. Plants flourish where they belong. If they are alien to here, they will need fertilizers or more water, or pesticides often enough. Why not then dedicate a portion of your lawn — which does nothing for local nature — and plant some natives, ones suited to soil, light, and moisture conditions of that place in your yard?

Here we are very much inspired by the work of Prof. Doug Tallamy, most recently of Nature\’s Best Hope, a New York Times Bestseller and a call to action. In it, he argues that in order to restore enough habitat to support our local wildlife nationally, we will need to convert 20 million of our 40 million acres of lawn into local native habitat.

He notes well that the lawn is an ecological dead zone, and what we are planting in our yards and public spaces from other countries contributes nothing to the local ecology since the native insects don\’t have the adaptations necessary to feed from these non-native plants. No native plants, no native insects, no amphibians, reptiles, birds of many sorts, and fewer fish.

Habitat Restoration: Long Island\’s Best Hope

Prof. Tallamy has since launched a non-profit called Homegrown National Park which encourages people to plant at least 2/3rds native (or \”2/3rds for the birds\”), with the goal of creating local habitat, a place where you can encounter nature directly. The organization allows people to map their native plantings on a national map, with a running tally of acres planted. We take it as a challenge to get as much of Long Island native as possible because nothing less will get us through.

Our first task is to build awareness.   What plants are native, what are non-native, and what are invasive?  By virtue of using a simple phone app like PictureThis! or iNaturalist, people can readily see what is growing in their yard, where it came from, how to tend to it, and how if necessary to get rid of it. People are always shocked to discover just how little in their yards and public spaces are native now, and how much is invasive. Maybe 25% of what is in a typical Long Island yard or park is native to here.

Our landscaping industry brings in plants from all over the world, non-natives that add little to the local ecology. Native insects evolved to eat our native plants, and not these. You will never find an insect bite on a dandelion or a tulip (unless it too is non-native from there!). Small wonder our carefully manicured properties are also fairly lifeless.

There are though a growing number of landscapers who understand the importance of planting native. Some are old timers, others are in their 30\’s. To them I say \”thank you\” and we certainly have a lot of work to do to create native habitat given what\’s been planted, demolished, or overwhelmed by invasive plants over the decades.

Then there are the invasive plants to contend with —  Oriental Bittersweet, Porcelain Berry, Japanese Honeysuckle, Japanese Multiflora Rose, Mugwort, Phragmites, Burning Bush, Tree of Heaven, Norway Maple, English Ivy, Privet, the lawn itself — to name the major offenders. We are dedicated to speaking before various community groups throughout Long Island to inform people what is native, what is invasive, and what one can do to plant the former and remove the latter. Contact Us

Once you see it, you can’t unsee it.  Long Island is losing a battle it didn’t even know it was fighting.   Little remains of what was here, but it is not too late.   We can take on the invasive plants and put back what should be here.

We need to do this because without native plants, we have no insects.  No insects mean no birds, amphibians, reptiles, far fewer mammals — the food web collapses.   As we developed Long Island, we destroyed habitats wholesale.  Then with suburbia came the fetish for the lawn, for landscaping, and for killing any bug we could. We see the aftermath of this in our silent parks and lifeless yards. 

From 1974, we have lost 45% of our insects globally, according to E.O. Wilson.  We have not coincidentally seen a 1% drop in songbird population every year since 1964.   By planting non-natives and letting invasive plants run wild, we are literally starving to death our local animals, driving them locally to extinction.

The Long Island Conservancy’s mission is to change that fate for our local animals by returning our local plants, by working with local groups in every community to help them tackle invasives and to recreate the local habitats.  There should be no differentiation between human and animal habitat.  “Rewild” your yard, or as Prof. Tallamy advised, “Bring Nature Home.”  This is not just ‘green advice.’ It is imperative if our local creatures are to survive what scientists call The Holocene Extinction, The Sixth Great Extinction, this one manmade, one already begun, where globally over million species are at stake.

So what is Long Island’s environmental future?  Can we build enough habitat for our wildlife?

The situation is rendered more dire for the fact that it was here, arguably, where suburbia was invented, where lawns and topiary became part of the tract housing aesthetic.   As Long Island quadrupled in population post WWII, as people left New York for the emergent suburbs, the local environment was devastated, many square miles bulldozed, so easily done on this giant sandbar.  

Today, if Nassau and Suffolk were its own country, it would be the 4th most densely populated in the world, with Bangladesh.   And we built with little concern for the fact our water came from an aquifer left by the glacier under all that sand.  We had the best drinking water in the country at one point.   We are ranking near the bottom in New York State now, with countless spills, major and minor, on this congested island, with 560,000 cesspools, and with fertilizer, pesticides, road runoff, and a loss of native habitat generally, including in people’s yards, all contributing.

We live on an island, and therefore share a common environment and a common fate.   We must have a comprehensive plan that assures a viable future.  What is our plan, across all jurisdictions?  What is Long Island’s map to a sustainable future?   This comprises everything:  Energy, transportation, housing, but most importantly, civic engagement.   Without a commitment everywhere to local stewardship, to civic engagement, we will surely see the Long Island we have loved finally disappear, swallowed by vines.

By reconnecting to Nature, we reconnect Restoring Habitatwith each other.   We create new tribes through common effort.   Our inaugural effort has been in Sayville, at Foster Marina Park.  Eight acres on the water.  Gorgeous setting.  Almost completely overrun with invasive species.  Lifeless by all accounts.   A neighbor noted a massive wisteria infestation.   Neighbors emerged spontaneously with tools to take it on.  It was here we decided to take back this space for the community.   

As per our philosophy, we involve all constituents — the Rotary, the Chamber of Commerce, the schools, families, neighbors.   65 people and an excavator cleared 8 truckloads of weeds, carted off by The Town of Islip.  They manage 107 parks, and there are 13 towns and 89 incorporated villages on Long Island.   Every one of those parks needs to be adopted locally.   Without local stewardship, these thousands of public spaces will be ecological dead zones.   

Each of us, armed with the knowledge as to what is good for the local environment, can now make a difference.   Restoring communities can be about turning a sump into a bird sanctuary, or planting a wildflower meadow in the high school lawn.   It can be about knowing what to order at the garden store.    It can be about “leaving the leaves” to build soil, habitat, and resilience, about not wasting money on fertilizer, water and pesticides because you are no longer trying to grow things that don’t belong here.  Natives need nothing, and there’s a cost savings there.  Plus natives are of course naturally beautiful.   

They are not only good for the environment:  They ARE the environment. 

We encourage then every community that  now seeks to restore a bit of local habitat to reach out to us at The Long Island Conservancy.   We are armed with advice, and are always ready to learn, for each problem will have its own solution.   In the end, it begins with a commitment to local stewardship.   We need to heal this island, and there are many places to start.