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Foxes, Skunks, Coyotes, & Raccoons, Oh My!

NOV2015-CROGAZ-IMGP0658raccoons — Although the Common Raccoon is often thought of as a “pest”, a family of raccoons is fun to watch.“Mom” peeks out from a wildlife box (about 30 feet from the author’s kitchen door) that has often been used by screech owls. The sow’s two kits were playing on top. (Photo credit: Marlene A. Condon)

By Marlene A. Condon
November, 2015

And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds: cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds.” And it was so. And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds and the cattle according to their kinds, and everything that creeps upon the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. [Genesis 1:24-1:25]

But man does not necessarily agree. In fact, he finds many of God’s creations to be so pestiferous, especially if they go after his livestock, that he has coined a word to describe them: “vermin.”

Even our state wildlife department refers to some kinds of mammals as “nuisance and problem wildlife,” even though part of its mission statement reads that this agency exists “to provide educational outreach programs and materials that foster an awareness of and appreciation for Virginia’s fish and wildlife resources [and] their habitats.”

Indeed, the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries (VDGIF) should not be employing words, such as “nuisance” and “problem wildlife” that carry the connotation that certain animals exist solely to vex mankind. On the contrary, God created every living organism on Earth to support mankind’s very existence!

You can know this statement is true by simply examining the order in which God brought about his creations. Everything came before mankind, which makes sense.

So why does man insult his Creator by implying that some of the Lord’s creations are anything but “good”? Usually this attitude is the result of a lack of knowledge regarding the functions of wildlife in the natural world.

For example, consider the red and the gray fox, as well as the eastern coyote. These mammals will take chickens and/or their eggs, and lambs if they can get to them.

Predators exist for the express purpose of limiting the populations of other kinds of animals. By doing so, they make possible the perpetuation of all species of life (including plants) on Earth by not allowing one particular kind to overwhelm the limited resources of the environment.

Predators were not given the ability to comprehend that man’s farm animals are off-limits to them. Man is the one who was endowed with the ability to think about how to coexist with the other critters that share this planet.

Additionally, he was given the proper anatomy to be able to physically act upon whatever actions his thought processes tell him he must perform—humans have opposable thumbs.

Opposable thumbs allow people to grasp objects so they can build the structures necessary to keep out predators and keep in their vulnerable animals. In other words, chickens and their eggs, and sheep giving birth, need to be inside structures that protect them from predation.

The problem is that even though people have the brains and the thumbs to keep farm animals safe, their initiative to take action falls far short of the motivation of predators to go after livestock. Thus they often take the easy route of just killing off predators, something DGIF currently and wrong-headedly encourages with coyotes.

Instead, VDGIF should educate farmers about the necessity of predators in the environment. For example, it’s precisely because we lack large predators that we have overpopulations of White-tailed Deer and Canada Geese.

If farmers own too many animals to protect by way of structures, an alternative is to employ large guard dogs or llamas to protect their livestock. In fact, llamas are a common sight now in Highland County, Virginia, where I hear there are more sheep than people!

And it should go without saying that babies, young children, cats, and small dogs should never be left alone where predators—including the human kind—roam.

The striped skunk (found in the eastern half of Virginia) and the common raccoon are often considered “nuisance and problem wildlife.” Because skunks and raccoons feed upon ground-nesting birds and their eggs in the wild, they will also feed upon chickens and their eggs if the farmer hasn’t taken the proper precautions to keep his fowl safe.

But in addition to their role of limiting the numbers of birds in the wild, skunks and raccoons also fulfill other important roles in nature, such as preying upon insects or their larvae, such as grubs, which are the immature forms of beetles.

The function of a grub is to feed upon dead plant roots that need to be recycled so they don’t take up precious space that another plant could use. But if the number of grubs becomes too high, the grubs will run out of dead roots and by necessity start feeding upon the roots of living plants in order to survive. This kind of feeding could be harmful to live plants.

By digging up grubs in the soil, skunks and raccoons limit their numbers so that the immature beetles don’t run out of their preferred food. Thus the mammals help the plants to remain healthy so they can perpetuate themselves.

Yet instead of accepting the free assistance of skunks and raccoons, people usually complain about their digging, even though the dug-out soil is easy to push back into the holes the animals made. When folks refuse to let these mammals do their job, they cause the grubs to increase in number and thus become problematic for their plants. Then people spend time and money to apply pesticides that are quite harmful to the environment, unlike the skunks and raccoons whose “harm” is only aesthetic and temporary in nature.

Even organic pesticides, such as Bt and Milky Spore Disease, are detrimental to the proper functioning of the environment. In addition to killing the nonnative grubs of Japanese beetles that are a big concern for folks, these pesticides also kill native scarab beetles that are closely related to Japanese beetles.

The purpose of pesticides is to kill as many animals as possible, but it’s never appropriate to wipe out native animals of any sort—they are here for a reason! This statement is true even if you believe all species are the result of evolution instead of God. No matter the origin of life, every wild critter fulfills several functions.

It’s important to recognize this truism, especially if you do believe in God. Otherwise, you insult your Maker by implying that you know better than He does about how the environment should function, and you show disrespect by destroying his creatures instead of coexisting with them when you should.

“Should” refers to situations in which the animals are not really causing harm, such as when skunks and raccoons make holes in the lawn or garden, or when you are responsible for creating an attractive nuisance, such as by allowing easy access to chickens and lambs to animals that are very hungry.

Yes, sometimes there may be collateral damage, such as a plant being dug up that you didn’t want harmed. But you should keep in mind that you could have lost more plants than the one if the skunk/raccoon hadn’t done its job and limited the number of grubs in that location for you.

To paraphrase the ancient Greek philosopher, Zeno, the goal of life should be to live in agreement with nature.

Blue Ridge Naturalist: Foxes, Skunks, Coyotes, & Raccoons, Oh My!

Nuclear Energy More Wildlife-friendly than Most “Green” Alternatives

POWER-PLANT-CHESTERFIELD-DUTCH-GAP — Dominion Resources’ Chesterfield Power Station is the largest fossil fuel-powered plant in Virginia. Replacing such plants with solar and wind farms isn’t necessarily the best choice. (Photo: Marlene A. Condon)

By Marlene A. Condon –
February, 2016

Thanks to the burning of fossil fuels, global climate change is now a term everyone knows. But do we talk about limiting population growth and the particular aspects of consumerism that have brought about this dangerous alteration of our atmosphere?

After all, as long as the human population keeps increasing, there will be a corresponding increase in demand for energy just for basic needs, such as heating homes and cooking—never mind the energy gluttony of our modern era of computers, cell phones, automatic doors that open and close constantly, etc.

