Resolve to be greener in 2022
Is one of your New Year’s resolutions to do what you can to help the environment this year? From baby steps to giant steps, there is something each of us can do.
• Change a light bulb. Replace white outdoor bulbs with yellow LEDs. Insect populations have declined 45% in just the past 40 years. While many people claim they don’t like bugs, without them, lizards, frogs, birds and even many mammals lose much or all of their food. Even birds that are seed-eaters as adults often eat high-protein insects as nestlings. White lights attract insects all night long, and can disrupt migration for migrating insects. Circling lights can exhaust them, making them easy prey for bats and birds. For a bigger step, get a motion-activated light.
While many people claim they don’t like bugs, without them, lizards, frogs, birds and even many mammals lose much or all of their food.
• Leave areas of your garden unmulched for native bees to dig nest tunnels. While mulching is useful for conserving water and keeping down weeds, native bees can’t dig though more than an inch or two of it, and 60% to 70% of our native bees nest in tunnels in the ground. UC Berkeley Urban Bee Lab’s helpabee.org suggests leaving 50% of your yard unmulched.
• Buy garden plants labeled “neonic-free.” Neonics (short for neonicotinoids) are the most widely used insecticides in the world. They get into plants tissues, including the pollen and nectar, harming many beneficial insects like bees. The Marin Master Gardeners’ website advises to read labels carefully, noting that acetamiprid, imidacloprid, dinotefuran, clothianidin and thiamethoxam are all neonicotinoids. You can find neonic-free plants, including many that are native and pollinatorfriendly, at O’Donnell’s Fairfax Nursery in Fairfax, Green Jeans Garden Supply in Mill Valley,
Mostly Natives Nursery in Point Reyes Station and CNL Native Plant Nursery at Tam Junction.
• Participate in citizen science by going to Otter Spotter when you see a river otter. Learn more at riverecologyprojcet.org.
• Pull out your tropical milkweed and replace it with native milkweed. Tropical milkweed has a parasite called OE (Ophryocystis elektroscirrha) that infects monarch butterflies. In addition, because it does not go dormant it encourages monarchs to breed when they should be heading to the coast to overwinter in clusters. Most of the caterpillars on them will not survive. Replace the milkweed with a native like narrow-leaf milkweed.
• Start posting your photos on websites like bugguide.net. In addition to the fun you will have learning about insects and spiders, entomologists look at these websites. I have been contacted by entomologists studying the spread of nonnative roaches to the Bay Area and studying the genetics of disjunct populations of gray dragon lubber grasshoppers. Occasionally an entomologist even finds a new species from a posting.
• Learn to use iNaturalist. This free app from the California Academy of Sciences now has AI, so if you are on the grid you may be able to identify a plant or insect on the spot. (You will find many times that the AI is not conclusive and you need to check further, and you may also find disagreements between, for example, calflora.net and iNaturalist.) In addition to the enjoyment learning and the connection to a community of naturalists can provide, each photo that you post adds to the database.
• Add Merlin to your phone. This free app from Cornell University has added a feature that allows you record a bird vocalization (song or call) and it will suggest an identification. Again, use your head, eyes and ears, not just the app. I had Merlin tell me a Sonoma chipmunk vocalization was a warbler. (This is actually a more “intelligent mistake” than you might think, given the similarity.)
To check if what Merlin comes up with makes sense, get a Marin bird checklist. This updated checklist not only tells you what birds are in Marin but which months of the year each bird is here, and how common it is each month that it is here. Go to marinaudubon.org/ birds/checklist-birds-marincounty.
• Help track monarch butterflies in your neighborhood and report monthly sightings by going to pollinatorposse.org/projects.
• Many local environmental groups such as the Marin chapter of the California Native Plant Society and Marin Audubon started having their monthly speakers online due to the pandemic. Often these presentations are recorded, so you can go to the Marin Audubon speaker series archive to hear Mia Monroe and Ed Nute talk about monarchs in Marin, or Daniel Edelstein talk about wood warblers in Marin.
• Learn about mushrooms at a fungus fair. Unfortunately the Point Reyes Fungus Fair has been canceled due to the omicron variant of COVID-19, but as I write the Mycological Society of San Francisco is still sponsoring its 50th Golden Jubilee Revival Fungus Fair on Jan. 23 in Orinda. Since the pandemic situation is ever-changing, check to verify at mssf.org/ fungus-fairs if it is on before heading to Orinda.