Explorers Club Fellow FN’19, Justin Grubb recently took the stage at TEDxStLouis to share a powerful and timely message: your backyard can be a refuge for wildlife and a frontline for conservation.
In his talk, Justin challenged the traditional American obsession with manicured lawns and instead encouraged audiences to reimagine their outdoor spaces as thriving ecosystems. By planting native wildflowers and removing non-native turfgrass, anyone can play a meaningful role in protecting our planet’s most important and overlooked species – insects.
“Insects are responsible for about $577 billion in global agricultural productivity every year,” Justin explained. “But in the last 50 years, we’ve lost around 75% of them. That’s a staggering loss, and we simply can’t afford to keep going down this path.”
The solution, he says, is surprisingly simple and within reach: plant native species. Native plants support the pollinators, birds, and other wildlife that evolved alongside them, creating a ripple effect that restores balance in local ecosystems. He encouraged attendees to plant natives, and then be lazy and enjoy sleeping in on a Saturday morning versus getting up to mow their yard.
A few years ago, Justin took on this challenge himself. He replaced a significant portion of his lawn with native plants—and the transformation was immediate. Bees, butterflies, birds, and even small mammals began to return, turning a once sterile space into a lively, functioning habitat.
“This is something everyone can do,” he emphasized. “This isn’t just gardening, its restoring, reconnecting, and rewilding our world, one backyard at a time.”
Justin’s TEDx talk wasn’t just a call to action—it was a hopeful reminder that big environmental wins can start right at home. As co-founder of Running Wild Media, he continues to use storytelling to inspire change and reconnect people with the wild world around them—sometimes, just outside their front door.
