18 Quotes by Douglas Tallamy

many of the alien plants that have succeeded in North America are not a random sample of all plants that evolved elsewhere, but rather are a subset that were imported specifically because of their unpalatability to insects

...a plant can only function as a true “native” while it is interacting with the community that historically helped shape it.

One of the maxims of the new field of conservation biological control is that to control insect herbivores, you must maintain populations of insect herbivores.

Butterflies used to reproduce on the native plants that grew in our yards before the plants were bulldozed and replaced with lawn. To have butterflies in our future, we need to replace those lost host plants, no if’s, and’s or but’s. If we do not, butterfly populations will continue to decline with every new house that is built.

How many times have you bought a plant that is advertised as being “pest free”? A plant that is “pest free” is inherently unpalatable to insects and often is not susceptible to local diseases. Because such plants do not pass the energy they capture from the sun up the food chain, they do not become functioning members of the ecosystem in which they are planted.

Ninety-five percent of the country (USA) has been logged, tilled, drained, grazed, paved, or otherwise developed.

What is needed is nothing less than a cultural transformation: rather than acting as if we were independent of nature, we need to behave a little more reverently or respectfully toward nature, as if we were the product and beneficiary of a a vibrant natural world, rather than its master.

...the consensus among landscape ecologists is that 3 to 5 percent of the land remains as undisturbed habitat for plants and animals (Rosenzweig 2003). In other words, we have taken and modified for our own use between 95 and 97 percent of all land in the lower 48 states.

...we humans have disrupted natural habitats in so many ways and in so many places that the future of our nation's biodiversity is dim unless we start to share the places in which we live --our cities and, to an even greater extent, our suburbs -- with the plants and animals that evolved there