Plenary Session

Nature's Best Hope

with Doug Tallamy, entomologist, ecologist, educator, and conservationist

Recent headlines about global insect declines, the impending extinction of one million species worldwide, and three billion fewer birds in North America are a bleak reality check about how ineffective our current landscape designs have been at sustaining the plants and animals that sustain us.  Such losses are not an option if we wish to continue our current standard of living on Planet Earth. The good news is that none of this is inevitable. Tallamy will discuss simple steps that each of us can- and must- take to reverse declining biodiversity on our own properties and will explain why we, ourselves, are nature’s best hope.

Douglas W. Tallamy is Professor and Chair of the Department of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Delaware in Newark, Delaware. Chief among his research goals is to better understand the many ways insects interact with plants and how such interactions determine the diversity of animal communities. He has written and co-authored a number of popular books that illustrate the potential for home gardens and landscaping to provide important habitat for native species, the most recent, published in 2025, entitled "How Can I Help? Saving Nature with Your Yard"