Editor’s Note: Spring 2024
National Wildlife magazine editor Jennifer Wehunt presents a bouquet of spring stories on growing habitat
- By Jennifer Wehunt
- NWF News
- Mar 28, 2024
A volunteer with the group Native Lands transplants a stiff goldenrod seedling as part of a restoration project at Black Jack Battlefield and Nature Park near Baldwin, Kansas.
SPRING! What a glorious reawakening. The days are longer, the mud is satisfyingly squelchy, and here in the Northeast, we’re on the precipice of a profusion of color. I’m a sucker for any perennial that comes in yellow: globeflower, tickseed, rudbeckia, you name it. Their reappearance each year is like having old friends come to visit.
I couldn’t wait to research plants native to my area when I bought my house a decade ago—more exciting than fixing a faulty foundation, for sure. Then in my mid-30s, I was old for a first-time U.S. homebuyer—a trend that is now the norm. That’s partially why, in spotlighting stories of wildlife-friendly habitats in this issue, we wanted to celebrate what we can accomplish together through big-picture projects, in addition to what we can plant in our own backyards. We’re proud to share in-depth reporting on the native seed supply, which could help restore public places from national grasslands to highway medians, and we look at how the field of entomology is as fragile and critical as some of the pollinators it studies.
We still believe changing the world starts where we live and work, and we’ve got an inspiring rallying cry from the head of Native Plant Habitat Strategy & Certifications for the National Wildlife Federation, plus the latest on corporate landscaping and a gorgeous ode to milkweed. When it comes to habitat, every plant—every seed—matters.
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