Meet an Ecologist Who Works for God

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Meet an Ecologist Who Works for God (and
Against Lawns)
A Long Island couple says fighting climate change and protecting biodiversity starts at
home. Or rather, right outside their suburban house.
By Cara Buckley Photographs by Karsten Moran
Dec. 3, 2021 Updated 9:03 a.m. ET
WADING RIVER, N.Y. If Bill Jacobs was a petty man, or a less religious one, he might
look through the thicket of flowers, bushes and brambles that encircle his home and see
enemies all around. For to the North, and to the South, and to the West and East and all
points in between, stretch acres and acres of lawns.
Lawns that are mowed and edges trimmed with military precision. Lawns where leaves
are banished with roaring machines and that are oftentimes doused with pesticides.
Lawns that are fastidiously manicured by landscapers like Justin Camp, Mr. Jacobss
neighbor next door, who maintains his own pristine blanket of green.
It takes a special kind of person to do something like that, Mr. Camp said, nodding to
wooded wilds of his neighbors yard. I mow lawns for a living, so its not my thing.
Mr. Jacobs and his wife, Lynn Jacobs, dont have a lawn to speak of, not counting the
patch of grass out back over which Mr. Jacobs runs his old manual mower every now and
then.
Their house is barely visible, obscured by a riot of flora that burst with colors
periwinkles, buttery yellows, whites, deep oranges, scarlets from early spring through
late fall. They grow assorted milkweeds, asters, elderberry, mountain mint, joe-pye weed,
goldenrods, white snakeroot and ironweed. Most are native to the region, and virtually all
serve the higher purpose of providing habitats and food to migrating birds and butterflies,
moths, beetles, flies and bees.
https://www.nytimes..html
A beetle on a native aster flower in the garden of Mr. Jacobs and his wife, Lynn.
A bumblebee and native aster.
Mr. Jacobs is an ecologist and Catholic who believes that humans can fight climate
change and help repair the world right where they live. While a number of urban dwellers
and suburbanites also sow native plants to that end, Mr. Jacobs says people need
A statue of St. Francis of Assisi in the garden, one of a number of religious expressions that also include St.
Kateri and St. Mary.
something more: To reconnect with nature and experience the sort of spiritual
transcendence he feels in a forest, or on a mountain, or amid the bounty of his own yard.
Its a feeling that, for him, is akin to feeling close to God.
We need something greater than people, said Mr. Jacobs, who worked at the Nature
Conservancy for nine years before joining a nonprofit that tackles invasive species
plants, animals and pathogens that squeeze out native varieties. We need a calling
outside of ourselves, to some sort of higher power, to something higher than ourselves to
preserve life on earth.
Which is why, for years now, Mr. Jacobs has looked beyond the lawns of Wading River, a
woodsy hamlet on Long Islands North Shore, to spread that ethos around the world.
About 20 years ago, he began compiling quotes from the Bible, saints and popes that
expound on the sanctity of Earth and its creatures, and posting them online. He
considered naming the project after St. Francis of Assisi, the go-to saint for animals and
the environment. But, not wanting to impose another European saint on American land,
he instead named it after Kateri Tekakwitha, a 17th Century Algonquin-Mohawk woman
who converted to Catholicism as a teenager and, in 2012, became the first Native
American to be canonized.
Kateri wouldve known every plant, wouldve collected food, and wouldve been very
connected with the land, Mr. Jacobs said.
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Three years ago, Mr. Jacobs took a step further, teaming up with a fellow Catholic
ecologist, Kathleen Hoenke, to launch the St. Kateri Habitats initiative, which encourages
the creation of wildlife-friendly gardens that feature native plants and offer a place to
Justin Camp, a landscaper in Wading River and Mr. Jacobss neighbor, who says a lawn is easier to maintain
than a garden filled with plants that attract birds, bees and critters. It takes a special kind of person to do
something like that, he said.
reflect and meditate (they also teamed up to write a book, Our Homes on Earth: A
Catholic Faith and Ecology Field Guide for Children, due out in 2023). They enlisted
other ecology-minded Catholics, and have since added an Indigenous peoples program
and two Indigenous women to their board.
The site is apolitical, runs on donations, and proposes ways people can help mitigate the
climate crisis and biodiversity collapse.
People have to love the Earth before they save it, Mr. Jacobs said. So love is the key.
We dont do doomsday stuff.
There are now about 190 St. Kateri Habitats on five continents, including an eco-village on
the isle of Mauritius, a tree nursery in Cameroon, an atrium in Kailua Kona, Hawaii and a
suburban backyard in Washington, D.C.
