Review by C.J. Bunce
When the rest of the world doesn’t always do its best to preserve and protect the ecology and animals of the planet, you need to take responsibility for it yourself. Like the classic comical family vacation, the phrase “don’t make me come up there” is apt. It’s time to “come up there” beginning with your own yard. Saving Nature One Yard at a Time—How to Protect and Nurture Our Native Species, available here at Amazon, is the guidebook every American needs. If you’re a fan of Audubon Society Field Guides or your scout training needs some refreshing, this handy book provides what you need to know to protect and respect local native North American birds, butterflies, bees, amphibians, reptiles, mammals, wildflowers, trees, and shrubs. It’s a new year and the greatest leader of our lifetime, Dr. Jane Goodall was just awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, so what better time to take action than now to honor her work?
Written by botanist David Deardorff and naturalist Kathryn Wadsworth, this book can be used as a reference or a teaching aid. If you’re teaching a class on nature at any level, or your scout or nature group is spending the next year earning nature badges, this would be a prime resource. It will get anyone started by looking at what you already know and what you see in your own yard, your neighborhood, or your local park or trails.
The first chapter sets the stage for the arrangement of the book, which provides resources for the individual naturalist with specific resources for wider local, regional, and national assistance. But its focus is providing six examples of life in its various forms, keyed to the state you live in. Using the six established contiguous U.S. bioregions–Cascadia, Great Basin, Sonoran, Prairie, Laurentia, and Dixon–it first digs into birds you would typically be able to identify in your own backyard. Identifying just six of the total species by category, readers are pulled into a scene. Each scenes describes the habitat of the animal, insect, or plant, a bit of a “day in the life” showing ideal conditions as well as threats.
Photographs help readers home in on and identify the species most likely to appear in their region. Many times the wildlife crosses boundaries. Readers can also search names of the wildlife using the index, for example if you think you’ve identified the woodpecker in your tree and want to know more about its food sources, you can get to the section quickly.
For the animals, each section describes how it builds its nesting areas and rears its young. All of this is told in a straightforward manner, about the level of a grade school textbook, but expansive enough in content to include any general piece of information an adult might want.
The end of each chapter provides the specifics on actions we can take, what each of us can do to protect, preserve, and promote nature. Knowing the challenges is important, but even adding shrubs and planting seeds can improve and change your yard for the better. Many options are presented for each category, so readers can select for themselves their level of engagement.
It’s a good starting point to begin to take personal responsibility to protect the planet this year, with action items you can personally take on with not a lot of effort or money. Many of these things you may already be doing. Saving Nature One Yard at a Time—How to Protect and Nurture Our Native Species is available now here at Amazon.