Yet as power companies attempt to provide the energy that our modern lifestyles are commanding, they are lambasted for their efforts. In Virginia, a lot of contentiousness exists about bringing fuel through the state via three huge natural-gas pipelines as well as the movement of electricity through gargantuan transmission towers.

That’s not surprising. What person who appreciates the natural beauty of a rural area wants such unnatural-looking features running through it? However, every American whose house is larger than absolutely necessary, or whose computer runs 24/7 for no good reason, bears some responsibility for these situations.

Many people insist that we don’t need coal or fracked hydrocarbons (environmentally destructive sources of energy) to supply our energy demands. They suggest we just need to develop “green” energy, such as can be obtained from sunshine, wind, and water.

But these so-called green energy sources are not synonymous with “harmless to the environment” as many people seem to think. Although “green” power sources may emit fewer or no carbon emissions as compared to coal, their use—when employed on a large scale—results in a variety of wildlife losses, both directly by infrastructure and indirectly by habitat alteration or destruction.

Dams built across rivers to create hydropower stop migratory (and edible) fish from being able to continue as far as they need to go in order to abundantly reproduce. And the concept of gathering energy from wave action presents such problems as alteration of habitat for benthic organisms (creatures that live at the lowest surface of a body of water, including on the sediment surface and in some sub-surface layers) and animal entanglement due to underwater moving parts.

Huge wind turbines kill migratory birds and bats that hit the spinning blades. Placing the bases of these structures within the ocean creates noise that can negatively impact sea life, especially cetaceans (whales and dolphins) that must communicate with one another over long distances.

The deployment of acres and acres of solar-panel arrays destroy habitat for the variety of wildlife they displace, and in some instances, the solar array itself has caused the deaths of particular species of birds, many of which are already recognized as endangered.

That said, solar panels on top of a roof (which are very common) and small wind turbines in a home landscape that no longer supports wildlife anyway are both great ways to obtain energy for the homeowner’s needs. However, large-scale solar- and wind-energy projects are too destructive of the environment. If people are going to continue to demand enormous amounts of energy instead of using energy more frugally—as I believe they should—the “greenest” alternative to coal is nuclear power.

Yes, people tend to be terrified of this radioactive fuel source, and admittedly with good reason. Radioactivity can be exceedingly dangerous should we be exposed to too much of it by a radioactive release from one of these power plants. And, of course, there’s the problem of leftover radioactive waste that needs to be properly disposed of. But are nuclear power plants “prohibitively dangerous,” as I’ve seen written?

There have never been deaths in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, or Europe due to nuclear power. Indeed, it has been in use now for over five decades and has a very good safety record.

The sum total of accidents in over 16,000 cumulative reactor-years of commercial nuclear power operation in 33 countries is three: Three Mile Island (United States, 1979), Chernobyl (Ukraine, 1986), and Fukushima (Japan, 2011).

Three Mile Island was contained without anyone being harmed, and there were no adverse environmental consequences.

Chernobyl involved an intense fire in a reactor designed without provision for containment of radioactive material should an accident occur. This design flaw is not allowed in Western countries. This incident killed 31 people and the ensuing environmental and health consequences have increased that total to at least 56.

Fukushima was designed to withstand an earthquake, which it did just fine. The operating units shut down and backup diesel generators started automatically to keep the nuclear safety systems powered. The problem was the huge tsunami that knocked out the backup power systems, allowing the reactors to overheat and release some radioactivity. Lessons have been learned; in the United States, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission now requires that portable electric generators and water-pumping equipment be stored onsite in a building away from the units so it’s available if needed to keep them safe.

Some folks worry that a nuclear power reactor might explode like a nuclear bomb. However, the fuel is not enriched anywhere near enough for that to happen.

Can spent fuel rods be enriched and then employed in bomb-making? Yes, but that’s why operating staff are monitored carefully, especially if they handle fuel. And new methods of mining uranium and improved technologies for building reactors that run on less-enriched uranium fuel should help make nuclear power even safer.

Although nuclear power stations emit about 17 tons of carbon dioxide per megawatt when producing power (compared to coal at a whopping 1000 tons), that’s not much more than wind and geothermal power, which emit the lowest amounts.

In terms of electricity production, the main advantage of nuclear power is that it delivers energy almost constantly. This makes it well-suited for providing the always-on “baseload” power supply we depend upon for reliability.

The main disadvantage in terms of electricity production is the problem of nuclear waste. According to the Nuclear Energy Institute, all of the used nuclear fuel produced over the past 50 years, if stacked end to end, would cover a single football field to a depth of about 21 feet.

The plan is to eventually store nuclear waste in underground repositories, but for now it is stored onsite at nuclear power plants in steel-lined, concrete water-filled vaults or in massive steel or steel-lined concrete dry containers. Although some folks worry about the possibility of equipment failures and personnel errors, there has yet to be a major incident.

Energy conservation should be practiced much more than it is, but the reality is that people are highly unlikely to change their ways. This fact was demonstrated by the need to legislate the use of more energy-efficient bulbs when people could have simply shut their lights off. That said, nuclear is far “greener” than most other sources in terms of maintaining the very existence of our natural world.

Blue Ridge Naturalist: Nuclear Energy More Wildlife-friendly than Most “Green” Alternatives

A Black Vulture a Day Keeps Disease Away

VULTURE-OTIS-_MG_7549copy — The Black Vulture’s preference for feeding upon putrefying (bacteria-ridden) carcasses makes it extremely important to our own health. (Photo: Otis Sowell, Jr.)

©Marlene A. Condon
March, 2016

Many farmers have decided that the Black Vulture is a predator that takes newborn calves and lambs. And when a problem arises nowadays that involves wildlife, the attitude of most people is to simply kill the offending animals.

However, that knee-jerk reaction can bring about much more serious problems in the long run because all organisms provide services that are vital to our own well being.

For example, the value of vultures to our waterways is largely overlooked. They help to limit health hazards throughout the 64,000 square miles that comprise the Chesapeake Bay watershed.

Some 150 major rivers and streams, plus innumerable smaller tributaries, deliver water to the bay, and I have observed vultures performing their important purification services along my own local river.

One day as I was exercising, I noticed vultures perched in the trees up ahead of me. They were overlooking the river that the road parallels, and I knew their presence was a sure sign that there must be a dead animal somewhere in their vicinity.

When I got closer, I could see several of these big birds standing on a dead deer that was lying in the river. It’s likely the deer was hit by a car but not immediately killed, and then managed to reach the river just a short distance away where it then died.

It’s also possible the deer was ill before it perished in the waterway. Although most wildlife is healthy, sometimes animals get sick, just as we do, and a severely ill animal often makes its way to water. It knows it will continue to require this vital substance to remain alive, but unfortunately, it may then succumb to its illness in or near the water it had sought.

