Miss seeing birds in the metro-east? This nonprofit will help bring them to your yard

When Jami Bossart looks back on her childhood, she is reminded of time in the woods and a natural soundtrack of chorusing birds and insects.

“I remember when the honeysuckle first started to appear and began to kind of choke out the woods that were near our house,” Bossart recalls from her backyard forest of native plants.

When Bossart and her family moved into their O’Fallon home seven years ago, she knew she wanted to bring back some of the magic from her childhood. To get there, she reached out to Charlie Pitts, a member of her garden club and native plant enthusiast.

Pitts pointed her to Bring Conservation Home, a program run by the St. Louis Audubon Society that helps homeowners support local wildlife in their own backyards. According to the program’s website, trained habitat advisors provide an “ecological landscaping inspiration and consultation service” with “tailored advice and resource connections to help people create high-quality natural spaces where they live.”

“People at the St. Louis Audubon realized that birds were declining everywhere, and in particularly here,” Pitts said. “Even the flyway birds were declining. And they got to thinking and they said, ‘hmm, maybe we’re taking a lot of land away from them and a lot of food away.’ And well, it turns out that birds require bugs and bugs require plants.”

Shannon Callahan, who works as a conservation ecologist at Audubon, says creating a food chain that supports insects supports the birds that eat them (and the birds and mammals that eat those birds).

“You can support wildlife and support conservation in your own yard with the decisions you make in your landscaping,” Callahan says. “So by using native plants, you can actually bring in native insects, which bring in native birds and supports the native food chain.”

Callahan said the program is at least partly inspired by prominent ecologist and entomologist Doug Tallamy’s “home grown national park” concept, which encourages regular citizens to steward their property, rather than over develop it. In his book “Nature’s Best Hope,” Tallamy says that due to the development of wildlife corridors and the removal of continuous nature scapes, we no longer live in a world where development only partly affects local ecosystems.

“We no longer have the right to ignore the stewardship responsibilities attached to land ownership,” Tallamy explains in his book. “Our privately owned land and the ecosystems upon it are essential to everyone’s well-being, not just our own. Abusing land anywhere has negative ramifications for people everywhere.”

Bring Conservation Home services as far west as Washington, Missouri, as far east as Highland, as far south as Evansville and stretches all the way to Jerseyville in the north.

After a consultation from a naturalist, volunteers will visit a property and help remove invasive plants and improve the landscape with natives. In addition to planting and ecological recommendations, the organization also helps with stormwater management.

Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC) partners with the organization to provide resources and shared knowledge, but folks in Illinois have to partner with private organizations instead of the government. There are also fewer participants east of the river in general; Callahan says that while Missouri is leading the charge on the growing trend of native landscaping, Illinois has less enthusiasm.

“There aren’t as many projects in Illinois as there should be,” Callahan said.

“It’s mostly a one-man show once you get over here,” Pitts confirmed. “There’ve been 50 or 60 sites on this side of the river, and I’ve helped with 35 to 40 of them.”

Even in Missouri, where there are over 30 volunteers in rotation, wait times remain as long as six months and volunteers are slim with the vast workload. In the metro-east the times remain the same, primarily due to the lack of interest from local residents compared to those in Missouri.

But Bossart is proud of the work BCH has done on her O’Fallon home. Her property is Gold certified, the second highest award one can receive from the program. Among other things, that means her property has 15% naturescaping, 25 native plant species and two storm water management elements.

She even convinced a couple of her neighbors to work with the program, resulting in a lush prairie and wooded area full of chirping birds and fluttering butterflies at the end of her cul-de-sac.

“The best compliment I ever got was a couple years ago,” Bossart said. “It was from a kiddo who was 6 or 7 years old from the neighborhood. She was over and she said, ‘you know, the best thing about your yard is that it’s alive.’”

How to get involved

To become involved with Bring Conservation Home, schedule a visit with a habitat advisor, who will visit your property and help you identify which plants are native and invasive, as well as create a management plan for storm water. Consultations range from $50 to $80, and a certification assessment costs $80.

There are different tiers for different types of property. Audubon says its highest priority tiers are areas that have “historically experienced disinvestment and where residents have limited access to nature.’

This story was originally published August 16, 2024 at 6:00 AM.