Individuals cannot solve this. I leave trees up, dead or alive. I plant native plants. I remove invasive species. I only keep invasive bushes if they house birds. I don't spray for insects except around the base of my house, I don't kill off chipmunks, voles, squirrels, rabbits, etc.
How can this compete with the dozens of neighbors in a half-mile radius that have removed in excess of hundreds of trees, big ones like oak, pine, maple, hickory and up to five feet in diameter, and turn their yards into grass wastelands? I never even see my neighbors use most of their yards. How do you compete against that level of narcissisim and lack of empathy?
It is exhausting on me both physically and emotionally. There's no one I can call to get help with my own yard because every landscaper knows nothing about ecology and uses loud and polluting gas-powered machinery.
I am to the point where I consider my actions as pissing into the wind and spitting into the ocean. Seeing bees where I hadn't seen them before using native plants that I planted is amazingly fullfilling. But I know that it basically has no greater impact, and it is completely against the tide.
Unless governments take action and penalize corporations for the harm they've done and take measures to prevent further harm, we won't be able to stop what's coming.
I think it might have something to do with feral and outdoor cats killing 1.4-3.7 billion birds per year in the US alone. [1] Individuals can do something here I wager, between education and taking responsibility by spaying and neutering.
It’s pretty wild to me that cats aren’t mentioned at all in this article since they’re absolutely massacring wild birds. They’re the leading cause of both bird and small mammal deaths in the US. They kill 10% of all US birds every year.
I do agree personal responsibility isn’t enough but it can certainly help.
[edit] in fact a cursory google shows the population of cats in the US is almost a perfect mirror of the bird population graph in the article since 1970.
I agree that cats kill a lot of birds and something needs to be done about this.
However, when you also have articles stating that migratory fish and insect populations have declined by 75% over the last 50 years [1,2] (which clearly isn't caused by outdoor cats) it would seem to me there are larger forces at work.
I agree that cats kill a lot of birds and something needs to be done about this.
Outside of birds, cats kill rodents. I live in rural Quebec, near farms, a massive nature preserve, and a national park larger than small US states.
When I first moved here, I had no cat, and several other neighbours were new to the area. Old houses, not fresh builds, just changeover of owners... they too with no cats.
The first year I was here, I became aware of the problem, and started to lay traps. And I caught 100+ mice, sometimes several per day for months, all inside my house.
Once Spring arrived, I tried to find entrances, and did! I blocked them, but anyone that knows rodents, and owns wood houses, that won't help if you have an out of control, local colony, and once the winter comes, do they ever want in!
I spent 3+ years with traps, sometimes reducing the population a bit, but each winter more than 50 mice.
Then a neightbour got a siamese cat.
I now catch a mouse or two a year.
If you look at mouse breeding and brood numbers, and you live in a area with loads of food in the summer (near farms, nature), you need something like cats. It's not an option, it just isn't.
There's a reason farmers have loads of semi-wild cats in their barns. And both the mice they catch, and the cats that catch them, are invasive.
And with the hantavirus often touted as 50% lethal, you do NOT want the moral responsibility of trap and release, nor do you want mice in your house. At all.
If they only killed mice that would be a fun fact, but they also kill 20 billion small mammals a year, lol. The point was though that cats are killing all the birds, that they help a few people with a mouse problem is tangential at best to the topic at hand. I can accept that mice are a problem and cats are killing all the birds and small mammals at the same time. It’s kind of like saying DDT is fine actually because it helps a few farmers improve their crop yields. That it does, but it nukes the eagles from orbit too, and we have to look at this systemically.
Once we accepted DDT as a problem we found alternative solutions. But there’s also localized solutions. A few spayed/neutered farm cats aren’t the end of the world.
that they help a few people with a mouse problem is tangenti
You like to eat, yes? Because I assure you, without cats, or something to replace them that does what cats do, you and I will starve to death.
Farmers don't have cats because they're cute. 3They have them to stop rodents from eating silo, seeds, fields bare.
What do you plan to do? Spray death chemicals all over the place, as a replacement?
And no, trapping won't work. It never kills enough, and there are never enough traps.
Honestly, I sincerely doubt cats are the issue. Cats do very poorly away from human settlements, and therefore there's loads of area without cat habitat. In Canada, most of the land is cat free, there is so much land without cats, it would be impossible for them to wipe out a noticeable percentage of birds.
There's no way they're the problem, as a result of this, when we're talking about 1/3 of the birds.
A far better explanation is insect population collapse. Missing food.
> Because I assure you, without cats, or something to replace them that does what cats do, you and I will starve to death.
You could have made the same argument about DDT. You have to acknowledge the problem before you can find a different solution.
With enough determination it’s quite feasible. You know as a Canadian that Alberta is the only place in the Americas without rats. They have a very successful management program. [1]
Cats are an invasive species, so are rats. Alternatives exist, please stop being so defensive. Given this topical counterexample it hardly seems like a case of “cats vs food and hentavirus” since Alberta has no rats, plenty of food and no hentavirus without relying on cats.
> There's no way they're the problem, as a result of this, when we're talking about 1/3 of the birds.
… they kill 10% of birds per year. Times 3 years is just about 1/3. Given it occurred over 50 years I’d say we’ve got us a good candidate. Especially since there is documented evidence of them leading to the extinction of entire species. You can see how the math here is within the ballpark yeah?
Alberta is not rat free. It claims to be, but poke about a bit, and you'll see how fake that claim is.