When carcasses end up in or along waterways, they can contaminate them if not removed in short order. Indeed, when vulture populations plummeted in South Asia, it led to a proliferation of rats and a rise in infectious diseases as a result of carcasses left to rot on the ground. (http://www.birdlife.org/datazone/sowb/casestudy/156[birdlife.org])

When an animal dies, it begins to decompose almost immediately. Particular species of bacteria work to recycle the dead creature and in the process produce bio-toxins. These natural poisons can sicken or kill people and most animals other than vultures.

Therefore a vulture is the ultimate sanitation worker to provide carcass removal services because it’s able to metabolize the noxious substances found in decaying flesh. It’s protected by highly acidic stomach liquids.

Wildlife conflicts between vultures and people must be resolved by the Wildlife Services division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture because these birds are protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. But farmers haven’t been satisfied with the federal handling of their complaints, so they talked a state senator into introducing a bill this legislative session to make it easier for them to kill Black Vultures.

Because vultures reproduce very slowly and would be unable to quickly rebound in numbers, killing too many of them could impact the health of waterways and subject the bay to yet another stressor. Additionally, disease would be allowed to linger in our environment.

A female Black Vulture nests only one time each year, laying one to three eggs that take over a month to hatch. The young remain in the nest for two to three months, which comprises most of the breeding season.

Senate Bill 37 (SB37) to allow farmers to kill Black Vultures is quite likely to become law, but it shouldn’t. The crime the Black Vulture is accused of—killing lambs and calves—doesn’t make sense. This bird is not designed for hunting.

American architect Louis Sullivan wrote, “Form ever follows function, and this is the law [of nature].” With flat, weak feet and blunt talons that are not capable of grasping (form), the Black Vulture is clearly designed for scavenging (function).

So how and why is this species killing newborn animals instead of feeding only upon dead ones? When animals start behaving unnaturally, there’s a logical reason for it. The answer to the vultures’ strange behavior in Virginia is obvious if you’ve been paying attention to our environment over the course of the past 20-30 years.

Many farmers have done away with hedgerows, the mix of shrubby and herbaceous growth that had served as protective windbreaks as well as habitat for wildlife, such as Northern Bobwhite Quail that have disappeared in Virginia along with the hedgerows.

Today’s farm is typically wall-to-wall fescue (grass) with a few large trees. This unnaturally barren land has not only destroyed wildlife habitat, but has also done away with a “birthing room” for cows and ewes where they can safely give birth.

Pregnant females actively seek a spot away from the rest of the herd or flock where they can hide from predators while bringing new life into the world. But a field devoid of cover forces them to give birth out in the open, where they can be easily seen by predators and vultures that, like any hungry animal, will take advantage of a situation that presents the opportunity for an easy meal.

In this case, the vultures have learned that the afterbirth (the placenta, which is the membrane that transfers nutrients from the adult female to her young in the womb) will be expelled shortly after the birth takes place and they wait for it. As for the claim that Black Vultures deliberately kill newborn lambs and calves, I believe people are misinterpreting what’s actually happening.

Newborn lambs and calves are covered in mucus, a mixture of water, sugars, proteins, and other substances that are just as appealing to vultures as the afterbirth. These scavengers could be simply trying to feed upon this mucus, rather than intentionally trying to kill the newborn animal.

Additionally, Black Vultures are often getting blamed for killing newborns when, in reality, the young were born sickly and abandoned by the mother or succumbed to the cold. The natural time of year for most mammals to give birth is spring, but farmers often manipulate births to occur in late fall or winter, which is unnatural and thus inappropriate.

The difficulty that farmers are experiencing with the Black Vulture is a relatively recent development that mirrors the growing disconnect between humans, their environment, and their livestock. When people refuse to live within the context of the natural world, it invariably creates problems.

Farmers have a duty to take reasonable steps to ensure the welfare of their animals, and they should use their intelligence to accept, and work within, the constraints set by the natural world, rather than trying to ignore real-life limitations on their actions.

Blue Ridge Naturalist: A Black Vulture a Day Keeps Disease Away

The Unloved Slug

©Marlene A. Condon
May, 2016

If you are like most gardeners, you probably hear the word “slug” and are instantly repulsed. Visions of slime and eaten plants may come to mind.

But slugs deserve far more respect than gardeners and others give to them. These invertebrates have the very important job of helping to recycle organic matter, returning it to the soil ultimately for the benefit of growing plants.

If you think that these critters exist to destroy your plants, then you have been misinformed. Unfortunately, it’s easy for that to be the case. University extension websites across the country perpetuate this very mistaken notion, and a book was even put out several years ago titled 50 Ways to Kill a Slug.

I read a review of this book that, in my opinion, should never have been published. It was totally out of touch with the real world of slugs and what they do.

The reader was told that slugs “are guaranteed to infuriate, [they] parade through the garden, munching on tender plants and leaving slimy trails that will always seem to be concentrated in areas where your bare hand will be most likely to touch the greatest surface area of slime.”

In spite of having gardened for more than half a century, I cannot relate at all to these comments. Why is that? What makes my gardening experiences so totally different from those of other long-time gardeners?

The answer is not a mystery. Simply put, I live in agreement with the natural world.

I love nature and I have embraced it virtually all of my life. Spending as much time as possible in the out-of-doors as a child and as an adult, I have seen first-hand, and often documented by way of photography and handwritten journals, the roles that various organisms play in the natural world.

If you took one of my classes or attended one of my slide presentations, you would stop thinking of slugs as “pests” and instead recognize them for the very important animals that they truly are: Mother Nature’s recyclers.

It’s vitally important for all organic matter (the remains of organisms that were once alive) to be recycled back into the environment. That’s because all living things, including us, are composed of recycled organic matter. This is the reason discarded vegetative scraps and inedible animal parts should never be sent to a landfill where it will be locked away and wasted rather than reused.

Slugs feed upon all kinds of things, from dead animals to sickly plants to animal droppings. By doing so, they recycle nutrients that your garden needs to grow well. In other words, they fertilize your plants so that you don’t need to spend time, effort, and perhaps money to do so.

Yet gardeners are constantly told to kill all—yes, I said all—of these lowly-yet-oh-so useful animals. This advice is nonsensical, so why does the gardening community take it to heart?

The problem is that the study of horticulture does not include learning about the natural world. Therefore gardeners are often not familiar with the actual roles that all organisms play to keep the environment—including their gardens—functioning properly.

The reality is that unless you understand how the natural world works, you simply cannot garden well. Gardening involves knowing about the lives of the animals out there so you can comprehend how they interact with plants and each other.

