You're partnering with WHO?

I’m a little late to hop on this story, but I want to show some solidarity for my fellow garden/nature bloggers by adding my voice to the outcry against the National Wildlife Federation-Scott’s partnership.

The blogger who initiated the story was Carole Brown at the Wildlife Garden blog, and then I just read a good run-down of all the follow-up by Susan Harris over at Garden Rant.  I also read NWF’s defense of the partnership, and while they make it sound warm and fuzzy and songbird-friendly, it’s just hard to swallow.

I am not completely anti-chemical or anti-lawn, but there is no doubt that Scott’s pushes a regimen of lawn and yard care that is ridiculously overblown, unnecessary, and toxic.  And certainly not critter-friendly.  So NWF suddenly wanting to pal around with them smells like a Rattus rattus, no doubt about it.  Sorta like The American Lung Association partnering up with Phillip Morris and saying, “but they’re not that bad, and we don’t endorse all their products, and we’ll reach more people this way!”

The whole thing really makes me feel sad more than angry. I used to read Ranger Rick as a little kid.  Later my mom got me a subscription to NWF’s National Wildlife, and I used to cut out pictures of animals and stick them on my bedroom walls.  I know many people who have NWF’s “Certified Wildlife Habitat” signs displayed proudly in their yards, and I always thought that was a great program.  This new alliance with the purveyors of the infamous Four Step Clover and Insect Decimation Lawn Care Program….well, it kinda breaks my heart.