And rats are not mice. And Alberta has plenty of cats around farms.
And the replacements for DDT are destroying insect populations. The problem is NOT cats. I notice you didn't explain why birds, in all the areas without cats, which is all areas in Canada without human settlements very close by, which is most of Canadian land, are dying too.
You're attributing cats to the problem, then explaining how it's proof it's cats.
> Alberta is not rat free. It claims to be, but poke about a bit, and you'll see how fake that claim is.
Once again no sources cited on your part other than, I guess, your gut, and "poking around."
> The problem is NOT cats.
You haven't made a case for that. The studies I dug up say quite the opposite, that cats are a massive source of wild bird mortality, that they've driven several species to extinction. I have cited sources and you seem to just be shooting from the hip?
> ... in all the areas without cats, which is all areas in Canada without human settlements very close by, which is most of Canadian land, are dying too.
What makes you think cats aren't in areas without human settlements very close by? This map shows they're all over the place. [1] And if that doesn't convince you check out the invasive feral cat population map in Australia where they actually wanted to cull the population. [2] They live on every square inch of Australia, and let me tell you, people do not.
"In some cases, house cats have singularly contributed to the virtual disappearance of Vancouver Island bird species. The streaked horned lark, once a resident of southern Vancouver Island, is now likely locally extinct in Canada, and cats were cited as one of the main causes of nest failure." [1]
"The coastal vesper sparrow has seen its population drop by 85 per cent over the past decade, and a federal government analysis cited a “high concentration of domestic and feral cats” as factors in their decline." [1]
Stop just repeating "nuh uh" and dig up some studies or lets end this conversation here, because the fact is, you are wrong on this one.
> You're attributing cats to the problem, then explaining how it's proof it's cats.
Wild house cats cannot live without prey, and they are not adapted to -40C, let alone -20C for weeks at a time. They cannot live in many parts of North America without humans settlements.
There are native cats in Canada, skilled at even detecting prey under feet of snow, but house cats are not that.
There is no significant cat presence in Canada, outside of human habitats.
I notice you cited Vancouver Island, the most temperate place in Canada. And there are deserts in Australia, cats don't live there without humans, yet there are birds adapted to the desert.
The outdoor neighborhood cats are the ones that are an issue. It sounds like promoting owl habitat would be a great targeted solution to mice problem without affecting small birds as much.
yup, If only we make all but indoor only incarcerated cat pets extinct we will bring balance to the world. It's not like we ever had outdoor cats before when the birds were plentiful. All sarcasm aside, insecticides and loss of habitat are major players in declining bird, bee and insect populations. Natural predators not so much.
I am pretty pro-climate / nature, but from a pure scientific bent and it is enlightening (and frightening) the frothing rage you get from most “green” people if you point out that having outdoor cats and having kids are two of the most damaging things you can do to your environment.
"Birds, it turns out, seem to be particularly sensitised to dogs – even on leads. In woodlands outside Sydney, for example, a study found that people walking leashed dogs caused a 'dramatic' reduction in the diversity and abundance of birds – more than double that caused by the same number of people walking without pets."
At the risk of getting flagged the logical conclusion to this train of thought is that the most effective singe action any individual can take to reduce carbon emissions is to mass murder their neighbors and then kill themselves.
"I think human consciousness is a tragic misstep in human evolution. We became too self aware; nature created an aspect of nature separate from itself. We are creatures that should not exist by natural law. We are things that labor under the illusion of having a self, a secretion of sensory experience and feeling, programmed with total assurance that we are each somebody, when in fact everybody’s nobody. I think the honorable thing for our species to do is deny our programming, stop reproducing, walk hand in hand into extinction, one last midnight, brothers and sisters opting out of a raw deal."
Okay, I hear you; however, I'm not sure that the idea that cats bear more responsibility for birds fatalities than humans passes my smell test, though.
Food for thought [0] - 269 million bird deaths a year in Canada alone is asserted. Cited reasons for death include: feral and pet cats, agriculture, oil and gas activities, and collisions with buildings.
As noted outdoor cats are domestic and thus kept alive by humans. Who's responsible in this scenario - the cat or the human? I suppose some feral cats are the result of/spawn of domestic cat abandonment as well.
Cats in europe are even worse. You go to certain cities and there are thousands of strays lying on the roads and roofs, populations seemingly sustained by dumpster diving, rats, plus plenty of restaurant owners or workers straight up feed the cats regularly. There are seemingly no catch and fix programs like in the US.
a quick google search tells me that there are 75 million feral cats in the usa, far more than any other country - by area or population or any way you want to measure it
This seems like a number that would never be accurate no matter where you look. Either way, you just don’t see cities coated in cats like you do in Europe. Like dozens and dozens of cats up on a roof is a very common sight when you start exploring especially Mediterranean cities. Cats visiting you multiple times as you sit outside at cafes. Hotel and resort feral cat populations that the workers know by name at this point. I’ve seen it all. There’s just nothing like it in the US. Maybe in Key West at hemingways old home, I’m told.
Side issue but this is why arguments against wind turbines "because they kill birds" are never spoken in good faith.
Yes, wind turbines kill birds.
Collisions with vehicles kill 1000 times more birds than wind turbines do.
Collisions with glass buildings kill 3 times more still.
And cats kill 4 times more still [0].
