DAY 11
You’ve Planted One Climate-Resilient, Native Plant to Help Restore Safe Habitat for Pollinators
Together with the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation
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What is your positive impact today?
Happy International Mountain Day. Today, you’ve planted one climate-resilient, native plant to help restore safe habitat for pollinators. This is part of a larger Pollinator Habitat Kit Program, which provides regionally-appropriate native plants for free to people who want to help restore habitat. You’ve also helped remove financial barriers for people in underserved communities who lack the financial resources to purchase plants themselves.
Above all, your plant helps capture carbon, fosters ecological resilience, empowers people to nurture their local neighborhoods, and provides nectar for threatened species like the monarch butterfly.
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Why is your impact important?
Pollinators are essential to our environment. They are those insects, like bees and butterflies, that help plants reproduce and contribute to one out of every three bites of food we eat. And the ecological service they provide is necessary for the reproduction of over 85% of the world’s flowering plants, including more than two-thirds of the world’s crop species. For example, the US alone grows more than 100 crops that either need or benefit from pollinators, and the economic value of these native pollinators is estimated at $3 billion per year. Unfortunately, in many places, the essential service of pollination is at risk from habitat loss, pesticide use, and introduced diseases.
One of the best ways to help declining pollinators and other wildlife is to restore safe habitat for them. Ensuring there is high-quality, climate-resilient habitat across all landscapes is one of the most fundamental actions we can take to protect pollinators.
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How are we achieving your impact together?
Our impactful partner for today is the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation. Through their Pollinator Habitat Kit Program, they give away hundreds of thousands of free native plants every year to hundreds of people and organizations around the US.
The Xerces Society works together with local nurseries across North America to provide regionally-appropriate native plants to residents and land managers, who then provide land, labor, time, and care—essential contributions that secure flowering habitats for years to come. These plants help support bees, butterflies, other beneficial insects, other wildlife, and even the human communities they are planted in.
More About the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation
The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation was founded in 1971 by lepidopterist Robert Michael Pyle. The organization’s name comes from the now-extinct Xerces Blue butterfly (Glaucopsyche Xerces), the first butterfly known to go extinct in North America as a result of human activities. The Xerces Society works throughout North America to conserve pollinators and other invertebrates, protect endangered species, and reduce pesticide use and impacts, using applied research, policy advocacy, public education, and on-the-ground habitat improvement to advance meaningful, long-term conservation. For over 50 years, they have been champions of insects—Earth’s most biodiverse and overlooked animals.
By providing habitat for insects, we are helping the entire ecosystem.
– Scott Hoffman Black; Executive Director of the Xerces Society
