The land is awash with sprays of amber, lemon, and yellow from the wild goldenrods that proliferate in meadows, roadsides, forest edges, and vacant lots this time of year. These misunderstood, underappreciated, and spectacularly diverse plants have been lumped into the common category of "goldenrod" and unfairly blamed for hay fever.
In today’s blog, we’ll explore what “ecosystem health” really means, review the biggest stressors acting on our wildlife populations today, and then I’ll offer some simple things you can do right now to help restore health and ecological integrity to the ecosystem right outside your own back door – and the front door, too!
Plants are the basis for terrestrial habitats that support our wildlife. To conserve wildlife, we must first conserve native plants. Non-native plants don't serve a functional ecological role in our landscapes and have minimal wildlife value, in general. In fact, invasive non-native plants negatively impact wildlife habitat in a variety of ways, some of which we are just now beginning to understand.
These furry, winged mammals have been the subject of so much mythology, lore, and horror stories – it’s hard to know where to begin. For starters, there’s the old-wives’ tale that bats often get tangled up in long hair (simply untrue), and let’s not forget the widely held belief that most bats have rabies and will attack. Like other wild animals, bats can contract rabies but less than ½ of 1% of bats actually have the disease. It is rare to be bitten by a bat because they are shy and avoid people, biting only in self-defense if handled.