Wind turbine bird deaths are deep in the noise as sources of bird deaths. Yes, we should keep trying to reduce that number further. But if we really care about saving birds we have a lot more dirty laundry than wind turbines.
actually, feral cats are what keep mouse, rat, squirrel and chipmunck populations in check and they are on their way to going extinct with the spay and neuter army out there. They do prey on birds when they can catch them but not at any great rate. You state 10%, that is not a massacre when you factor that cats are birds natural predators. Will you be erradicating eagles and falcons because they too prey on birds? Feral cats are not the same as abandoned house cats. Their home is the outdoors, why are we eradicating them to extinction? They are part of natures balance and an important rodent predator.
My neighbor has an outdoor cat. This cat kills at least one bird a day according to their kids (the cat brings the corpse to their porch). So I think you're tremendously mistaken about "not at any great rate."
Housecats are not native to most countries, and feral cat colonies are not healthy either (lots of disease). They are not part of "natures balance" and we're not eradicating them to extinction. That's just utter nonsense.
You are the owner of a domesticated species. Feral cats are part of natures food chain and natural balance. Without them there would be no stopping the rodent population.Not liking them being there doesn't make them invasive.
No, they're not. They're an invasive species brought to different locations around the world via human activity. The feral cats being discussed originated in the middle east and were brought to different continents by humans. North America's native cat species do not naturally target mice.
This is like saying the argentine black and white tegu is a natural part of the food chain in Florida. Please understand that humans bringing a species to a new location doesn't suddenly convert them to part of nature.
Cougars, wolves, coyotes. eagles, snakes (venomous and constrictors), hawks, and owls are natural predators of cats. Their populations have been decimated mostly by loss of habitat (same with birds). Peronnally I'd much rather be overrun by feral cats than rats any given day.
Er, cats are not native to North America. The 100M of them are descendants of the cats introduced by the colonists. They are an invasive species. They were never before and are not now part of natures balance in the Americas. So are rats in many places, having hitched rides on boats.
Yeah when 99% of people don't care about this sort of issue or are unaware of it and keep cutting trees down it doesn't matter if a few people are doing all they can.
I go home to my parents' neighborhood in Florida and more and more of the trees are disappearing in a 100-year-old neighborhood. It's not even new houses being built. These are 50-year old houses.
There is 1 house in the entire neighborhood (has to be at least 1,000 houses) that had a "no mow may" sign for the bees and isn't a purely St. Augustine grass yard. This is an upper-income higher education neigborhood too.
The culture is changing to be even less tree friendly from what it was a few decades ago.
Honestly I don't have hope in general for our future environment. I do not think we will be able to stop what is coming (both temperature-wise and species-wise). Humans are desperate for money and unfortunately making money means making things as easy and convenient as possible to get/buy.
I suspect it’s common that my city (France) requires 1 thick-trunk tree per ~80 square meter (9m x 9m). Also there is a ratio of concrete-vs-earth of 10% (posh neighborhoods), 15% or 20%, and parking spots per living surface.
My yard is 30x50m => 1500sqm => 1275sqm must be kept as earth, I must have 18 trees (thick-trunk) (and 2 parking spots and the street must have 0.5 guest parking spot).
I don't know about the tree requirement, as I don't believe I have that in my hometown, but we do have a mandatory 2 parking slots rule, within the limits of the property. The idea is to ease the parking space (less traffic jams, less people turning around searching for a place, less pollution also), avoid cars being on sidewalks and general security (better view of the surroundings when driving)
Yes, abstracting away that if people can conveniently park and use their car, they will use it for absolutely everything. That's why France is also champion of surburbia in Europe... We're are ruining our landscapes and cities with single family homes, only for that stupid summer bbq we've all seen on every bloody ad since childhood, and PSA's profit of course.
As soon as people have a house, they will have a car. Be realist. Building without parking space means they’ll invade the street parking.
On the other hand, I know places where companies can’t rent a house, they must stick to commercial-zoned areas. THAT’s enforcing the 10km-every-morning-to-go-to-work rule.
But again, suburbia is a pleasant lifestyle, we wouldn’t have to ruin landscapes if we could live downtown, but you guys make it horrible (Oh, hi Grégory Doucet). Sometimes intolerance bears a cost.
> As soon as people have a house, they will have a car. Be realist.
You don't even need to go to Japan or the Netherlands to understand that this is not true, you just need to spend a bit of time on YouTube: I recommend "Life where I'm from" for the former, and "Not just bikes" for the later.
> But again, suburbia is a pleasant lifestyle, we wouldn’t have to ruin landscapes if we could live downtown, but you guys make it horrible (Oh, hi Grégory Doucet). Sometimes intolerance bears a cost.
I don't think anyone is arguing about whether it's pleasant or not. I personally hate this lifestyle even though that's where I grew up, but that's irrelevant, the only thing that matters is that a car-centric suburbia is unsustainable at scale...
The planet will bounce back one way or another, short of a global nuclear war I don't see how we can do more damage than the asteroid that took out the dinausaurs. Humans just may not be here to enjoy it if we can't get out of the way and stop consuming natural resources for the sake Of GDP growth.
> The planet will be fine. It's humankind that's at stake.
This is oft repeated, but it fails short of anything meaningful. The planet, as in a rock floating around in space, will be fine, yes. But what about the untold amount of species of plants and animals that are suffering and will continue to suffer in our wake?
They will adapt or die and something will replace them. Diversity will go down for a while and then back up again. It's almost impossible to sterilize Earth and as long as something lives on it will eventually flourish again. It will never be the same but something else will flourish.
