Make Space for the Diversity of Life

Help native plants by uprooting invasive exotic volunteers in your yard. Support efforts to set aside wild habitat interconnected by corridors, by volunteering for, or financially supporting, a local land trust. Help address the climate crisis by curbing unintentional energy use, because climate change is causing habitat changes that in turn are raising extinction rates. (see Day One).

More Suggestions

Support organic agriculture and local farmers. Conventional agriculture is more likely to specialize in a few varieties, decreasing the diversity of food crops. Buy organic shade-grown, fair trade coffee, for example Triple Mitzvah coffee marketed by Congregation B'nai Torah, Boston's Reconstructionist Shul.

Eat low on the food chain. Much more acreage is expended raising feed for meat and poultry than would be used to grow protein-rich vegetable alternatives. Some beef is raised in areas cleared from rainforest for that purpose.

Recycle paper, buy recycled paper, print on both sides of a sheet of paper before recycling it, and reduce paper consumption. Although paper companies replant trees, biodiversity is usually reduced.

Resources

List of top invasive plant species from Georgia Exotic Pest Plant Council

Books and Other Non-Internet

Ellen Bernstein, The Splendor of Creation, p. 26-54

Organization Web Sites

Georgia Organics
Rainforest Action Network
Georgia Native Plant Society
The Land Trust Alliance is the convener, strategist and representative of land trusts across America. Locate land trusts active in Georgia.