A slug—there are many species—is typically a fat little animal that looks damp. It reminds me somewhat of a miniature seal, only without the feet. And like seals, slugs are usually found where it is wet.

These animals will die if they dry out. Thus they tend to avoid direct sunshine, staying among and underneath plant debris on sunny days and only venturing forth into the open on cloudy or damp days.

If someone tells me that he has a slug problem, I tell him that he must be keeping his garden too wet. In nature, cause and effect is always logical. But in order to determine what is causing the effect observed, you must investigate exactly what the gardener is doing and how that affects the behavior of the animal in question.

For example, sometimes a gardener over-waters his garden, or perhaps he has applied so much mulch that it never dries out. When organic matter remains constantly wet, it starts to rot. That means microorganisms have begun to recycle it.

If plants are growing so close together that they don’t have enough air circulation to dry them off, they too will start to rot because conditions aren’t right for the plants to remain healthy. Mother Nature wants to remove such plants from the environment as quickly as possible because they are not likely to be able to reproduce. If plants are not going to help perpetuate life, they are wasting precious real estate.

Therefore Mother Nature sends in slugs that can recycle the rotting, sickly plants more quickly than the microorganisms are capable of doing. This action opens up the space sooner for new plants to grow that may perform better than the previous plants in that location.

Sadly, gardeners see the slugs and blame them for destroying their plants when, in reality, the slugs are correcting a cultivation “wrong” performed by the gardener. So this is why we have slugs: They tell you to change your gardening ways so your plants can grow well and strong instead of sickly and weak.

Don’t buy into the gardening prejudice against these fine animals that demands they be put to death instead of thanked for the work they do and the advice they provide you—if you pay attention and learn to speak the language of Mother Nature.

Blue Ridge Naturalist: The Unloved Slug

My Driveway Garden

Galium-hairy-bedstraw-adj-trim-247x300 — The lovely-but-tiny red flowers of the Hairy Bedstraw (Galium pilosum) are best appreciated with a hand lens. (Photo: Marlene A. Condon)

By Marlene A. Condon
June, 2016

I absolutely love my 300-foot-long driveway garden. A gravel driveway is favored by many species of plants, especially rather small ones that you might not notice or pay attention to when they are in the mixed company of larger plants.

My driveway is yet another garden of delightful surprises every year, introducing me to flowers that I never before knew existed. Thus whenever people tell me they’ve paved their driveway, I can’t help but feel that they’ve lost a golden opportunity to see and learn about the wildflowers of our area.

I also feel that they might have lost the chance to meet new insects whose lives are closely tied to those particular kinds of blooms, and to notice bigger animals that might have taken advantage of the gravel pathway (which would feel much more natural to them than a surface of asphalt) to travel through their property.

Our first view of a Box Turtle for the year is often of one walking across the driveway from the forest to my planted flower gardens. And Red Efts (the terrestrial immature form of the Eastern or Red-spotted Newt) can often be found wandering around on the gravel following rainstorms when everything is wet.

Snakes, birds, and mammals regularly make use of the driveway. We’ve watched copperheads and rat snakes poking their faces down into the spaces between the rocks as if seriously searching for something. Unfortunately, I do not know what.

Brown Thrashers enjoy taking dust baths whenever a big-enough area somehow becomes pebble-less. We now try to maintain such an area close enough to the house to enjoy the goings-on.

And foxes used to be seen crossing the driveway at dusk. Unfortunately, both the Red and the Gray Fox have virtually disappeared from my area. The proof is evident by the noticeable increase in Eastern Cottontail Rabbits. (I believe the foxes have been extirpated, along with the coyotes I used to hear.)

But returning to my driveway garden, as my absolute favorite color is red, I was thrilled when numerous Hairy Bedstraw (Galium pilosum) plants showed up there. This wasn’t an easy plant to identify, however. My Peterson guide to wildflowers doesn’t include it.

The Newcomb guide contains this plant, but it tells us the bloom color ranges from greenish white to purple. The plants in my driveway are a true red (luckily for me!), which is an unusual turn of events in my experience.

I’ve purchased many plants that were supposed to have red blooms but ended up being various shades of pinkish purple. As a result, you would think that purple was my favorite color when you look around my yard. (The lesson to be learned is that you should never take the color of plant blossoms on faith—buy your plants when they are blooming, if possible.) So it’s rather amazing that red isn’t mentioned for Hairy Bedstraw, yet my plants are—for once—the color I adore.

Mind you, this is a tiny flower, but it’s absolutely lovely in close-up—as are many of the driveway plants. Bluecurls (Trichostema dichotomum), American Penneyroyal (Hedeoma pulegioides), and Bluets (Houstonia caerulea) are best viewed with a hand lens.

Another favorite of mine is Venus’ Looking-glass (Specularia perfoliata). The enchanting name makes me think of fairy tales, and the small purple blooms are pretty, but the heart-shaped leaves that clasp the stem are what really capture my fancy. It’s in the Lobelia Family, so many of its larger “cousins” are well known cultivated plants.

Venus’ Looking-glass is described in field guides as a plant of “sterile fields, clearings,” while Hairy Bedstraw is said to be a plant of dry woods and thickets. While these details do not exactly match the characteristics of my driveway garden, those of St. Andrew’s Cross (Ascyrum hypericoides) hits the nail on the head: “dry sandy or rocky soil.”

St. Andrew’s Cross is in the St. Johnswort Family, but it has such flattened yellow flowers that the first time I saw one of these plants (in a wilderness area), I couldn’t imagine what it was. I didn’t manage to identify it from field guide drawings that gave the impression that it was an upright plant when it actually grows more as a dense, discretely mounded ground cover. But once it showed up in the driveway, familiarity facilitated recognition.

The wildflowers in my driveway garden share the trait of growing well among small rocks surrounded by precious little soil for root growth or moisture retention. They are truly plants of great stamina that can even manage to obtain enough nutrients to be healthy even though they haven’t much access to organic matter. They are plants to be admired, really.

Yet I’ve noticed there can be a bias in wildflower field guides when it comes to how the location of these plants is described. When the plants are native, the places where they tend to be found are usually described simply in terms of the physical characteristics of the site (dry, fields). But sometimes, when the plants are not native to our area, the places you will find them are described more in terms of human opinion of the plant’s non-native origin rather than in a straightforward characterization of the site.

For example, Garlic Mustard (Alliaria officinalis), an alien species of which I have very few even though it’s considered by many people to be a serious “invader,” includes the term “waste places” in its Peterson guide write-up, as does the alien Asiatic Dayflower (Commelina communis) and Field Bindweed (Convolvulus arvensis). This site description is rarely found, if it’s found at all, for native plants.