Hopefully many of them outlast us regardless of what stupid things we do, but yes this is a very real risk and we could take down a huge portion of diverse life on the planet with us.
I can't speak for anyone else that may have said something similar, but for me this is an observation rather than an argument. I don't want this to be what happens, I simply haven't seen any meaningful number of people actually willing to make the types of changes that would reverse this course.
Getting rid of or drastically reducing oil use would be a huge step in the right direction, and probably one of the most meaningful things we could do today. That will never happen by choice though, we're way too dependant on cheap energy and the conceniences (and economics) it provides.
>Humans just may not be here to enjoy it if we can't get out of the way and stop consuming natural resources for the sake Of GDP growth.
Humans may be the only species to understand the concept of a species, and it seems some members don't care at all if the whole species disappears, as long as 'the planet' is fine. Intelligence may be an evolutionary dead end.
It’s not about the planet being fine or not, it’s about the planet being a nice place to live for our descents. Your ascends made a nice job to get you a better life. Removing birds species won’t help in that direction, as well as a ton of other direct and indirect stuff we make happening here.
I completely agree and in no way do I like what we are collectively doing to this planet. I try to live a pretty minimal life and limit my impact on the environment. But the fact is that we seem hell-bent on running the planet for our own gain and it would take a miracle at this point for us to pull out of the tailspin, even if we actually had the will.
I can only speak to the people I've engaged with in the US and parts of Europe, but people aren't really willing to make the changes that really seem most important to me. Drastically reducingoil use, for example, would make a big difference but would destroy the GDP measure that many countries value so highly and would cause a huge shock to most every industry in the world. We've grown too dependant on industrialized food, easy access to products, and the power of leveraging cheap energy to go back to doing most things manually or with the help of animal power.
Once you've established that and, luckily, don't fall into the camp of the ones who don't give a damn and just profit. How do you cope? It's a very depressing thought that puts in perspective absolutely everything, including reproduction.
That's a great question and really the ultimate trick. For me the situation is oddly a bit of optimism and hope in an otherwise totally screwed up system. I find peace in the idea that the planet will go on one way or another, if we humans cause too much damage it will get rid of us like a bad cold and move on.
That can absolutely be depressing as well, but that's where I have to remind myself that the environment functions on the scale of thousands of years rather than decades. This planet and the life on it is an absolutely amazing thing, and amazingly resilient. I hope we can pull out of this nosedive so that we can continue to see what humans come up with, but I rest assured that we can't literally destroy the planet and that "the end" for us will be well down the road.
In the meantime, I just try to do my part to minimize my impact and partner with nature rather than fight it. I want to enjoy my life, and for me part of that is pushing myself to the point of some frustration and discomfort. I live in a small house with simple utilities and hope to have it off grid soon. Yes I still have a car and buy some things from Amazon or the grocery store, but I do without when I can and at least a few times a week I get annoyed that I don't have more storage in my tiny house. I figure if I'm feeling a bit of that pain I must be doing something right and can better enjoy the good parts of life.
Thanks for the detailed answer :) I am still very unable to ignore the things I can't control which is likely my main problem. I think the small house soon to be off grid part may be a very good way to take a step back... It's way too easy to focus on absurd human behaviours in rather dense areas.
The GP I was responding to did actually allude to a future of inevitable climate issues and species collapse.
For me the fact that the planet will love on regardless is a sign of optimism though, not doomsday apocalypse or some kind of perverse nihilism. It's like looking up at the stars, it reminds me of how small we are and that we're just a part of history rather than the start and end of it.
If carbon is burned its in the atmosphere presumably. Thats easily accessible as it will eventually get absorbed as terrestrial biomass. Charcoal economies are technologically simpler than coal economies.
Producing solar panels requires an advanced technical civilization being in place. You cannot jump from middle ages tech to producing solar panels with skipping dependence on fossil fuels in the intermediate steps.
It’s hard to extract the huge amounts of energy we get from fossil fuels from these sources without having a cheap energy source available to get you started.
Hard does not matter. If it takes the new life 100k years to go from agricultural to the industrial revolution rather than the 10k years it took us they will still get there. What I am saying is that it's not impossible to have an industrial revolution without coal. Not that it's not hard.
We at most did things like run a mill on a river. Now compare the megawatt output of a proper modern hydroelectric project and say it isn't much energy. Imagine a society side stepping coalburning and going right to big hydro projects. Even something like a forest specifically grown and cultivated for energy is a relatively new idea, and doesn’t require any real technology even beyond understanding systems theory.
Big hydro requires ungodly amounts of reinforced concrete, labor (to dig millions of cubic meters on earth) and transportation capacity (gotta transport that concrete on site - hard to do with ox-powered carriages on unpaved roads). I can't see say Louis the XIV's France ever pulling that off.
It's common in a 50+ year old neighborhood for trees to be diseased or dead or have a root system that is growing into the foundation of buildings or other infrastructure. It's not that people don't want trees, it's that people don't want trees that are a liability during the next storm (which I'm guessing is especially true in a place like florida).
But just think about that. Imagine someone just up and moving into your yard, without your permission, and then they decide to bulldoze your house because it's getting in the way of <x>.
I do understand the practicalities and constraints of homeownership, but I do wish we, as a species, did a bit more thinking ahead and had more empathy for literally anything else besides us.
