077 How To Grow Your Own Homegrown National Park

October 31, 2023

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We currently stand at a pivotal juncture where the loss of numerous species from our local ecosystems poses a serious threat. This jeopardizes the ecosystem services that are essential for our well-being, including oxygen production, water purification, flood control, pollination, pest regulation, and carbon storage. However, this isn’t a moment of condemning human actions, but an opportunity to embrace an enjoyable path to positive change through stewardship.

Doug Tallamy’s message emphasizes a solution-focused approach: small individual efforts can collectively make a significant impact. By working together, we can create new ecological networks that support the growth and resilience of plant and animal populations, allowing them to thrive despite normal population fluctuations.

At the heart of this initiative is the concept of the Homegrown National Park®, a term coined by Doug. It serves as a rallying point, recognizing that even our grand national parks, remarkable as they are, are too isolated and limited in scale to preserve species effectively. The idea behind the Homegrown National Park is a grassroots call to action, encouraging us to restore habitats in our residential and working areas, and to a lesser extent in agricultural and grazing lands, effectively extending the concept of national parks to our own yards and communities.

To visually represent this collective effort, they have created “THE MAP,” an interactive community-based tool that tracks each person’s contribution to native plantings by State, County, and Zip Code. This map not only gauges progress toward the ambitious goal of planting 20 million acres of native species in the U.S. but also provides individuals with a tangible way to see their role in a larger ecological restoration effort, thereby creating new ecological networks and revitalizing biodiversity.