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#1 | ||||
Co-Administrator
Join Date: Nov 2008
Location: Midwest
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Nonnative Plants: Ecological Traps
Offering alluring habitat for songbirds, exotic plants may actually decrease the animals' long-term survival and fitness National Wildlife Federation 01-14-2013 // John Carey Quote:
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"We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect." Aldo Leopold |
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#2 |
Heron
Join Date: Dec 2011
Location: powell,Ohio
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I like it! Thanks Cirsium I'm going to use this article as a resource in a paper I'm writing about managing backyard habitats.
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#3 |
Co-Administrator
Join Date: Nov 2008
Location: Midwest
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Here's another thread that has some interesting information about birds and alien honeysuckles:
http://www.wildlifegardeners.org/for...our-birds.html
__________________
"We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect." Aldo Leopold |
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#4 |
WG Hospitality & UAOKA recipient
Join Date: Dec 2009
Location: Pennsylvania
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Nice find, Cirsium.
![]() I have removed a lot of Asian honeysuckle from our property...always being aware of the structure that they provided (since they prevented natives to fill that niche)...but it wasn't until this year that I found a nest (left over from last year) in one--on the edge of our property. Over four years, I've only seen this one nest, but still felt concern that I was removing habitat (degraded as it was)...this year, I'm removing the rest of them--although the ones on the edge of a drop off I've just cut off at the base--I'm sure they will resprout, but I need their root systems intact for now to hold the bank against erosion. In their place, I've added a choke cherry or two...some pagoda dogwood (Cornus alternifolia), wild blueberry bushes, and others. I feel better knowing that, ultimately, my restored habitat will benefit more species than I can imagine.
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"If suburbia were landscaped with meadows, prairies, thickets or forests, or combinations of these, then the water would sparkle, fish would be good to eat again, birds would sing and human spirits would soar." ~ Lorrie Otto ~ A Native Backyard Blog ~ |
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#5 |
Salamander
Join Date: Feb 2013
Location: Central Ohio
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Source-sink systems and ecological traps are very VERY complicated subjects. I started looking into them a few years ago when I heard that backyard gardens had been shown to be a problem. Would seem that whether a backyard garden is bad depends on on the species. I recently read a paper that found that monarch butterflies seemed to benefit from butterfly gardens, so that is good. But, I've seen other papers that show other butterfly species are adversely affected.
![]() Google Scholar is one of the searches I use for finding research articles on the subject.
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The caterpillar does all the work but the butterfly gets all the publicity. George Carlin |
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Tags |
ecological, nonnative, plants, traps |
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