An Imperfect Book about Conservation

A review of Nature's Best Hope

Recently, I read Nature’s Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation That Starts in Your Yard by Douglas Tallamy. A family friend suggested it after hearing about my interest in gardening and environmentalism. The first few chapters annoyed me so much that I thought I’d be finishing the book out of spite, but Tallamy managed to surprise me. Except for the beginning, the book was an easy read filled with practical suggestions. I wanted to share my thoughts including what frustrated me so much about the beginning, an overview of the practical suggestions, and why imperfect solutions are necessary.

A False Origin of Humankind

The first four chapters deals with how Tallamy thinks humanity got into the ecological mess we are in. He only alludes to climate change (something I’ll come back to) and instead focuses on the mass species extinctions that have been happening since the industrial revolution. The following paragraph is a summary of the story told in these chapters.

Humans have always lived in opposition to the environment. Hunter-gatherers succeeded by being the best at extracting natural resources, even if that caused extinctions, and because of evolution this caused humans to be hard-wired to dominate nature. The idea that any indigenous society lived in harmony with their local ecosystem is simply part of the noble savage myth. We know this is a myth because archeological evidence shows that ancient humans caused extinctions of megafauna throughout history. Now, though, things can change. Humans are in a unique position to recognize our interdependence with nature thanks to romantic-era poets and modern ecological science.¹

This presentation of human history is not unique and I’ve heard versions of it before. While I’ve long been skeptical of this story, what really convinced me that humanity’s origin is both less pessimistic and more complicated was reading The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow (hence forth referred to as the Davids). As made clear by the title, The Dawn of Everything is an expansive book about many topics. What’s relevant to Tallamy’s story are the Davids’ arguments that there is no one origin story, that the “myth of the noble savage” has long been used to dismiss the relevance of indigenous thought, and that humans have always had the capacity to choose how to behave (at least to a certain degree).

In Tallamy’s origin story, all early humans survived by over-extracting the resources around them. How does that fit with the fact that humans have lived in varying locations for tens of thousands of years? Doing so would not be possible unless they lived in ways that could sustain the land around them and their population over generations. They weren’t all perfect stewards of the environment but they had to find some ways of not over-hunting or over-gathering the food that sustained them.² Tallamy dismisses the idea that indigenous people had any purposeful sustainable practices as a form of naïve racism, as the “myth of the noble savage.” The use of the “myth of the noble” as a way to dismiss any relevance of indigenous thought has a long history as discussed by the Davids in the appropriately titled section on the “myth of the myth of the noble savage.”

In the early days of colonialization, Europeans dealt with a major problem. Many of them noticed that American Indians did certain things better. The Europeans would see these supposedly uncivilized people taking better care of their sick, having more equal forms of governance, and allowing women more participation in society. Fearing a revolution, the aristocracy needed a way to dismiss the idea that Europeans could learn anything from these civilizations, especially when these ideas were spreading to their homelands. Here is where the myth of the noble savage first began. It became a short and simple thought-terminating cliché to stop any suggestion that Native Americans had any practices, politics, or ideologies that could be useful or relevant to Europeans. Tallamy unintentionally uses the myth in the same way. He rejects the relevance of American Indian ecological practices either past or present.³

However, the biggest problem with Tallamy’s origin story of humanity’s relationship with nature is that he assumes ancient humans and more recent indigenous peoples (treated equivalently in his telling) were subject to the whims of evolution in a way that is no longer true of modern people living in industrialized economies. They could not notice their effect on the environment and choose how to respond while we can. As the Davids describe it, in these origin stories hunter-gatherers are caught in an

evolutionary straitjacket, their place in history defined by their mode of subsistence, and their role blindly to enact some abstract law of development which we understand but they do not; certainly, it rarely occurs to anyone to ask what sort of worlds they thought they were trying to create.⁴

The idea that indigenous people could not notice their effects on the environment comes from a long history of racism, but it also comes from the modern problem of how alienated many of us are from our local environments. We are the ones who do not always see how our actions affect the world around us. Many of us rely on news reports of distant places and reports of complex science to know that climate change is happening. Global news and macro-scale climate data weren’t possible until recently. But until recently, noticing that over-extracting resources leads to fewer animals and plants was not only possible, it was obvious. Some indigenous cultures over-extracted anyway, but they didn’t do so because it was inevitable. They did so because they either felt it was worth it or they were not affected by the consequences. Situations that are still true today.

