“Influencer Drama” Riles Up the Native Plant Community
Kyle Lybarger, Alex Fasulo, and the power of social media to inspire, or divide
Author’s note: This article discusses a disagreement between two public figures. There have been accusations of harassment and threats. Please do not engage in those behaviors.
“Influencer drama” isn’t a topic I ever expected to write about. But these days, the significance of social media personalities is undeniable. Whatever you’re into, whether it’s makeup tutorials, travel tips, or environmental conservation, there’s a good chance you’ll end up consuming some influencer content.
The person behind the content you enjoy might be selling a product. They might be the product. Or, less often, they might just be a genuine advocate for a cause.
One influencer I follow is Kyle Lybarger. With a friendly, bearded face and a slight southern accent, he’s the face of the Native Habitat Project, a group that advocates for the preservation and restoration of grasslands and native plants in the American Southeast.
The Native Habitat Project’s social media accounts have huge followings, including over 450k followers on Instagram. Lybarger has become a superstar in the native plant movement, receiving tons of positive media attention. In June, he was profiled by the New York Times.
When I refer to the “native plant movement,” I’m talking about a cluster of related causes, including:
The fight against invasive plants
Protecting and expanding the use of threatened native plants
Providing habitat and food for pollinators (“saving” the bees and butterflies)
Preserving wildlife habitat
Eco-friendly landscaping and replacing turf grass lawns with better alternatives
I’m a long-time believer in these causes, so it’s been interesting to see them gain traction in recent years.
I grew up in the suburbs, and my parents were the proud owners of “the worst lawn in the neighborhood.” Their approach evolved from the lazy eco-friendly basics (growing a weedy, un-watered lawn) to the development of a fabulous two-acre wildlife haven, with native plant meadows, a pond, bird feeders, and all sorts of habitat. Throughout the spring and summer, their property is absolutely buzzing with life.
From childhood to visits home in my 30s, I’ve spent thousands of hours laboring on my parents’ property — planting, mowing, weeding, digging — to help turn it into something beautiful. The fruits of these efforts are a row of once-tiny pine trees that now tower over the yard’s border, meadows full of pollinators, abundant veggie harvests, and red-bellied woodpeckers at the feeder.
When I moved to California to study environmental policy, I got involved with a local land trust, leading volunteer workdays to remove invasive plants from sensitive habitats.
Later, as an environmental planner, I helped local governments with the enforcement of environmental regulations and the planning of public lands projects. My favorite project I worked on involved the conversion of a golf course into a park — the ultimate rewilding of one of the most harmful land uses.
My point here is: I’m into native plants. It’s one of my things. So, when I came across Kyle Lybarger, I recognized his authenticity.
Lybarger has a degree in forestry and he’s a professional forester and conservationist. He speaks with obvious expertise about plants, ecosystems, and land management. His videos often include conversations with scientists and other experts, as well as inside looks at practices like controlled burns and seed collection.
That’s Kyle Lybarger: Influencer #1 in our story.
Now, let’s meet Influencer #2: Alexandra (or Alex) Fasulo.
A few months ago, I started seeing Fasulo’s posts on my social media feeds. In a number of video and text posts, she describes her purchase of a small piece of New York farmland where she’s developing a “pollinator farm.” She discusses a “massive land transfer” in which aging farmers are selling off their properties. She makes the case that it’s up to young people like her (and you and me) to grab some of that land before it gets gobbled up by “Wall Street” entities that will turn it into “shopping strips and very ugly developments that nobody can afford.”
It’s a compelling message.
Soon after noticing her for the first time, I started seeing a lot of her posts, even though I’d never clicked “follow.” Seemingly, she was doing a social media blitz, flooding the networks with content to rapidly ramp up her followings.
Then I saw her name on an Instagram story from the Native Habitat Project. It showed side-by-side screenshots of similar Facebook posts from their account and Fasulo’s.
The caption read “Combating misinformation on FB is never ending but it has to be done!”
At first, I thought that Lybarger and Fasulo had teamed up and agreed to publish the same posts. But, a closer look reveals differences. Fasulo is urging readers “DON’T spray,” referring to chemical weed treatments. Lybarger repurposes her words, encouraging the spraying of invasive species for the betterment of native plants.
This was an interesting development. Two native plant influencers with massive followings, airing a public disagreement. Drama!
So, I decided to take a closer look at Ms. Fasulo’s posts. And it led me down quite the rabbit hole.
Lots of Alex Fasulo’s recent social media posts share general info and encouragement about native plants and pollinator-friendly gardening.
