Conservation Starts at Home

Protecting Southwest Florida’s Everglades and wild places “out there” is essential – but so is making landscapes just outside our door work better for nature.

For 65 years, Audubon Western Everglades (AWE) has advocated for programs and policies that protect large, connected landscapes through state-led efforts as well as local land conservation programs like Conservation Collier. Protecting large, connected natural areas like the Everglades remains a top priority. These landscapes are essential for biodiversity, clean water, healthy wildlife populations and the resilience of Southwest Florida’s communities.

But there is another piece of the conservation puzzle that deserves our attention: the land found between protected areas, in spaces where we live and work.

These are privately held lands - more than half of the land in the United States is privately owned, so choices made about landscaping rest on millions of property owners. A popular choice is to landscape with turfgrass, which covers over 40 million acres in the US, making it America’s largest irrigated crop. Turf is water and chemical intensive, often requiring extensive application of fertilizers and pesticides, which easily wash into canals, lakes, and then the ocean.

Protecting Water Is a Smart Investment

Southwest Florida’s water resources are finite. How we use them matters.

Rather than designing landscapes around irrigation-dependent and resource-intensive turf, there is an exciting opportunity to protect the native habitat that remains in the places we live—and to bring more of it into our urban and developed areas.

The goal goes beyond using less water and planting more native species. It is to design landscapes that are compatible with Southwest Florida’s climate and water resources and to approach development and landscaping with greater foresight.

One yard may seem insignificant. But property by property, neighborhood by neighborhood, these actions can create a network of habitats that support ecological function at scale.

We Need Both: Large-scale Conservation and Nature Where We Live.

That is the premise behind AWE’s Nature Where We Live initiative: practical, science-based actions that allow individuals, neighborhoods and communities to contribute to the health of the land and water around them.

A Yard Equals Habitat

Replacing even a portion of traditional turfgrass with native landscaping offers:

• Habitat for wildlife. Even a small native landscape provides food and shelter for wildlife and insects that form the foundation of many food webs.
• Support for pollinators and US food production. Roughly 100 food crops grown in the United States require pollination, while more than one in five native pollinators are at risk of extinction. Many pollinators rely specifically on native plants for food. Planting natives helps support the pollinators on which U.S. agriculture depends.
• Water Quality Protection. Our yards are connected to our waterways. Rain often carries excess fertilizer, pesticides, and other pollutants into storm drains and eventually into coastal waters. Reducing chemical-intensive turf and increasing native vegetation that requires little to no fertilizer or pesticides supports local water quality.
• Reduced Water Demand. The average Florida resident uses about 120 gallons of water each day, largely directed toward irrigating turf. Native landscapes, when appropriately designed and established, require little to no irrigation.

Nature Where We Live isn't asking residents to become conservation scientists or transform their entire properties overnight. It is about recognizing that every yard, neighborhood, and community space is part of a much larger ecological landscape.

Large-scale conservation will always be essential, but making thoughtful choices on surrounding private properties offers a meaningful opportunity to extend important habitat and its ecological function beyond traditional boundaries.

The cumulative effect has significant potential.

Conservation isn't somewhere else. It is all around us. And every one of us has an opportunity to help shape what comes next.

Learn more about Nature Where We Live, Marco Island’s Owl Watch Program, and other opportunities to get involved at www.audubonwe.org.