For all of the above reasons, I was not a fan of Nature’s Best Hope. These first few chapters primed me to distrust Tallamy’s judgement. And yet I found that these chapters were so disconnected and unnecessary to the rest of the book that I could easily separate my critiques of the origin story chapters to the three-quarters of the book devoted to practical suggestions on creating pollinator gardens. It’s not good writing structure, but it means I can recommend skipping the first part of the book without missing anything of importance.

Homegrown National Park

What Nature’s Best Hope is actually about is this idea that suburban homeowners should devote half their lawn to native species. He calls this the Homegrown National Park. It’s a concept that links household landscaping to the broader conservation movement of the US parks system. While the parks have been fundamental to conservation efforts, they aren’t enough. Many plants and animals need smaller pieces of land throughout the country and not just large portions of land in a few areas. That’s where the Homegrown National Park comes in. If people kept conservation principals in mind when designing their yard then there would be enough spread for the various birds, insects, and plants that are currently struggling. It’s a simple and appealing idea.

Why I Recommend the Book

Despite having a bad start, I still liked Nature’s Best Hope. The rest of the book is about the hows and whys of Homegrown National Park. Why anybody should care, why humans need to intervene on behalf of native species, how individuals can find out what species are native to their area, and how homeowners can create pollinator gardens without upsetting their neighbors. Tallamy does a good job arguing against grass lawns and for conservation in a way that’s likely to appeal to people who aren’t already big environmentalists. As mentioned earlier, he does not talk about climate change in the book, which seems to be a tactical decision. It’s one I support because while it’d be great if the reality of climate change wasn’t a partisan issue, it is. This is a book with the potential to convince my conservative family members to change their gardening practices. They don’t believe in human-caused climate change, but they do care about their local environment. Saving endangered species is something just about everyone can agree on.

While it’s not a politically radical book, the world Nature’s Best Hope imagines is one that’s very different from our current one. Most lawns in the US are entirely grass. They do not support much life and they require massive amounts of energy to maintain. If half those lawn became native pollinator gardens then that would be a great boon to various struggling species while also reducing energy and water usage that goes toward lawn care. Similar to his tactical avoidance of mentioning climate change, Tallamy does a great job of appealing to people who are reluctant to give up their grass lawns. Most environment messaging on grass lawns is aggressive, especially on the Internet. I say this as part of the problem. “Fuck lawns” is a fun rallying cry but it’s not exactly persuasive. Even though I don’t personally understand it, I recognize there are many people out there who take great pride in their lawns. We need people who can appeal to grass-lovers.

Another thing Tallamy does well is address the various arguments against caring whether plants are native. There’s some interesting arguments in environmental spaces about how the focus on native versus invasive plants can be problematic. Overzealous attempts at weeding can be worse than doing nothing. The designation of “native vs invasive vs alien” is a social construct without clear boundaries and that’s been influenced by human biases about how to view the world. There’s also less interesting arguments against caring about native plants that rely on letting survival of the fittest take over. Tallamy addresses all of these arguments in thoughtful ways. He makes a strong case that gardening and landscaping culture should place more priority on native plants than they currently do. His argument is not for restoring the land to some pre-colonialization ideal. Instead, it’s to be more mindful about gardening in relation to local ecosystems. Be mindful of which introduced plants are likely to crowd out other plants. Be mindful of which plants will help feed local and migratory birds.

Skip the First Four Chapters

If you have a yard and are in the US⁵ then I recommend reading Nature’s Best Hope. It’s an imperfect book that starts with a needlessly pessimistic view of humanity that dismisses the relevance of any indigenous thought on conservation. It presents a solution that is too individualistic. And yet, this imperfect book with its imperfect solution could make a real, positive difference. Pushing the culture toward caring about local ecosystems and using less grass is a great thing. It’s a book more likely to convince someone who isn’t already a big environmentalist and we need more of that. It’s a practical book that’s great for people, like me, who are beginning gardeners and not lifelong nature enthusiasts. Plus, it has pictures.

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Here are some relevant links:

Bird-Friendly Native Plant Finder

Homegrown National Park Website

1. The fourth chapter is slightly different. It’s an argument that tribal thinking is why grass lawns are the norm. It’s not as bad as the first three chapters, but it still suffers from the same problem of being oversimplified and unnecessary.

2. Here is an interesting example of a tribe who maintained the same level of biodiversity in a part of the Amazon for 5,000 years.

3. A book suggestion that is about Native American ecological practices and thought is Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer.

4. pg. 96 The Dawn of Everything, emphasis from original

5. The general ideas would apply outside the US, but he spends much of the book focused on specific species that are endangered in mainland America.