Of course, many alien species do tend to be found in areas degraded by human activities, such as along railroad tracks, roadsides (current and historical), hiking trails, and within former or still active cow fields. They are therefore quite commonly seen because they are able to take advantage of destroyed soil profiles of compacted dirt containing little organic matter. They keep the ground productive (i.e., they provide habitat for wildlife) that bare dirt can never do.

Over four dozen species of plants comprise my driveway garden, with a bit less than 50 percent of them non-native. Many of these driveway plant species are not found anywhere else in my yard, not only because they obviously prefer dry, rather nutrient-poor soil, but because they are so small that they could easily be crowded out by much larger plants—whether those plants are native or non-native.

It’s a fact of life that there’s always this push-and-pull within the plant world. The plants that are best suited to a site persist, although they, too, will be replaced over time as conditions change.

Even my driveway garden changes from year to year, depending upon whether new gravel is added or new soil builds up among the rocks. It’s a classroom of sorts, one that provides beauty along with an education.

Blue Ridge Naturalist: My Driveway Garden

Pesticides Are a Danger to All Life

BLUEBIRD-PAIR-DEAD-2016-04-19 — A dead bluebird pair, possibly killed by pesticides, lies beside its eggs that will never hatch. Photo: Paula Ziebarth.

Local bluebirder Ron Kingston alerted me in April to a distressingly sad situation that occurred in a cemetery in central Ohio. He’d heard from Paula Ziebarth, who monitors nest boxes in the area, that a mated pair of Eastern Bluebirds had died after workers had put out earthworm-shaped poison bait (a product made by Bell Laboratories under the brand name of Talpirid) to kill moles.

It’s not clear if the birds had found “worms”—that perhaps someone had accidentally dropped onto the ground—and eaten them, unaware that within mankind’s world, something that looks every bit like an earthworm is not necessarily an earthworm. But even if the bluebirds didn’t eat this poison bait, there’s plenty to be concerned about.

(It should be noted that if the bait had been deliberately placed on top of the ground instead of within the mole tunnels, that application would be in violation of the manufacturer’s instructions for use.)

First of all, the idea of shaping poison bait into something that many different kinds of animals would think they could eat is horribly shortsighted. It’s akin to creating candy-shaped poison to be used in the home where a child might mistake it for a treat.

Additionally, this bait has been given “an attractive smell for hungry moles,” which means any animal able to smell it within a mole tunnel will be enticed to dig it up. Raccoons, skunks, and bears have a keen sense of smell and habitually dig up soil to feed upon underground critters.

Pets have sometimes been the unintended victims of pesticides, which people find abhorrent. Yet society has accepted the use of poisons to kill wildlife of every sort. What has happened to our humanity that most people accept the willful poisoning of these creatures when it’s terribly mean-spirited to cause any living being to die an excruciatingly painful death?

It’s as if people have lost their sense of compassion when it comes to wild animals, as though these critters pose such an enormous threat to their own well-being that they are somehow not worthy of mercy. Yet what crime is a mole guilty of that it should be given a death sentence?

Is making raised tunnels in grass or garden—tunnels that could easily be tamped down by foot and avoided by anyone not wishing to sink into the dirt—truly a crime worthy of poisoning when the critter is simply doing its job for the benefit of people? Yes, that is exactly what a mole is doing. It controls the numbers of organisms living within the soil so your environment can function properly.

When a mole feeds upon grubs—beetle larvae that normally feed upon dead plant roots to recycle them—it keeps the grubs from overpopulating the area. By having their numbers limited, these immature beetles won’t run out of dead roots and be forced into feeding upon the roots of living plants to avoid starving.

The mole’s action thus helps to perpetuate the life of both plants and grubs. Plants can’t remain healthy and strong without roots, so they would be unable to perpetuate themselves. Eventually the area could become devoid of plants, which means there would be no food for future generations of grubs that are necessary to recycle nutrients back into the soil for the benefit of future generations of plants.

When a mole feeds upon earthworms, it perpetuates their existence as well. If the earthworms become overpopulated, they too will run out of food and die off. The disappearance of earthworms would impact plants not only because earthworms are recyclers of nutrients that plants require for good health, but also because earthworms aerate the soil for the benefit of plants. Their roots require air, which is why plants do poorly in compacted soil.

The mole in your yard, garden, or cemetery (there is typically only one mole except during mating season) keeps these closed biological loops functioning properly. If you want your plants to remain healthy, you want your mole to do its job.

But even though there is no need to be killing a mole in a yard or garden, is there a need in cemeteries? Perhaps if folks would make the effort to understand our wildlife and to recognize the importance of these animals to their own existence, they wouldn’t mind being more vigilant about watching where they stepped within the cemetery.

Signs could be placed at entrances to alert visitors to the presence of mole tunnels, which the groundskeepers could do their best to tamp down.

Folks might realize the silliness of the things they get upset over if they weren’t so concerned with “perfection.” Today’s world is one in which appearances are everything, whether it be one’s own personal appearance or the appearance of one’s possessions, including his yard. Many people see mole tunnels as imperfections in their lawn’s appearance or, worse yet, as destructive of the health of the lawn.

In fact, the view that many forms of wildlife are exceedingly destructive and/or dangerous is ridiculously prevalent among folks these days. You can’t watch TV, listen to the radio, or read a newspaper without being exposed to ads for “pest” control. These ads don’t stick to facts; they exaggerate the supposed negative impacts of many kinds of animals upon people.

Even scientists talk about “pests’, even though the whole idea of organisms existing to destroy the very world that supports them is nonsensical. (Perhaps researchers take their cue from man, who’s the only creature to knowingly sabotage his surroundings.)

Life is all about perpetuating life, which can’t happen if insects, for example, are out there destroying the very plants they require for future generations of their own kind. The only reason people run into difficulties with plants being overwhelmed by insects is because people create improperly functioning environments in which plant-feeding insects are not kept limited by predators.

People completely misunderstand how the natural world works, and they are constantly bombarded with the idea that any wildlife causing the least bit of inconvenience or risk of harm to them should be killed. As a result, we have children and adults alike who expect to live their lives without ever seeing certain kinds of wildlife within their sphere of existence.

A few years ago I was told about an experience someone had while talking with an Albemarle County elementary school custodian. A young girl of eight or nine approached the custodian with a teacher by her side. She wanted to tell him, with much concern, mind you, that there was a dead spider outside the building.

Yes, she was concerned about a spider that was where it belonged, not one that had found its way into the building. However, even if the spider had been inside, it should not have caused such consternation as to require informing the custodian.

Viewing the natural world only from their own perspective, humans have totally misread it and are destroying it. We need to get back to seeing “Mother Nature” as the nurturing entity that this name so accurately depicts.