I doubt that it's people lack empathy, it's more that if a tree root starts cracking up your concrete or a dead branch falls on your roof in a storm it will likely cost you a lot more than just dealing with the tree in the first place.
"Imagine someone just up and moving into your yard, without your permission, and then they decide to bulldoze your house because it's getting in the way of <x>."
it doesn't matter why people don't want trees. It's humans sacrificing trees for their needs/wants that matters. It's getting rid of trees and other natural things in general that is the problem. Humans' mere existence causes this.
Yeah, the systemic issues driving habitat loss are massive. I have made my yard a refuge for native plants to support insects, birds, and other wildlife, but I see exterminators on my street all the time killing off any insects that appear in neighbor's yards, and that kind of mass scale habitat destruction/loss is going on all around us in so many ways (lawns, roads, industrial farming, et al). I also really enjoy my pollinator garden and rewilded habitat, but people are culturally conditioned to destroy habitat, and unless that changes we're going to keep seeing more and more loss.
Right, which is why you have the opportunity to evangelize what you're doing.
Like for example, a two dudes in my hood have swapped their lawns over to micro clover because I did it three years ago; the lawn is packed with wildlife, and it looks great. Wouldn't have happened had they not come over for BBQ one day and asked about it.
Part of it is evangelizing, but its bigger than that - the yards of tomorrow need to look at lot more like grasslands and a lot less like farmland or golf courses, though.
Grassland is long grass, and it shelters a lot more than just insects and birds. It can be cover for small dogs, cats, beavers, possums, moles, mice, snakes, etc...
Understandably most "neighborhoods" don't want snakes, raccoons, or possums in their yards, but that's the level of "wilderness" we need to return to. Might make living a lot more difficult for a lot of folk...
Yeah a lot of inhabitants of a healthy habitat are labeled culturally as "pests" and "pest control" does a lot of damage to native plants, insects, birds, and other wildlife. I go out identifying insects under my porch lights or out in the yard submitting iNaturalist observations. There' an amazing, diverse natural world out there that can be accessible in a local yard that's a native habitat. I'm up to 400 species at my house (lots of those are moths and other insects). But in reality there's a lot of people who see any snake, insect, or arachnid, and respond with "kill it with fire."
> But in reality there's a lot of people who see any snake, insect, or arachnid, and respond with "kill it with fire."
Did you have a natural (or learned) revulsion for bugs? If so, how did you get over it?
I’ve gotten over mice completely, never felt right killing one in the first place.
I’ve been trying to make peace with bugs; I unplugged my mosquito zappers last summer shortly after getting them when I realized they were zapping mostly everything but mosquitoes.
Still something inside of me that has such a visceral reaction to bugs. I wish they would just stay away from me and I’d happily respond in kind :’(
> I wish they would just stay away from me and I’d happily respond in kind :’(
I mean, that’s kinda the line I draw and live with.
Anything in the house is fair game. I don’t feel good about it, but mice, insects, or anything else that’s in my living space has to go. I’ll do what I need to to keep my living space mine.
Anything outside… that’s shared space. As much as I can I try and co-exist. I see the bugs as much a part of the nature I appreciate as the bunnies, the deer, the turkeys, the foxes, the ducks, and everything else. None of it exists without the rest. Anything that isn’t an existential threat to myself or my property I leave alone. If I can’t personally handle them right now, I can always go back in the house.
Where I can, I try and balance my use of the space with everything else. I appreciate the nature where I live, so I only do what’s necessary to make it livable for me.
I mow only enough space around the house for us to use. I’ve been working on evicting some groundhogs because they’re trying to turn the ground under my garage into swiss cheese. I get rid of poison ivy when it encroaches in our space but we don’t “weed”. When the mosquitos got so bad we were scared to open a door I did spray some pesticide immediately around our house, but made sure to keep the space I sprayed well mowed to discourage the bees from coming here and getting caught in the crossfire.
I guess it’s just a small mindset shift—I still want the bugs to stay away from me, but I can’t be pissed about bugs when I wander into their home any more than I could wander in to a bear’s den and be annoyed that a bear attacked me.
Oh, except ticks. Fuck ticks. Those are kill on sight.
BTI is a great targeted solution for mosquitoes. Tick tubes can work well for ticks. Although targeted, the tick tubes have some potential for larger impact. More effort, but there tick drags and CO2 traps too.
Oh wow, not sure how I missed that one. I'm up in Canada so it's probably restricted or only sold in tiny 100g retail packages, but if I can chase down some industrial sized bags of that somewhere I'll definitely add that to my toolbox. A little bit of that spread around the wet spots during the spring melt would probably go a long way.
So far I've been primarily relying on permethrin. A gallon of 36.8% was something like $100 and dilutes out to ~600 litres of spray for my purposes. It's not water soluble and binds strongly to soil so I don't need to worry about it getting into the water table and spreading beyond where I spray it (or into my well water). I've been spraying just around my house (and, well, _on_ my house) to make a moat to keep away the mosquitos, ticks, ants, and all the other bazillion things that kept finding their way in.
We've also invested in a couple of the CO2 traps for mosquitos. Have those out in the yard a little ways out.
End of the day though... we live in the middle of a forest situated on wetland. That's part of how I got to a place of picking my battles. I know I'm not going to make much of a dent. As long as my house isn't overrun, it is what it is.