Like this:
“Lawns cover more land in the U.S. than any irrigated crop. But they feed no bees, no birds, no butterflies. A wild corner changes everything.” — Alex Fasulo (public Facebook page)
Okay, no issues there. That’s a good message. And although she doesn’t offer a citation for the fact she shares, it does check out.
But other posts were… less factual.
Like this one:
“An owl can eat over 1,000 insects a night. If those insects were sprayed with pesticide, that’s 1,000 doses of poison — in one meal.” — Alex Fasulo (public Facebook page)
Yeah, owls don’t do that. I mean, if they held an eating contest in a gymnasium full of gnats, maybe one of them could pull it off. But there’s no scientific record of such behavior.
On that post, several commenters pointed out that her fact was, in fact, not a fact. Those commenters were told, by other commenters, that they were “missing the point.”
No, no, no. If you have to use fabricated statistics to make a point, then you have no point.
A bogus stat in the service of a noble cause might seem harmless. But what’s coming next? More fake info, in support of stances that are more complicated than “stop poisoning owls.”
Like this:
“When solar panels are damaged from strong winds, hail, and fire, they leach cadmium, lead, and silicon tetrachloride into the soil below them. The solar ‘farm’ soil becomes unusable for future generations.” — Alex Fasulo (public Facebook page)
Turns out, she’s as passionate about fighting solar power as she is about saving butterflies. Apparently, a developer wants to build a solar farm near her property. Fasulo is speaking out aggressively against this project (through social media and at her local town hall meetings). She argues that solar panels belong on rooftops and parking lots, not on farmland.
Opposing a solar project doesn’t necessarily mean that someone isn’t a genuine environmentalist. Like any energy source, solar has negative impacts and can be problematic in the wrong location. But, this is a tricky area. The fossil fuel industry, right-wing media, and republican politicians all have an odious history of undermining renewables. And they often use bogus environmentalism to rally support.
I’ve seen this in my home state of New Jersey, where offshore wind energy projects have been wrongly blamed for whale deaths. In an effort to shut these projects down, politicians and beachfront property owners peddle misinformation while ignoring the real threats to marine life, such as the fishing and shipping industries.
So, while I’m aware that there may be valid arguments against new energy projects, I view the sort of broad, unsubstantiated claims that Fasulo makes as major red flags.
Who is Alex Fasulo?
When I started planning this article, I didn’t intend to put much focus on Alex Fasulo’s background or motivations. I wanted to discuss, more generally, the role of influencers in social movements. But, having seen just how influential Fasulo is, I think it’s important to have this discussion.
On Substack, she has nearly 40k subscribers. She’s currently ranked #12 on the bestseller list for Climate & Environment. On Instagram, where she identifies as an ecopreneur, she has 579k followers.
Let’s see how she got here.
Before Fasulo was a farm influencer, she was a freelance writing guru. A major one. In March 2021, CNBC published this headline:
$378,000 a year on Fiverr. From ghostwriting articles and e-books.
In the CNBC article, she mentions charging $1k for 10,000-word e-books. That would involve writing more than one 10,000-word book every day of the year. It would total around 3.7 million written words per year.
Of course, she didn’t do all that work herself. As she explains on a 2021 podcast episode titled “Becoming a Millionaire as a Freelancer,” she outsourced assignments to a team of writers.
She learned how to make money as an online writer. She marketed herself as an expert. She outsourced. She sold courses. You’ve seen it before — the standard guru cycle.
Then, in 2024, she announced: “I’m buying farmland.” Shortly after, she said she was no longer freelancing on Fiverr.
For the past year, her content has been all about farming, how to buy land, how to help pollinators… the threat posed by solar energy…
To some who have followed Fasulo’s career, this farming stuff is just the latest grift, the new angle for exploiting followers. And there’s plenty of anti-guru sentiment out there — folks who fell for messaging like “How to make over $1,000/day on Fiverr” (that’s the headline of an article Fasulo wrote last year).
There’s a widely read 18-minute article on Medium titled “Why I Have Suspicions About Alex Fasulo’s Claimed Fiverr Income.” There’s an entire r/AlexandraFasulo subreddit devoted to warning the public about her.
But she’s also got a big fan base. And it’s a fresh group of souls. Bye-bye aspiring freelance writers, hello gardeners.
But, hey, gardeners — please fact-check your influencers. Question their motives.
When it comes to Alex Fasulo: Given the questionable information she posts and her history as an opportunistic guru, you might be better off looking elsewhere for reliable tips on eco-friendly gardening.
It gets weirder
A freelancing guru buys a farm, posts questionable content, and feuds with a native plant influencer. That’s a pretty good story. But things get weirder.