Blue Ridge Naturalist: Pesticides Are a Danger to All Life

A New Year’s Energy Resolution: Waste Not, Want Not!

Roughly 50 percent of refrigerated display cases in grocery stores are open, wasting an enormous amount of energy that shoppers foot the bill for by paying higher food prices. (Photo credit: Marlene A. Condon)

Last Thanksgiving, I came face to face with the environmental prospects facing our world. Speaking with a young man who I’d guess was about 30, I was deeply distressed by his indifference to the effect of ever-increasing energy demands placed upon the Earth.

With all of the talk about sustainability, I would have hoped that young people, especially, would demonstrate more environmental awareness. But for this young waiter, energy consumption was as natural and necessary as food consumption.

He spoke of how his generation believed work should be mixed with play, and he pointed to the TV screens lining the walls of the hotel restaurant where he was an employee and I was a guest.

His point was that people could be connected constantly to the world via many electronic gadgets, and he added that even the apartment building where he lived was similarly set up, with screens in the lobby to greet people the moment they walked into the building.

While the restaurant employee felt right at home at work (which I now know was the intention), I had felt thankful that the TVs were silent, their information being disseminated by closed captioning instead of blaring very much unwanted sounds. For me, the TVs represented a terrible waste of energy as they consumed it most hours of the day, even though few people were paying any attention to them.

Additionally, the screens were so large that just the one on the front wall of the restaurant could have served the purpose instead of covering the length of an additional wall with them.

Yes, electronic screens may be far more energy-efficient than the old-style TVs, but when you multiply them by the uncountable screens running most of each day in other hotels, doctors’ offices, car repair shops, and homes, whether anyone is watching them or not, you can begin to understand how much we squander our energy resources.

The coal, natural gas, and oil that run our modern-day world consist of nothing more than the remains of prehistoric organisms that were chemically altered via great pressure and temperature. It required millions of years of processing to become the fuel we are burning through at such a rapid pace that the depletion of it is in sight after just more than 150 years!

The proof that these fossil fuels are truly a limited resource is made clear by the desperate attempts to obtain oil and gas by hydraulic fracturing of shale deposits. Why else would anyone bother to go after oil and gas deep within the ground?

What about leaving fuel for future generations? The fact that we are going after every last hydrocarbon molecule we can possibly get does not show much concern for people’s descendants.

Obviously, we should not view this precious commodity with such a cavalier attitude, but many folks do. Indeed, on the very day I started writing this column, I heard a person on a conservative radio talk show saying he should have a right to build his home without insulation, if he so desired (and I believe he could, as I could find no reference to government regulations requiring homes to have insulation).

To him, the increased amount of energy he would end up using to warm his home was nobody’s business but his. If he wanted to waste energy, that should be his prerogative as a freedom-loving American.

But declaring a right to waste resources affects all of us: Following through on your right causes the resource to run out all the sooner for everyone. It’s remarkable that the caller—and his host who thoroughly agreed with him—were oblivious to the irony of calling themselves “conservatives” when they didn’t care about conserving a limited resource.

However, when you look around, it’s easy to see how society as a whole gives short shrift to energy usage:

Grocery stores use upright, open, refrigerated display cases that make those aisles, and sometimes the entire store, uncomfortably and unnecessarily chilly.

The automatic doors at the entranceways to many businesses and apartment complexes are constantly opening and closing, even if no one is entering or leaving.

The large houses that have become the norm over the past couple of decades or so require a great deal of energy to cool and heat, whether every room is actually used or not.

And perhaps the most obvious example of our wasteful ways is the running of such things as lights, computers, and TVs at home and at work even though no one is making use of them. It should be noted that we wouldn’t have been forced into buying more-expensive CFL light bulbs that contain mercury if people would have just switched off the lights when exiting the room.

In Virginia, people are fighting three pipelines¹ proposed to go through the state to carry natural gas obtained by hydrofracking. Many folks don’t want these huge conduits going through their “back yards” and you can’t blame them.

Personally, I’ve never understood why some people should be forced to give up their properties for the sake of everyone else, especially in this case when so much energy is, and has been, expended so carelessly and needlessly.

Additionally, we should not overlook how our appetite for energy horrendously affects wildlife. Even supposedly “green” power sources (i.e., they emit fewer or no carbon emissions), when employed on a large scale, result in a variety of wildlife losses too numerous to completely list. The following are but a few examples:

Huge solar panel arrays destroy habitat for desert tortoises and are killing birds by incineration.

Wind turbines on mountain tops impact eagle nesting sites while killing migratory birds and bats that hit the turbine blades.

Wind turbine construction and operation in the ocean create noise, which can impact sea life, especially cetaceans (whales and dolphins) that need to communicate with one another.

River dams to create hydropower stop migratory fish from being able to reproduce adequately.

Please understand that I’m not saying we shouldn’t use energy. I, for one, am certainly grateful that I don’t have to fully suffer the freezing temperatures of winter the way my ancestors did.

My point is that we should use energy as wisely as possible to minimize its seriously deleterious impacts upon the Earth as well as to prolong the availability of the resource.

It’s January, a time of New Year’s resolutions. It would be wonderful if everyone resolved to make “waste not, want not” their motto when consuming energy.

¹[Dominion’s Atlantic Coast Pipeline; the EQT Corp and NextEra Energy companies’ Mountain Valley Pipeline; and the Oklahoma-based Williams company’s Western Marcellus Pipeline]

To Feed or Not to Feed: That Was the Question

Brightly colored American Goldfinches will visit feeders as well as plants to obtain the seeds they need throughout the year. (Photo credit: Marlene A. Condon)

At my last talk of the season in Shenandoah National Park, an audience member asked me about bird feeding. He’d heard that this activity was linked to the increase in Lyme disease because it increased the number of mice around people’s homes.

White-footed Mice serve as the main reservoir for Lyme bacteria. These microorganisms are transferred to people when larval ticks that have fed upon infected mice reach the nymph or adult stage of their life cycle and feed upon humans. (Ticks prefer deer, but people make an acceptable substitute.)

The man was quite concerned about the possibility of contracting this illness, and he was rather upset that I didn’t agree that people should stop feeding birds. He felt that if people maintained the nature-friendly garden that I was advocating, they wouldn’t need to feed birds anyway.

While it’s true that people could—and should—supply food to wildlife by properly landscaping their property, the reality is that very few people understand the value of replicating the natural world around their homes. Thus very few yards are truly capable of supplying food to birds and other wildlife.

Bird feeding can help animals survive, especially during harsh weather when it’s absolutely crucial for them to have easy access to food. However, people should feed responsibly, which means understanding the consequences of their actions and addressing potential problems.

