Joining a community of like-minded people in organizations, such as Wild Ones, is a powerful way to promote a healthy planet beyond our own yard. Here in Central New York, the local chapter of Wild Ones is Habitat Gardening in Central New York.
We’ve found that the advantages of taking part in such an organization are:
- we continue to learn more and more about our local ecoregion and about habitat gardening at our monthly meetings,
- we meet fellow citizens who are also working to leave a legacy of a living planet — our favorite kind of people! —, and
- we’re supporting a larger, national effort to spread the word about preserving biodiversity with native plants, and the importance of environmental stewardship in general.
Supporting like-minded organizations
We’re pretty frugal in most areas of our lives, but we believe in supporting organizations with our membership and donations.
Here are some of the wildlife- and environment-related organizations we support because they do good work. (If you’re not in Central NY, most areas have similar local organizations you can support.)
Local organizations
- Baltimore Woods, a local nature center
- Central New York Land Trust (formerly Save the County)
- Onondaga Audubon – a chapter of the national organization
National organizations
- American Bird Conservancy
- Bat Conservation International
- Beyond Pesticides
- BugGuide.net
- Cornell Lab of Ornithology
- Monarch Watch
- National Audubon Society
- National Wildlife Federation
- The Nature Conservancy
- National Resources Defense Council (NRDC)
- Sierra Club
- Union of Concerned Scientists
- Wild Ones: Native Plants, Natural Landscapes and the local HGCNY chapter
- Xerces Society, an invertebrate conservation organization
Resources
If you don’t live in Central New York, why not start your own chapter of Wild Ones? It’s easy to get started. Just contact Wild Ones, and they’ll help you set up a Seedling chapter.
Our Habitat Gardening in Central New York (HGCNY) Wild Ones chapter publishes twice-monthly FREE newsletters anyone can sign up for. If you’d like to subscribe, just email me at info@hgcny.org.
Reflections
Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realize we cannot eat money.
~ Alanis Obomsawin