---
title: "From a Mountaintop, UMD Alum Encounters Toxin-Emitting Olive Bushes, Smothering Vines and the Imperfection of Conservation"
date: 2025-02-03T05:30:00-05:00
author: University of Maryland
canonical_url: "https://today.umd.edu/from-a-mountaintop-umd-alum-encounters-murderous-caterpillars-smothering-vines-and-the-imperfection-of-conservation"
section: Articles
---
# From a Mountaintop, UMD Alum Encounters Toxin-Emitting Olive Bushes, Smothering Vines and the Imperfection of Conservation

*February 3, 2025* — by [Sala Levin ’10](/author/sala-levin-10)


> In New Book, ‘Bad Naturalist’ Details Efforts to Bring a Virginia Peak Back to Its Roots

*IMG 4248 1920x1080 — In "Bad Naturalist," released last month by Hachette's Timber Press, Paula Whyman '87 (left) recounts her experiences trying to clear a Virginia mountaintop of invasive plants and restore its native flora.*

Those who know and love Paula Whyman ’87 may have been skeptical about her well-meaning endeavors in the natural world. The perennials she planted in her suburban Maryland backyard failed to return for a second year. The fledgling robin she tried to save from a heat wave expired before she could even get it to an animal shelter. The frogs she and her children attempted to raise died after refusing to eat the crickets Whyman released into their terrarium.

But those thwarted forays into flora and fauna didn’t deter Whyman. In August 2020, after decades of sporadic searching for a home in the Virginia countryside, she and her husband purchased more than just a patch for some vegetable gardening. They bought 200 acres on a peak in the Blue Ridge Mountains, where Whyman undertook the daunting task of clearing invasive plants and encouraging native plant life on this long gone-to-seed cow pasture and orchard—an experiment she’s written about in her new book, “Bad Naturalist: One Woman’s Ecological Education on a Wild Virginia Mountaintop,” released by Hachette’s Timber Press last month.

“I thought, ‘This is a really exciting possibility, despite the fact that I didn’t know much about plants or how to proceed with making an old hayfield into a native meadow,’” she said.


*Bad Naturalist book cover*




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