News Reporter: Climate Coach: Be a lazy gardener.

PUBLISHED BY

Climate Coach
Down-to-earth advice for life on our changing planet.

(María Jesús Contreras for The Washington Post)

By Michael J. Coren

Welcome. This week, camels are the new cows and how to avoid an "insect apocalypse" by being a lazy gardener.

But first, thank you for joining me every week as we explore better ways to fight climate change. This Earth Day, we want to offer you unlimited access for just $40 for your next year. With a subscription, you'll be able to read all Post climate coverage (no more paywall!), plus everything else we offer. Click here to subscribe.

Every spring, the air near my house hums. Bees and insects crisscross my yard searching for a sip of nectar, ferrying pollen between the golden poppies and California lilacs, and bumbling across flower petals.

Each night, I assumed they flew back to their honeycomb castles. But believing all bees live in hives is like thinking all humans live in treehouses because you once saw someone climbing trees.

The truth was at my feet all along. Of the world's 20,000 or so bee species, a whopping 70 percent dwell in the ground, while most of the rest shelter aboveground in hollow stems and wood. Less than 5 percent live in hives.

This is an opportunity. Unlike other wildlife holding on in distant nature reserves, insects are ever present in our lives, settling down in our yards, parks and even our homes. (The average home contains 100 insect species, virtually all of them harmless.)

Insects, a vast biological family comprised of more than a million species, rank among the most successful organisms on the planet. No other animals can match their sheer diversity.

Yet they're also suffering alarming declines some scientists call the "insect apocalypse." Scientists are still working to pinpoint the exact causes — habitat destruction, poisons, pollution and rising temperatures all play a role.

Bees — along with the rest of class Insecta — need you. Rather than reach for a can of Raid, welcome lacewings, sweat bees and lady beetles into your life by building bug mansions on your balcony or in your backyard.

The best part? The laziest gardeners make the best bug architects. To learn how to build your own bug mansion with stems and leaves, click on the blue button below to read my column (and check out Xerces's instructions on building habitat)

What's nesting in your yard? Send stories and photos to climatecoach@washpost.com. I read all your emails.

Click here to read the column

Field Sample

It's not every day you bring part of an ecosystem back from oblivion.

This month, the California Academy of Sciences and Presidio Trust relocated Silvery Blue butterflies (Glaucopsyche lygdamus) into the sand dunes of the Presidio, a national park site in San Francisco, from elsewhere on the California coast. They're the closest living relative of the extinct Xerces Blue butterfly (G. xerces), the first butterfly driven to extinction by humans in the United States about 80 years ago.

"This isn't a Jurassic Park-style de-extinction project, but it will have a major impact," said California Academy of Sciences' Durrell Kapan in a statement. "The Silvery Blue will act as an ecological 'stand-in' for the Xerces Blue, performing the same ecosystem functions as both a pollinator and a critical member of the food web."

Gayle Laird © California Academy of Sciences

With luck, the butterfly, adapted to San Francisco's sand dunes and cool, foggy climate, will be one of several efforts by the institution to regenerate the natural world in California and elsewhere.

Snapshot

Welcome to Noreen and Antonia! A group of scientists led by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service cloned two baby ferrets from cells frozen nearly four decades ago. It's a milestone in the effort to save the black-footed ferret, one of North America's most endangered mammals, writes Dino Grandoni.

Today's entire wild ferret population descends from just seven individuals. This lack of genetic diversity imperils the species' survival, so the two new additions give the Great Plains predator a crucial boost as it tries to recover from the brink of extinction.

"Genetic diversity is critical for resilience to environmental change," said Megan Owen, vice president of conservation science at the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, one of Fish and Wildlife's partners in the cloning effort. "It's basically the raw material of adaptive evolution."

The Second Degree

After reading my last column on iguanas and invasive species, Jason Hodin thought we should embrace them.

"I often think about how what we call 'invasive' species are the subset that are attracted to the same kind of environment that we apparently favor," he writes. "Fruit flies, rodents, pigeons, roaches, iguana, and on and on. If we are proud of the modifications we've made to the planet to suit us, these should be our totem creatures."

Susan wrote that in France wild pig, or sanglier, is an appreciated delicacy. Despite having family members who hunt, she said, "they recoil with horror when I ask them to save me hog meat — apparently they throw it out!"

In most parts of the United States, this aversion comes down to culture, taste and regulation. Wild boar doesn't have as much fat as farm-raised pigs, and can (sometimes) taste gamier. Some states also prevent wild meat from being sold, even when feral pigs cause environmental problems. That may be changing: States such as Louisiana are allowing wild boar to be sold and you can now buy wild boar online.

Two questions for you: Has green living become a source of relationship strife at home? Maybe your partner insists on pre-rinsing the dishes (when you know it's generally not necessary) or you don't want to give up your gas stove? If so, tell me about how you resolved it.

And for those of you who haven't shopped at refill or zero-waste stores, my colleague Allyson Chiu would like to know your biggest questions or concerns. If you have, we'd love to hear your tips and advice here.

On the Climate Front

From The Post:

Carbon offsets too often don't deliver. We take a look inside the race to fix them.

For the first time, U.S. may force polluters to clean up these 'forever chemicals.'

The U.S. just changed how it manages a tenth of its land: Conservation and oil drilling are now on par on federal lands for the first time.

In parts of Africa, camels are the new cows.

From elsewhere:

Environmental damages from change will be six times higher than the cost of preventing them, finds a study in Nature.

A tiny inland shorebird, Wilson's phalarope, may help save the Great Salt Lake, reports Inside Climate News.

Maine, warns the Atlantic, is a cautionary tale for America's PFAS future.

The heat on a desolate Arizona mountaintop may have driven a 3-million-year-old lizard population extinct, says CBS.

And our great wheat experiment is off and running. For those who received your seeds in the mail, please take photos and notes of how it's going.

"Yesterday, we got our wheat seeds in the ground," wrote Richard and Judith Selby. "[We] posted a sign so that visitors (and the deer) will know that behind the wire fencing is our field trial experiment (and me.)"

Send me your photos and stories of what else you're growing this spring at climatecoach@washpost.com