Cities have a bad rap for being environmental baddies and that’s not always justified. While I love visiting beautiful wilderness areas, I know that my impact on the planet’s ecology is often less in a city because I don’t need a car to get there or get around. I’ve previously written about greening your city breaks for EcoSalon.
Just like rural or wilderness areas, urban landscapes have an eco-system and many cities are havens of biodiversity. Just think of all the creatures great and small that cohabit cities with humans and all the plants and trees that grow within urban areas. Okay, it’s not the tropical rainforest, but perhaps there’s good reason why it’s called a concrete jungle.
Sadly, biodiversity in our cities is declining at an alarming rate, with even the unassuming sparrow in danger. This thoughtful video from the European Commission might help put things in perspective.
So what can you do? From planting flowers to attract insects and birds to volunteer to clean up a river and choosing where to swim carefully, each of us can make a difference starting in our own backyard (literally).
Often there is so much focus on climate change that other environmental causes get forgotten. But the fate of the human species is much more bound up in the fate of the myriad of other species around us, especially the small creatures like bees and butterflies. Climate change is serious in part because of the damaging effect it will have on biodiversity, helping hasten the wave of extinctions humans have already kicked off.
I believe that nourishing life and healthy eco-systems is one of the most positive choices we can make. Biodiversity is just another name for “life on earth”. Isn’t that worth saving?
Please share your stories about how you protect biodiversity when you are at home or on your travels.
Commercial disclosure: I hosted this video free of charge because it’s a cause close to my heart. However, I would earn a small fee for every view. Roaming Tales’ policy is to disclose all commercial arrangements.
I’d give myself a so-so grade on promoting biodiversity in my urban environment. I rent a place, so don’t have full control of the yard. In the areas that I do control (raised beds and containers), I unfortunately have been planting exclusively non-native plants — vegetables, herbs, citrus. However, I leave a lot of ground undisturbed so that ground-nesting native bees can use it, there is a diversity of flowers planted for bees, hummingbirds and other pollinators to feed from, and I don’t use pesticides. I tried installing some “bee condos” — wood blocks with long holes drilled in them to provide nesting sites for native bees — but they seem to be unoccupied. I guess they were hit by the real estate crisis too…
For those who want to help improve biodiversity in nearby parks, there are often volunteer work groups that pull invasive weeds and otherwise help improve habitats. Local native plant societies might be able to help find a group. In the Bay Area, I know of a monthly effort in the East Bay Regional Parks at Skyline Park that is aimed at the highly invasive scotch broom. There used to be a monthly “weed pull” at Point Reyes National Seashore that focused on different plants every month — scotch broom, cape ivy, and some others — but I don’t know if that is still going on. Although the workdays offered significant chances to get rashes from poison oak, the National Park Service crew took us off of the main trails into places at the Seashore normally not visited by the public.
Marc´s last [type] ..Let this salad invade your kitchen: wakame, cucumber and radish sprouts with smoky vinaigrette
It has long been feared that human activity is causing massive extinctions. Despite increased efforts at conservation, it has not been enough and biodiversity losses continue. The costs associated with deteriorating or vanishing ecosystems will be high. However, sustainable development and consumption would help avert ecological problems.
Why is Biodiversity important? Does it really matter if there aren’t so many species?
Biodiversity boosts ecosystem productivity where each species, no matter how small, all have an important role to play.
Preserving species and their habitats is important for ecosystems to self-sustain themselves.
Yet, the pressures to destroy habitat for logging, illegal hunting, and other challenges are making conservation a struggle.
Mariana Teagan
Miami – Florida