The Jacobses yard was the first, and includes non-native plants that birds and insects
love like fuchsia, a magnet for hummingbirds, and Ms. Jacobss steadily expanding patch
of Mexican sunflowers, where, amid the petals, bumblebees often doze off in the late
afternoon. Out back, autumn leaves are left in place for overwintering insects, and a
years-old pile of fallen branches has become home to generations of chipmunks.
Yet as the number of St. Kateri habitats grew worldwide, and their one-third acre grew
more hospitable to wildlife, many of the Jacobses neighbors seemed to take the exact
opposite tack.
A visiting tufted titmouse.
A monarch butterfly on a butterfly bush.
In nearby yards, old trees were felled by the dozens, thinning the neighborhoods
overhead canopy. Noisy machinery replaced rakes, fallen leaves became anathema, and
outsourced landscaping, once the purview of the rich, became common. As concerns
Ms. Jacobs with a black cohosh flower.
about , the popularity of pesticides soared. The Jacobses began
carefully moving monarch butterfly eggs and caterpillars to special nests inside their
home, to protect them from parasites and drifting chemicals.
For the Jacobses, or organic pesticides are suspect, too; if a
substance is designed to kill one type of insect, they figure its bound to hurt others.
Hadnt people heard about the insect apocalypse?
If youre a type of being that really has a hard time seeing things die, its very troubling,
Ms. Jacobs said during a chat in her garden one recent fall day, raising her voice over the
din of a gasoline-powered blower that was shooing leaves from a neighbors lawn.
Mr. Jacobs, for his part, looks around at all the pristine lawns (the lawn is an obsession,
like a cult, he says) and sees ecological deserts that feed neither wildlife nor the human
soul. This is a poverty that most of us are not even aware of, he said.
Among the lawn-owning Wading River set, sentiments about the Jacobses thriving
habitat ranges from admiring to indifferent to mixed. A few neighbors have whispered
complaints that sometimes rats join the critter parade to the Jacobses yard. Mr. Jacobs
The Jacobs home, right, contrasts with the manicured lawns of neighbors, whose properties are more typical
of the neighborhood.
said theyre drawn to birdseed and to other neighbors yards too and also that he just
invested in new rodent-proof compost bins.
Mr. Camp, the landscaper, maintains a friendly politesse with the Jacobses, and said that
as bountiful as their garden was, lawns like his involve far less work. The other
landscaper whose property abuts their yard did not respond to requests for comment.
Linda Covello, who lives down the road, and who has also kept a dead tree in place
because woodpeckers regularly nest there, described Ms. Jacobs as some sort of
Galadriel from Lord of the Rings.
Youve got your landscaping people out here, Ms. Covello said, But shes the lady of the
woods, the goddess of the woods.
Overall, though, the Jacobses had to concede that locally, their approach to nature wasnt
exactly catching on.
Then a magazine marketing executive named William McCaffrey bought the house
across from them in 2020, and moved in with Maxwell, his miniature pinscher.
Virginia creeper.
Cardinal flower.
William McCaffrey, a neighbor who started working to expand his flower beds after meeting the
Jacobses, with his dog Max.
From the start, Mr. McCaffrey was entranced by the Jacobses garden, and took photos as
he and Maxwell walked by. He and Ms. Jacobs got to chatting, and he told her that he
wanted to gussy up his place, too, and grow wisteria. Ms. Jacobs gently relayed that as
beautiful as wisteria was, it was invasive, smothering native plants and starving them of
light.
She told me she could show me alternatives, Mr. McCaffrey said. I never really thought
about it. She educated me.
She gave him seeds from her flowers and he planted them along with other native
species. This past summer, hummingbirds, monarch butterflies and pairs of goldfinches
zipped between the Jacobses garden and his. Now Mr. McCaffrey is planning to vastly
expand his flower beds, which, per Ms. Jacobss counsel, he enriches using leaves from
his lawn, to include 30 other kinds of native plants. He has two cars, and thinks about
what else he could do in his yard to offset their carbon dioxide emissions.
Im a convert, Mr. McCaffrey said, It really made me think about how and what I pick
for my garden works into the whole cycle.
He is also noticing the land around him in new ways. One of his favorite trees on his
property is a twisty, soaring locust. Gazing at it one day, Mr. McCaffrey realized he could
see the shape of a woman in its graceful branches, and now he spots her every time he
looks.
Can you see her? he said, pointing up to the tree one recent day. A ballerina.

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