Bloomfield Sustainability Network

Bloomfield Sustainability endorses three grassroots candidates for Bloomfield Town Council — every vote counts on June 2nd. We need a council majority to ensure transparency and stop decisions like the pending $3M sewer payment system moving forward without public input. Read why these endorsements matter and how you can help: https://wix.to/8dMe2Q6

BSN Endorses Three Grassroots Candidates for Bloomfield Town Council - Vote June 2nd! With only five and a half weeks left until the primary, your support is more critical than ever. We need all three of these candidates to win to secure a majority on the council to ensure transparency. As you can see not having a majority means we have no say in moving forward with the pending $3 mi...

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3 billion.

North America has lost an estimated 3 billion birds since 1970.

→ Published in Science (2019, Rosenberg et al.)
→ About 29% of all birds gone in 50 years
→ Not just rare species—common backyard birds are declining too

Sparrows, warblers, blackbirds, and finches: major losses across these groups
Swallows and other aerial insect-eaters: steep declines (e.g., barn swallows ~-40%+)
Grassland birds: ~700 million lost (the hardest-hit group)
Across habitats

Losses aren’t isolated—they’re widespread:

Forests: ~1 billion birds lost
Grasslands: ~700 million lost
Wetlands & shorebirds: hundreds of millions lost
Deserts & arid regions: declining trends

👉 The exception:
Waterfowl and raptors have increased—a direct result of targeted conservation.

Why it’s happening

Multiple pressures are stacking together:

1️⃣ Habitat loss — especially grasslands converted to agriculture
2️⃣ Outdoor cats — estimated 1.3–4.0 billion birds killed/year (U.S.)
3️⃣ Window collisions — hundreds of millions to over 1 billion deaths/year
4️⃣ Pesticides — reducing the insects many birds rely on
5️⃣ Light pollution — disrupting nighttime migration
6️⃣ Climate change — shifting timing between breeding and food availability

The hopeful part

Some birds are recovering—and that matters.

Waterfowl increased thanks to wetland protection and restoration
Raptors rebounded after the DDT ban and legal protections

👉 Proof: conservation works—when we actually do it.

7 simple ways to help

1️⃣ Make windows bird-safe (decals, patterns, or screens)
2️⃣ Keep cats indoors
3️⃣ Turn off unnecessary lights during migration
4️⃣ Plant native plants
5️⃣ Avoid or reduce pesticide use
6️⃣ Support bird-friendly farming (e.g., shade-grown coffee)
7️⃣ Reduce, reuse, recycle

3 billion birds.

Not just a statistic.

It’s the sound of your backyard getting quieter—
year by year.

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That tricky space under trees can still be beautiful, but the best results usually come from choosing plants that can handle shade and root competition 🌸
🌳 Dry shade is harder than people think, especially under established trees
🌿 Hostas, hellebores, astilbe, and violets can all be great choices depending on your spot
🍂 My tip: add compost first and water new plants well while they get established, because tree roots compete hard

Thinking about your spring garden?

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The pest doesn't need spraying. It needs a predator. The predator doesn't need buying. It needs a flower.

Plant the right flower and the predator shows up on its own, finds the pest, and does the work for free. The chain assembles itself.

🌱 Five chains that work:

- Aphids → ladybug larvae → plant yarrow. The larvae do the killing — hundreds of aphids each. The yarrow keeps the adults around to lay eggs near the colony

- Tomato hornworms → braconid wasps → let your dill bolt. The wasp lays eggs inside the hornworm. The flowers are the weapon, not the dill leaves

- Slugs → ground beetles → let cilantro flower. The beetles hunt at night while you sleep. The flowers give them daytime shelter

- Cabbage worms → paper wasps → plant fennel. The wasps catch caterpillars, chew them into paste, and feed them to their own larvae. One nest near your brassicas catches dozens a day

- Whiteflies → lacewing larvae → plant cosmos. The larvae have sickle-shaped jaws that drain whiteflies in seconds. The cosmos keeps adult lacewings fed and laying eggs nearby

One flower per pest. The predator does the rest 🌿

Rebirth of the fireflies

Before fireflies light up your summer, they spend years doing this.

Hunting. Underground. As something you'd step on without a second thought.

A firefly's life cycle runs backward from what you'd expect. The part you see — the floating golden light show in July — lasts 2 to 3 weeks. The part you never see lasts 1 to 2 years. The magical adult is the epilogue. The larva is the whole book.

Firefly larvae are predators. Not scavengers. Not grazers. Predators. They hunt snails, slugs, and earthworms through the top 3 inches of your soil every night from March through October. The killing method is pharmaceutical — the larva bites, injects a paralyzing venom that liquefies the prey's internal organs, and drinks the result. A half-inch armored worm dissolving a slug from the inside in the dark. Nature's most beautiful insect starts as nature's most efficient liquidator.

They glow while they do it. A faint greenish light from the underside of the abdomen, barely visible unless you're on your hands and knees at 10 PM with a flashlight pointed at the soil. That glow isn't romance. It's a warning — the larva contains lucibufagins, toxic compounds that make it taste terrible to every bird, toad, and mouse that might otherwise eat it. The light says "don't bother."

Right now, in March, the soil is warming and the larvae are waking up. They're in YOUR soil. Under YOUR lawn. Resuming the hunt they paused in November. They have 3 more months of feeding, then pupation, then 2 weeks of flight, light, and mating before they die.

Here's where it breaks.

Every lawn chemical you apply in spring saturates the top 3 inches of soil — exactly the zone where firefly larvae live and hunt. Pre-emergent herbicide. Grub killer. Broad-spectrum insecticide. The larvae absorb the compounds through their skin the same way they absorb moisture. They don't die immediately. They weaken, stop feeding, fail to pupate, and never emerge.

You spray in April. No fireflies in July. The gap between cause and consequence is 15 months, so you never connect them.

That faint green glow in your soil tonight is eating your slug problem AND building the light show your kids will chase with jars in 4 months.

She needs the soil to be clean. That's the only thing she's asking.