You can avoid increasing mouse populations by simply putting out only the amount of seed that birds will consume in a day. An organism’s population can grow only if there is plenty of food to sustain its expansion.

You can figure out how much to feed by checking the ground at the end of the day to assess how many seeds remain. It’s not a problem for some seeds to be on the ground; after all, the mice have to eat too! But there shouldn’t be an abundance of them. If necessary, cut back on how much you dispense in the morning.

Some years ago, many ornithologists were also quite concerned about bird feeding and wanted people to stop. They worried about the spread of disease among birds in close contact day after day, and they also felt it made birds more vulnerable to predation by hawks. Again, such situations can be easily addressed.

First of all, no feeder should be much more than 9-12 feet from shrubs and/or small trees, or at least a brush pile, where birds can have a chance to escape a hawk attack. That distance provides a barrier to prevent Gray Squirrels from jumping from the plants or brush pile to the feeder (a squirrel can jump about 8 feet horizontally), but it’s close enough for a bird to make a prompt dash to safety.

If there aren’t woody plants near your feeder pole, you should consider placing a fast-growing evergreen (such as Photinia serrulata) close by. Evergreen shrubs and trees are better than deciduous woody plants as they provide cover all the year around.

However, the best cover for birds is provided by a nearby brush pile. Small birds can navigate through the interlocking branches and twigs to reach the safety of the interior of the pile, while the larger hawk is unable to get through the small openings.

[For a free brochure on brush piles that I wrote several years ago for the Virginia Department of Forestry, please contact me at marlenecondon@aol.com]

To avoid the spread of disease among birds at feeders, you should watch for sick animals. They can be recognized by their sluggishness and hesitation to fly away from food.

If you notice a bird behaving this way, you should take down all of your feeders, empty them completely, and then wash them well with plenty of soap and water to wash away microorganisms. Rinse the feeders well and let them air dry completely, preferably in sunlight, before refilling them.

Healthy birds will move off during this time to find food elsewhere (in your natural landscaping, I hope), and the sick bird will die more quickly, relieving it of its misery.

In addition to believing that bird feeding can be quite helpful to birds, I also believe that birds—via bird feeders—can be quite helpful to us.

More than 20 years ago now, I took care of my mother in my home for the last 11 months of her life. She had cancer and became bedridden about two months after I brought her to live with me.

I had placed her bed where she could watch the bird feeder on the deck. I knew she needed something to entertain her and watching birds was just the ticket!

Not only did my mom get to see birds she had never seen before, which she found interesting, but she also felt useful by filling the role of research assistant. Because I couldn’t stay right with my mother all day (there was plenty that needed to be done elsewhere in the house), she would give me a report about what I’d missed when I had been out of the room.

I was thrilled to get her observations as they added to my knowledge, and they provided us with wonderful conversations that could relieve us both of thoughts about her impending death.

One of the most meaningful things my mother did for me under these heartbreaking circumstances was to call me whenever there was a photo opportunity. One photo, of a male Northern Cardinal bathing in my deck water pan, will always bring back that day so long ago when my mom helped me to get that bird’s picture.

For some people, bird feeding has played a lasting role in family relationships under happier circumstances. Nancy, a birder I know by way of the Virginia bird list-serve, shared with me her experience as a very young child.

Her grandmother would feed Blue Jays. She’d hold up Nancy, who wasn’t even three years old yet, to see the birds eating. To this day, Nancy loves Blue Jays. They are the first kind of bird she can remember being aware of and, of course, they will always make her think of her loving grandmother who introduced Nancy to a lifelong hobby.

My only concern with this activity is when people start to believe that birds are somehow more precious than other kinds of wildlife, and then proceed to try to banish some species from around their homes.

Your environment can only support birds if it contains a tapestry of organisms living and working together to fulfill their natural roles. If you want your feathered friends to live well, don’t try to make them live in a vacuum.

Wildlife Dependent upon People

Last month, on a day that was —according to the calendar—about two weeks before the beginning of spring, I listened to the sounds of its impending arrival. Wood Frogs had been calling vociferously all day from my artificial ponds and a lone Spring Peeper had occasionally joined in.

But what really made an impression on me was the number of woodcocks I had heard calling in the morning darkness before the Sun rose. I was taking my usual walk along a nearby road and was thrilled to hear at least seven of these birds in my area.

A woodcock is a rather strange-looking bird with a long beak and plump body. It nests from Virginia northwards, but then needs to move southwards with the seasons—generally speaking. One relatively snowless winter, I did hear a woodcock calling every month from November to May in a nearby field, but that is unusual.

Birders visit fields to listen for returning woodcocks at this time of the year, particularly fields that contain damp soil conditions that allow the birds to feed. A woodcock’s long beak is used to probe the soil for earthworms and other invertebrates.

The population of woodcocks has been in decline since the 1960s. Their diminishing numbers are said to be due to loss of habitat because of development and also forest maturation. The reason we now have more forests composed of older trees is because we are still suffering the fallout from years ago when the huge outcry against clear-cutting left people thinking that cutting forests is a bad thing to do.

The result has been a loss of habitat for the many kinds of wildlife that absolutely depend upon the shrubby and wild grass-and-flower-filled landscape that comprises a regenerating forest landscape. The American Woodcock and other birds, such as the Ruffed Grouse, simply cannot reproduce without the appropriate habitat provided by a young forest.

But when people view the world with a very narrow perspective, and they insist that their perspective guide the management of most public (and often private) land, the end result is typically disastrous for the environment as a whole.

Additionally, based upon my own local observations, another very serious problem for the woodcock and other birds of field and edge habitat is the default modification of the landscape that occurs in conjunction with people building houses in fields.

Instead of maintaining mostly field habitat around their new home, the owners more commonly turn the acreage into lawn, which very few species of wildlife can utilize. Or, if they keep it looking like a field, it is cut far too often to be of much use to wildlife.

As evidenced by my pre-dawn walk that early-March day, fields are vital to our American Woodcock. Although most of the woodcocks I heard that morning were performing their aerial mating display to impress females in farm fields, one woodcock was making use of a wonderfully overgrown “yard.” And since I’ve also heard a woodcock here in previous years, the acreage is obviously being managed well for this type of bird.

The yard consists of about five acres (I would guess), which has neither been turned into a lawn nor kept cut throughout the growing, and mating, season. The folks who moved into the house on that property several years ago made the decision to manage the land in a nature-friendly manner and have done so continuously.

The woodcock singing from, and displaying above, their field is testament to their management-style success. In my opinion, these folks are so admirable that they deserve an award. Instead, Albemarle County and Commonwealth of Virginia officials bestow upon them the very highest land valuation (and tax bill) possible for private property—residential—for helping wildlife and the environment as a whole.