I have seriously considered it, but I do wonder about the neighborhood response. Although I don't think there's any danger and that there's actually more danger from the mosquitoes carrying every disease under the sun, I'm not sure if it's a battle I want to take on if someone has an issue with it. Once the bats are in place, I believe it requires engaging with state wildlife authorities to relocate them. Maybe I'm being too paranoid. I mean, there are already bats in the area anyway. They probably just have a hard time finding shelter.
I have a bat house. It's been empty for years. Apparently they prefer my neighbor's attic. But all least they'll have a place to go if they get evicted from the attic.
Sorry, late reply. I've never really had any serious issues with bugs, but desensitization by exposure is the way to go. I've used the iNaturalist app photographing and identifying insects for years, so when I find a new to me species I learn about their life history, and explore what I've seen in its taxonomy. So I'm comfortable around most bugs now since I know which are harmless, and which are the handful that have a sting/bite they'll actually use. Most insects, like most animals, don't want to fight, and would prefer to be left alone. Bees aren't going to sting unless you harass them or you threaten their hive, most wasps don't sting, and very few are aggressive. Grasshoppers and katydids totally do bite though, they scare me. Also I steer clear of anything that looks like a fire ant, centipede, warrior wasps, hornet, or yellowjacket.
I redid parts of my lawn last fall (first time ever doing so or even having the opportunity). I did about 30% of that new European microclover and 70% various fine fescues. Not sure if I feel it was a success or not, but the clover does make it look like a nice meadow. But the clover and fescue, if I let them grow, it gets so thick that I can't even mow it effectively. Do you just let the microclover fully take over and grow to a certain height before cutting? I have heard it has a memory of where it was cut and stops growing there. I haven't noticed that though. How do you keep other things fron taking over the yard?
It does have a memory of cut height, and I mow it with a reel mower once a week.
WRT other things taking over the yard, it's been rainy as hell here past few weeks and so the weeds have deff. sprung up unaccounted for; I just spend a day weeding mechanically, using a weed grabber tool.
Both count as my workout. Headphones + podcast = no gym membership required.
You'd be interested to know that this month I'll be finishing a huge trellis on the south wall of our house to let vines grow. This will reduce cooling costs and look beautiful (I hope).
Thanks. I use a battery powered mower, but because the fescue and clover retain so much moisture and has grown so thick, it has been really struggling (I think any mower would really) to mulch except at the highest height setting. I let it grow unhindered in the spring, and since it's been raining like crazy, I can't stay on top of it. (I should note that my lawn is probably only a 1/4 of my property.)
What reel mower do you use? Does it have height adjustments?
What are the environmental repercussions of that? I don't do any chemicals, weed killer, or chemical fertilizers. All I do, to feed the soil and not the grass, is dolomitic lime and organic fertilizer.
none that i saw. it just suppresses growth hormone of plants for a couple of weeks so they grow at half speed or less. less mowing. less watering. less fertilizers. etc.
for plants that are not grass pgrs usually slow down vertical growth and promote lateral branching/density
yea. generics cost 1/3.still not cheap. yet, i decided to try one this summer, because mowing grass that grows as crazy on the hill (frontyard) at 90sh weather - it's just not my definition of fun
Maybe you mean you don't use a 2-stroke engine to mow as the point you were making, but if not, what the huh? There's evangelizing, and then there's just being the crazy guy on the corner making stuff up that sounds like evangelizing. You're leaning towards the latter with these kinds of non-ambiguous contradictory statements.
I have a couple on our farm and honestly really enjoy cutting hay by hand. The key is to get out there early when it's still cool, and keep the blade sharp as you go!
wild white clover is naturally short and takes up much of the lawn where we are renting. if it weren't for the other random tall stuff we probably wouldn't need to mow at all.
Okay so my original comment was maybe lacking on its own "solutioning" so let me try one out, based on your comment.
1. Set up a bird-friendly/enviro-friendly environment in your yard. You could do this by planting micro-clover instead of grass, building bird houses, adding safe sources of water for birds, planting pollinator-friendly flora.
2. Evangelize. Plan a block party or even a birdwatching 'club'. This doesn't have to be as formal as it sounds; you could just take pictures of birds and evangelize them on a local group, or maybe point out to a few of your neighbors that they have really interesting specimens on their property.
3. Connect with the local Audubon chapter (or equivalent) and give them encouragement or support; help them with their website or social media, invite them to a BBQ, show them that you care and will help out.
Obviously I don't know your situation and can't predict all the reasons this might not work – and I'm not suggesting that you have to do all this – I'm really just trying to get your juices flowing, show you that there's ways that you can at the local level that might even benefit you – like getting to know your neighbors, having a beautiful and unique home, or even just making friends!
My religious friend takes photos of the natural areas around his town and then donates the (beautiful) photos to local churches to be displayed in their hallways – "God's bounty". He also sells calendars of same to parishioners. Each photo comes with a story about the wildlife in the area and how it interacts with the human world.
Is he intentionally psyop'ing an environmental message? He's pretty smart, so maybe. Is it effective? Maybe.
But I will tell you this: I have been on more hikes with this guy than I would have normally thanks to the majesty he documents... so it's worked on me!
The Oasis effect of habitat is valuable and can form part of corridors so insects and birds can migrate and breed.
So your actions alone can be valuable.
Your may inspire others or be part of a chain of things which inspires them.
Your hard won knowledge awaits their questions.
You may have to fight HOAs and disaproval. Your battles lay the groundwork for those that follow to succeed - setting precendent and raising issues, sometimes even by losing.
