New map will allow people in Canada to join international effort to bring nature home

TORONTO | Traditional territory of many nations – including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples – and now home to many diverse First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples — The David Suzuki Foundation is partnering with U.S.–based Homegrown National Park® to encourage people in Canada to join the growing movement to regenerate biodiversity where we live, work and play, establishing an international network of “Homegrown National Parks.”

In his landmark book, Bringing Nature Home, author and entomologist Douglas Tallamy offered a novel way to increase biodiversity in communities. Instead of relying on government agencies to establish natural spaces like parks and conservation reserves, he encouraged residents to establish “Homegrown National Parks” — loose networks of habitat on private and public lands planted with native plants, shrubs and trees that support local insects and wildlife.

“Despite being the planet’s largest and most diverse group of organisms, insects have declined by 45 per cent over the past 40 years,” said Tallamy, co-founder of the Homegrown National Park. “But each of us can play a hands-on role. If we each do our own small part, not only can we restore insect populations, we will also create the largest collective conservation effort in history.”

In 2013, the David Suzuki Foundation recruited volunteers to help establish a Homegrown National Park in Toronto. After a few years of homegrown plantings, events and musical parades, in 2017 the project transitioned into the award-winning Butterflyway Project — a national network of volunteers creating neighbourhood-scale habitat corridors for bees and butterflies. More than 1,000 Butterflyway Rangers will be participating in local native plant projects this spring and adding their plantings to the new Canadian map.

“We invite gardeners and community groups throughout the country to join the Homegrown National Park movement by getting native plants into the ground this spring and putting their plantings on the Park MAP,” said Jode Roberts, manager of the David Suzuki Foundation’s rewilding communities program. “This is a great opportunity to highlight how much is happening on the ground. We’re stitching together an international patchwork of individual actions into one inspiring movement.”

To get on the new Canadian version of the Homegrown National Park Map, participants will submit information about habitat that has been created in their yards, neighbourhoods and communities. The aim of the map is to showcase thousands of plantings while establishing habitat on millions of hectares of land throughout Canada and the U.S.

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The David Suzuki Foundation (DavidSuzuki.org | @DavidSuzukiFdn) is a leading Canadian environmental non-profit organization, founded in 1990. We operate in English and French, with offices in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal. We collaborate with all people in Canada, including First Nations leadership and communities, governments, businesses and individuals to find solutions to create a sustainable Canada through scientific research, traditional ecological knowledge, communications and public engagement, and innovative policy and legal solutions. Our mission is to protect nature’s diversity and the well-being of all life, now and for the future.

Homegrown National Park (HNPark.org) is a U.S. based 501(c)3 non-profit. Its mission is to regenerate biodiversity with the urgency demanded of the crisis via a massive and unprecedented science-based grassroots movement. By catalyzing millions of people to plant native and remove invasives on all potential habitat, we regenerate biodiversity and restore vital ecosystem services, one person at a time. HNP has no political, religious, cultural or geographic boundaries because every human being on this planet needs diverse, highly productive ecosystems to survive.