As often as local politicians purport to be conservation-minded, it’s difficult to understand why they don’t push for Richmond legislators to change tax laws so people who are truly conservation-minded aren’t penalized for doing what, in actuality, everyone should be doing with their properties.

No one requires a huge lawn. This aesthetic concept should be considered archaic and a relic of a time when mankind wasn’t taking up every bit of available space on the planet. It may have been acceptable years ago to waste land, but it shouldn’t be tolerated nowadays.

Any lawn that is larger than what will be utilized for everyday entertaining represents a wasted resource. Land is supposed to be productive. It should be growing food (whether for people or other organisms) or providing shelter and nesting sites for animals.

This is the reason that every bit of usable land sprouts seedlings that people call “weeds.” Mother Nature is trying to provide for her critters.

Anyone who gardens and anyone who owns land should think about their actions upon the environment as a whole. And if you are fortunate enough to own a fair bit of land, you should consider emulating my neighbors who’ve managed to attract a woodcock to their property for a few years now.

Make no mistake about it: The future of our wildlife is going to be determined by how people choose to manage their yards.

Butterfly Weed Won’t Save Monarchs

A female Monarch lays an egg on Common Milkweed in the author’s garden. (Photo credit: Marlene A. Condon)

I’m often asked how I became so captivated by the natural world. Most people usually answer this question by saying they saw a particularly beautiful animal or plant, which made them want to learn more about it. From there they moved on to other aspects of nature. But I was simply born with a love of all things wild.

I was very young when my grandparents were still alive and owned a farm. Almost every memory I possess of spending time at the farm involves wildflowers and wild animals, even though my family had no interest in nature. (I’m happy to report that changed when I started writing about it.)

No one personally introduced me to the lovely plants and secretive wild animals that weren’t as difficult to spot back then as they are now. My attention was just innately drawn to the natural environment that surrounded my family as we walked along roadways to gather blueberries that were growing wild.

Folks at that time didn’t insist upon roadsides and field borders being cut and manicured as most people demand today—as if unkempt plant growth is somehow undignified and indicative of bad moral character. The Monarch Butterfly is just one of the most obvious casualties of this current attitude towards the natural world.

The Monarch population is estimated to have dropped by a whopping 90 percent over the past 20 years. Farmers in the Midwest contributed to this situation by increasing herbicide usage to make sure no “weeds” competed with crops throughout the growing season. One of those so-called weeds was milkweed—the only kind of plant a Monarch caterpillar can feed upon.

Needless to say, a dearth of milkweed equates to a dearth of Monarchs. Indeed, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service is considering adding this butterfly to the Endangered Species list—a shocking turn of events when the Monarch has always seemed so abundantly common as to be safe from the threat of extinction.

Another important factor is the unwillingness of folks to do what’s best for wildlife instead of themselves around their homes. Most gardeners, even those growing “butterfly gardens,” prefer to grow Butterfly Weed (Asclepias tuberosa) rather than Common Milkweed (Asclepias syrica).

People have a fondness for Butterfly Weed because of its lovely orange color and its compact growth habit. Unlike its ungainly cousin—the Common Milkweed with its coarse growth that can reach 5-6 feet in height—Butterfly Weed fits better, aesthetically and size-wise, into a cultured landscape.

But this species presents two serious problems for Monarchs: a less desirable sap for the caterpillars to feed upon, and an ultimate size that is not sufficient for these insects to reach maturity.

The sap of Butterfly Weed is clear, not milky. In other words, it does not contain much of the alkaloids and other complex compounds that make Monarchs distasteful to predators, sickening them to such an extent that they do not try eating a Monarch again.

Surprisingly to me, scientists aren’t concerned about gardeners choosing to grow Butterfly Weed instead of Common Milkweed. They seem to think that as long as a few Monarchs are eating more-chemically toxic milkweeds somewhere else, the rest (i.e., the ones feeding in your yard) will be adequately protected.

It’s very common for scientists to take the attitude that getting people to do anything at-all-positive for wildlife is acceptable because otherwise people might instead do nothing. While I certainly want to encourage folks to do whatever they can to make their yards more nature-friendly, even if the choices they make are not the best ones, this particular instance is different. I can’t support the allowance of Butterfly Weed as a suitable plant to assist diminishing Monarch numbers.

People need to know that if most Monarch caterpillars feed upon Butterfly Weed, most Monarch caterpillars will be more palatable than they would be if they fed upon Common Milkweed, and that puts the entire population at risk of predation. Indeed, when I look to Mother Nature—as I always do—she backs me up. (The natural world can always be counted on for verity.)

The most-common and most-used milkweed from the Great Plains eastward in the United States and north to southern Canada—the range of the Monarch—is Common Milkweed, with its milky sap. If the scientific supposition that Butterfly Weed is just as good a plant for Monarchs as Common Milkweed were valid, you would expect Butterfly Weed to be more common than it is throughout much of its, and this butterfly’s, range.

To me, this provides the definitive proof that the Common Milkweed is the one that has been used the most throughout the centuries by Monarchs, and that should be reason enough to pick this species for your garden. But if you are skeptical of my assertion, I can give you the undeniable evidence for not choosing Butterfly Weed: The plant is so small that it simply can’t support one caterpillar, let alone many, all the way to maturity.

Unless you can grow a huge number of these plants in your garden, you will doom Monarch caterpillars to starvation. I know because my husband was kind enough to rescue many caterpillars one year from a person’s garden that held only Butterfly Weed. Every one of those Monarchs would have died if I hadn’t been growing Common Milkweed in my gardens.

Indeed, Monarch butterflies themselves have provided the indisputable substantiation of my contention: They’ve never laid even one egg on the Butterfly Weed growing in the same garden bed as my Common Milkweed.

Monarchs know what they need. If they lay eggs upon Butterfly Weed, you can rest assured that there’s too limited a supply of Common Milkweed in the area. Please use your garden space wisely by planting Common Milkweed instead of Butterfly Weed. Monarchs desperately need you to do what’s best for them, not you.

Note: VDOT has begun a new “Pollinator Habitat Program” to assist pollinators by creating and maintaining appropriate habitat. The agency is looking for partners to work with to create plots on VDOT lands in and near Safety Rest Areas & Park & Rides. The Interstate 64 VDOT Workers Memorial on Afton Mountain is a location they are considering for this program. Garden clubs, wildlife conservancies and area businesses are encouraged to participate by providing volunteer labor and funding. If you’re interested, please contact Diane Beyer, State Roadside Management Planner, at diane.beyer@vdot.virginia.gov for more information.