Even if others don't follow your practice you may pique their interest - which may change their opinions. Opinions are the mandate by which local officials and politicians act?
Many of these good consequences may be invisible to you. Doing good is never useless. The causes of change can be unpredictable and subtle. The future can be radically altered by small effects in the past.
Perhaps the life of a native bumble bee that survives by virtue of your planting may be the one that mutates enough so his descendants survive the coming changes.
Thank god that I do not have an HOA. Luckily things are different here, although I am very surprised that someone recently was able to cut down literally every tree on the property. (It appears the house was bought by an investor or someone quite wealthy.)
I honestly can't imagine the stress that an HOA would bring to my life.
Thanks for the kind words! I'm definitely still learning and making lots of mistakes along the way.
In some areas humans actually increase the biodiversity. My area is mostly desert most of the time. We get our water from the California aqueduct. On my property I have squirrels, rabbits, and chipmunks. I've seen red tailed Hawks and Owls. Cats can't be outdoor here. I've already seen a cat's head discarded on my property. I have so many types of birds here all the time.
The open space here has a ton of animals and biodiversity but humans have actually increased the biodiversity. For example the squirrels on my property eat dates off my date trees. Date trees and eastern squirrels aren't native here but they do feed the hawks and owls. Bees are harvesting on my property constantly.
> but humans have actually increased the biodiversity
If that's even true, I would say that it is exceedingly rare, even on small local levels. And it would be dwarfed by the rest of human activity killing off biodiversity. I have squirrels, chipmunks, rabbits, voles, foxes, raccoons, owls, hawks, several species of birds like woodpeckers, cardinals, nuthatches, etc., bats, coyotes, fisher cats, deer, bees, wasps, moths, butterflies, dragonflies, hummingbirds, and more all on my properly. Some are there every single day, like the chipmunks and bees, and the others are frequent visitors. But even with all that, the diversity is absolutely lower than what this area would have been like just 200 years ago. For example, mountain lions are gone and bobcats are on their way out. Same with bears. And there are several native plant species that are on their way out as well.
Also, deserts actually can be teeming with biodiversity. It's just not the biodiversity that we recognize.
Yes, but that comes at the expense of the biodiversity that existed before the California Aqueduct did. The Central Valley was once a massive seasonal wetland that supported millions if not billions of migratory waterfowl, to say nothing of non-avian biodiversity in the area (which I likewise recall being massive--this is detailed in Cadillac Desert, which I don't have on hand). I don't think that that biodiversity tradeoff is a net positive one.
I don't know why you think that. It makes no sense. The viaduct comes from far far north away of the central valley. That water would otherwise not even ever flow through the central valley. Naturally this area doesn't really retain most of its water. It just goes right into the ocean. The central valley lake naturally appears and disappears through no fault of humanity.
In NZ, there's been successful local endeavours to, for example, plant nectar bearing trees in urban backyards to encourage endemic birds to return, another I know of to bring biodiversity into monoculture vineyard areas to keep the bees healthy, and they've worked because people benefit from them - our nectar feeding birds are also beautiful singers, and the song of the korimako/bellbird and tui are cherished, and the vineyard owners themselves benefit from healthier pollinators.
It's where there's no direct benefit, or the species is uncharismaric that it gets tricky. It's a lot harder to motivate people to preserve habitat for a stick insect or mudfish.
> There's no one I can call to get help with my own yard because every landscaper knows nothing about ecology and uses loud and polluting gas-powered machinery.
For my own yard, in Washington State, I've interacted with a half dozen arborists and landscapers. Every one of them has been an expert in local species, has had concrete suggestions about what to plant and how to maintain, and is generally very excited to engage on the problem at the homeowner level.
> Unless governments take action and penalize corporations for the harm they've done and take measures to prevent further harm, we won't be able to stop what's coming.
What corporations? It sounds like your neighbors are just individuals? And can you clarify "what's coming"?
The point really is that individual action is sisyphean. The energy is too diffuse because the vast majority of people lack any real power or even real autonomy over their lives.
The only way the things that were done by mass action can be undone is through mass action. Who are the people who can invoke mass action? Basically there’s only one answer: governments.
Maybe if governments hadnt spent the last 60 years destroying labor movements (at the behest of corporations) there would be another option. But here we are in the year of our lord 2023 after decades of successful union busting.
I should make it clear that I don't see myself as a model ecological homeowner, but I do feel that I am trying. I was trying to point out that I can't even make a difference as an individual versus other individuals, so I feel individuals have no hope competing against industrial environmental damage. I feel like I already notice less bees and butterflies compared to last year. I don't think I have even seen a butterfly this year.
In terms of what corporations, just open the so-called phone book with your eyes closed and point. Our worship of scale has us destroying the environment at scale.
What's coming is more headlines like the one here and what the other commenter mentioned of ecological collapse. Without pollinators, how will we grow food?
The owning/ruling class is directly responsible for the overwhelming majority of the pollution and environmental destruction on the planet. This is not complicated.
The voting class is responsible for always wanting to “save the mother and the orphan” (metaphor, but it’s a “let’s save everyone, allow everyone to prosper, increase wages and let everyone massively live in consumerism” attitude), effectively massively overpopulating the earth, requiring more concrete poured in cities and even more poured concrete in tourism because their home city is unbearable, and all of it requiring, in a word, mass industry.
But somehow it’s the industry that’s at fault.