While perusing old Reddit threads, I saw a few mentions of Fasulo’s far-right politics. This led me to the Wayback Machine (a massive digital archive), where I discovered her old, deleted tweets.
“Far right” is an understatement.
The brief record of her tweets spans from November 2020 to January 2021. As you might recall, that was a rocky time in the USA.
It’s tough to sum up just how unhinged her posts were. If you’re curious, you can find them here and here.
Here are a few highlights.
“Does anyone ever low-key think a civil war would be a good thing for the rampant narcissism, soy boy syndrome, and egotistical obsessions that are happening today?”
“Anyone else love the moment from DineshDsouza’s Trump Card when they had one of BarackObama’s gay lovers on? You realize the media has sheltered us from the truth on all democratic candidates?”
“All I want for Christmas is an entire artillery for when they start hunting Trump supporters.”
“It’s all the soy and estrogen in the meat and cheese today” (as a reply to: “Men shouldn’t wear dresses”)
“When my opponent shares the same integrity and morals as me, fine, we can unify despite differences. When you believe in destroying America, aborting children, taking God out of school, defunding the police, and worshipping Satan, we have nothing in common. You are my enemy.”
There’s so much more. She said we need a new Mount Rushmore for Rudy Giuliani. She didn’t believe for one second that Donald Trump could have lost the 2020 election. She was very excited about the January 6 attack on the Capitol, although her messaging alternately celebrated the violence and blamed it on conspiracies.
After Mike Pence certified Joe Biden’s win, she tweeted: “Well shit, Q was right about Mike Pence, too.” — referring to the QAnon conspiracy movement.
I wonder where she stands on those issues today? I’m sure her followers would love to know, too.
Everything’s political
In late June, Kyle Lybarger sent Alex Fasulo a message. He asked her to stop posting misinformation about managing native habitats. Without replying, she blocked him.
Over the next few days, The Great Native Plant Influencer Drama of 2025 ensued. Fasulo haters sent Lybarger messages about her. He shared those messages. Fasulo made a video accusing him of doxxing her and inciting “mob violence.” Their supporters bickered in comment sections.
Lybarger is no longer publishing posts about Fasulo. Yahoo News reports that he stopped mentioning her because her supporters were harassing and threatening him.
Things had gotten ugly, fast.
Lybarger told Yahoo:
“I love the native plant community and I love all the people trying to do good things. I don’t want any harm to come to this community. I just want to make people aware.”
I believe him, and I appreciate the work he does. The trouble is, it’s not easy to “just do good” these days.
On its surface, the Lybarger/Fasulo spat was about differing opinions on invasive plants and an objection to poorly researched posts. How does that escalate to “mob violence” accusations in just a few days? This speaks to the magnitude of influencer culture. Both Lybarger and Fasulo have hundreds of thousands of eyes on their posts, every day. Their fan bases are quick to jump to their defense.
Influencers are powerful people, and their audience is often unaware of the strings being pulled — the money and the politics that drive the content.
Take the “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) movement. Influencers pull you in with tips about vitamins and nutrition, and warnings about unsafe ingredients in foods. But, are they qualified to provide that advice? Are they getting rich by exploiting your fears?
Look to a movement’s leaders. Robert F. Kennedy amassed a huge following with MAHA messaging. Now, he’s Trump’s Secretary of Health and Human Services. And while MAHA influencers chatter about food dyes and raw milk, the Republican party destroys research programs and cuts $1 trillion from Medicaid. Making us healthy again, indeed.
It would be nice if certain causes could be truly nonpolitical, but that’s not the world we live in. In the case of Alex Fasulo, you might be pulled in by the pro-pollinator posts, then stick around for the anti-solar content. And don’t be surprised if you see her running for local office in New York sometime soon.
And how about Kyle Lybarger? He almost never directly mentions politics. But he criticizes harmful development projects (which are more likely when environmental agencies and rules are weakened). And when Congress was considering a massive sell-off of public lands, he spoke up against the bill — but didn’t mention the extremely partisan nature of the issue.
When his followers urge him to “name names”, he says:
If you see a tremendous imbalance between the two parties on environmental issues, then “I won’t talk politics” isn’t an ideal message from a leading advocate.
I’m not sure how I feel about this defense, but Lybarger says that talking politics would cut his following in half.
An environmentalist who won’t talk politics might be a paradox, but an apolitical influencer could be a good thing. It’s just a tricky path to navigate.
The native plant world might be built on pure intentions. But the influencer world is not.
Fascinating stuff, grippingly documented! I am unfamiliar with all of this but the parallels of stuff like this are everywhere. The motives and scammy chemeleon like moves of some of these top influencers is predictable but also scary how many of their followers believe whatever they say.