WBUR interviews postdoctoral researcher about loss of native plants in New England
WBUR (NPR Boston) spoke with Caitlin McDonough MacKenzie, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Maine, for the report, “New England is losing its native plants. Researchers say it’s time to stop and smell the wildflowers.” A recent study led by McDonough MacKenzie found that about one quarter of native New England wildflower species have been lost in the last 150 years. Researchers worry that this loss of biodiversity may harm local ecosystems, the report states. McDonough MacKenzie said the losses don’t follow an obvious pattern. “It’s not just developed sites that are losing more of their historic floras,” she said. “There are a lot of stressors and threats to our native plants.” A recent biodiversity report from the United Nations detailed massive extinctions happening across the globe, WBUR reported. Even though McDonough MacKenzie’s study didn’t find that wildflowers have gone extinct, she said the changes she found are just as concerning. “It can be really hard to wrap your head around these really big, abstract concepts of something like a United Nations report. But when we look at it at a local level it drives home how real this is, especially when you can point to these things happening basically in our backyard here, in New England,” she said. “This is not just a study of something that’s happening to polar bears in the Arctic or the Amazon rainforest being chopped down, this is happening right here.” Lancaster Farming also reported on the study, and New England Public Radio carried the WBUR report. McDonough MacKenzie also was a recent guest on WNPR‘s (Connecticut Public Radio) “Where We Live” program. The show’s topic was the significance of Connecticut’s new commitment to offshore wind.