But “how do you dare say no to more humans!” is somehow at fault. I get it, we can be 10bn if we all ate crickets, but surprise, food is not even the reason why land gets urbanized and overexploited and polluted. Plus, creating more high-density humans, the kind who never sees any patch of earth, the kind who believes travelling across the world to see Kylie Minogue in a casino and buy some flamboyant clothes, is the best way to get voters who understand and care nothing to nature.
Ruling class just executed what you wanted. Guess what, what we want is to leave no human behind, help everyone, and raise them all to high levels of consumerism, whether in the West or in the third world. I really don’t see how the ruling class has any stake in pollution. Every time they try to get us to reduce our lifestyle, we vote them out.
Yeah you can account for it that way, but the people who buy the products and use the services the owning class owns and operates are indirectly responsible, so individual action is very much relevant!
I don’t have a solution, but I just wanted to say thank you for doing whatever you can. It’s frustrating as fuck but it’s what we’ve got and it’s the only way I can sleep at night, so thanks for being another person doing the right thing.
Just do it because you will have a better life. You don't need much more reasons than this.
Walking barefoot in the wet grass while sipping your coffee, and smirking at the neighbors that still keep doing it wrong is optional.
In most places, the probability of a snake or a racoon hiding in the grass to attack you is negligible. We are loud. They have better things to do and plenty of places to run away.
> How can this compete with the dozens of neighbors in a half-mile radius that have removed in excess of hundreds of trees, big ones like oak, pine, maple, hickory and up to five feet in diameter, and turn their yards into grass wastelands? I never even see my neighbors use most of their yards. How do you compete against that level of narcissisim and lack of empathy?
Moving might be an option. There are places where this doesn't happen and while you might have other problems, you probably won't have those problems.
I don't think the issue is whether GP lives next to neighbors with these kind of lawns, but more that the relative proportion of bird-hostile yards is outpacing any individual attempt to counterbalance. Moving only solves the problem if the only thing you care about is the extent to which you, personally, are forced to see one of the causes of this population drop in your daily life. It doesn't address the problem itself, which is kind of also GP's point.
No person can solve this. Techno-optimist HN won’t believe me now, but we’re living through the Collapse of the civilization right now. Ukraine, banks, covid, climate change and all else are merely symptoms of human population overshoot. See https://medium.com/@CollapseSurvival/overshoot-why-its-alrea...
Right, but that won’t happen until things become sufficiently painful enough (for the masses or corporate profits or both). Not ideal, but that’s the world we live in.
No, individuals is the only way this works. Individuals started it and they can stop it.
But ideally in addition to doing things yourself and being an example you should also try to convince and encourage others to do it by raising awareness, supporting legislation, not using suppliers and not working for companies that violate those rules etc.
I completely sympathize with you. Seriously. But I'm not sure the cause is simply narcissism - to my eyes the real root cause is abject ignorance. If they were to realize, like you, they would be unable to behave the way they do
I don't know, but that's an interesting idea. I've thought about looking into what it would take to protect certain trees and native plants on my property. But I have also wondered if that would also make my property unsellable. :(
Not OP but I’d assume something analogous to the tobacco lawsuits but for ecological damage caused by marketing of products generally known to be harmful to healthy natural ecosystems that trap users in a cycle of additional product use (once nature reacts to the apocalypse by starting additional pioneer plant growth in that are).
You say individuals cannot solve this, then go on to show how the problem is with individuals turning their yards into grass wastelands. Well if its individuals causing the problem, wouldn't it mean that individuals can solve it? Seems like your comment is contradicting itself.
And what do you call displacing hundreds of birds, animals, plants, insects by planting literally wastelands made of grass just so that the grass can be looked at? How is that not narcissism, a lack of empathy, and vanity? It's the very definitions of those words.
We must first come to terms with what we as humans do and how we interact with and perceive the world.
Look up Benjamin Vogt and Douglas Tallamy. They say the same thing. I can't remember who it was, but someone said that it was a disservice to the diversity of life found in deserts to call lawns green deserts.
What would you like to rationally talk about? What did I say that was irrational?
You know, I can admit to myself that I am vain and a narcissist in this context. The part that I have left as a lawn, I do like looking at it. It has been a journey for myself to gain empathy for things that are not human and for many things I can't even see, much less communicate with. It takes time and effort, but it also takes accepting the situation and saying "what am I going to do about it?". I do still mow the parts of my property that is a lawn, and I generally realize its general destructiveness and disruptiveness. But I try to address that, and see what I can differently.
A bon mot, to be sure, but whether or not they are labeled as such makes no difference. The behavior refuses to change in either situation. Plenty of pitiful fools are still trying to keep sod alive in the vicinity of the Mojave.
How can this compete with the dozens of neighbors in a half-mile radius that have removed in excess of hundreds of trees, big ones like oak, pine, maple, hickory and up to five feet in diameter, and turn their yards into grass wastelands? I never even see my neighbors use most of their yards. How do you compete against that level of narcissisim and lack of empathy?
It is exhausting on me both physically and emotionally. There's no one I can call to get help with my own yard because every landscaper knows nothing about ecology and uses loud and polluting gas-powered machinery.
I am to the point where I consider my actions as pissing into the wind and spitting into the ocean. Seeing bees where I hadn't seen them before using native plants that I planted is amazingly fullfilling. But I know that it basically has no greater impact, and it is completely against the tide.
Unless governments take action and penalize corporations for the harm they've done and take measures to prevent further harm, we won't be able to stop what's coming.