April is one of those months where conservation is on everyone’s minds, with Earth Month being one of the events celebrated.
This past winter, many of the conversations that have been held at the adult speaker series have focused on conservation efforts. Monarch butterfly gardens and water quality. A lot of the lessons in those discussions have talked about the importance of diversity in plants and native seeds to help with items like fighting erosion and controlling nitrate run off into water supplies.
The Lisbon and Mount Vernon chapter of the Linn County League of Women Voters recently held a sustainability forum in Mount Vernon City Hall as well on topics related to conservation, including No Mow May, the efforts of the City of Mount Vernon’s sustainability committee on projects and discussion with Solid Waste Agency on recycling and composting’s impact to reducing waste.
The City of Mount Vernon recently agreed with not enforcing mowing requirements for those participating in No Mow May to help pollinators get more of a foothold coming out of the ground during spring. The city is also looking at increasing ground slated for native plantings, like prairie crops, in some areas of town in the future.
Of course, we’re experiencing the impacts of climate change in this state. Iowa over the past 30 years has been moved to Zone 5 for plant hardiness guidelines from Zone 4 in portions of the state.
We’ve seen a winter, aside from a snow storm that dropped more than two feet of snow in a span of a week, that has been relatively dry and warmer than usual, which is going to continue with the impacts of droughts in portions of the region as well.
This Earth Month, we should take moments to look at the areas we can contribute to conservation locally ourselves and improve the Earth just a little bit.