You must log in or # to comment.
I’ve decided to leave the leaves on my yard and I swear my neighbors are mowing and leaf blowing twice as much just to spite me.
IDGAF. I’d rather have fireflies and bumblebees than human neighbors
Or realize that there is still tons of land that isn’t maintained and is actually a better habitat for bees anyway. Even in your own neighborhood ther is plenty of places that don’t get tended to. This is really just a diversion to redirect people from all the things the ag industry does that harm the bees on a scale us individuals, even collectively can’t hold a candle to. Remember when they tried to convince us that leaving the water running while we brush our teeth was a major usage of fresh water. But again, compared to the ag industry, all household water use is a drop in the bucket.
Sure but… It’s still a really good advice and I’m glad someone posted it. I rarely rake away leaves for reasons like this, and this gives me one extra reason to not do so.
That doesn’t mean you’re wrong, but we can all be right : fight the important battles for large scale effects while enjoying the small scale effects of individual actions.
I think that they’re just railing against the smoke show that would have us believe that our individual actions are more to blame than industry as a whole. You can recycle, you can drive a electric car, you can even generate your electricity and store it locally in a battery and not even use the grid but even if we all did that without change to heavy industry we are still screwed.
One small example of this is how big tobacco and big oil have used exactly the same tactics to distract us from what’s really going on and protect their profits regardless of the harm to us as a species.
Would you like to know more? https://www.eenews.net/articles/big-tobacco-had-to-pay-206b-is-big-oil-next/
Yeah, it totaly woshed right over them. They are playing games with human emotions to protect and increase profits. These kind of things were the early version of the algorithms that are designed to keep you glued to content so you see more ads.
For insects, pristine lawns are a huge problem. This isn’t quite comparable.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen the data, but isn’t the American lawn considered a major biome now? At least compared to wildlands.
Between lawns and monocropping in the US, yes we need to fight back against those activities and favor rewilding.
For those reading, start by introducing native plants to your parcel. Let nature do it’s thing. Then, consider going vegan since animals need multiple times the amount of land and water to grow: resources to grow the plants, then resources to grow the animals. Then, consider donating to organizations like The Xerces Society, the Wildlife Conservation Network, or MarAlliance. Better yet, find something local to you and join up!
You either missed the point, or you have fallen for the propaganda. Industry is a much higher % of the problem than your lawn. But they want to distract you by making you think you should do something with your yard to fix things. When the majority fail to do anything, they will feel like, well I didn’t do my part, so I can’t demand industry do anything. This allows them to keep destroying the environment. It’s a great tactic, worked well with plastic for a very long time. Your just helping them. Instead vote for people who care about us and the planet more than corporate profits. Regulate the industries and support lab grown meats.
After looking into the data, I’d probably agree with you.
The US USDA ERS estimates that urban area land use is the lowest of all categories, but is rising. Yet NASA found that turfgrass represents the largest irrigated crop in the US, 3 times as much as corn.
I will have to say that the research on this is quite outdated, with newer research seemingly coming from industry groups associated with the golf sector and giving rise to conflicts of interest.
But I generally agree with your sentiment. Place the blame on the individual, the citizen, rather than the corporations and economic industries. I’d tend to agree with you, although I wonder if the issues are necessarily mutually exclusive. Sure we might prioritize the latter, but the former gives people tangible reasons to point to and continue in their advocacy for the latter.
It’s the last part where we disagree. I think that pushing efforts that make people feel like they did thier part makes them complacent to pushing against industry or others. In some cases the individual effort touted is something that few people will end up doing because of how inconvenient it is. So they will feel they can’t demand better of industry and others. And in the case of this leaves stuff, it is something that excuses inaction, so people will feel like they did their part so the result isn’t thier fault, and thus not thier problem anymore. And of course everyone loves a post supporting inaction because it makes them feel better about themsleves for not getting around to something they thought they should do. That makes it very popular. As such it drowns out messages about the larger causes and solutions.
I don’t view this as a “pick up the leaves or not” false choice. I leave the leaves in some areas and mow over/pick them up in others. They’re literally free mulch and compost
Go to a farm, ask for stall muckings…free compost.
Just remember that month suggestions online are for certain geographic areas. You might need to move them earlier or later. (The best rules I have seen is when nights are above 50 F in North America)
As a Brit we were always taught to gently disturb leaf piles before jumping in them or throwing them into the fire, just in case hedgehogs were in there. The habit has stuck, although I now just rake our leaves up onto the mulched beds and leave them. The chickens will then pull them apart and consume any living thing unfortunate enough to live there.
Colony collapse was due to fungicides being sprayed in the day. -Bees don’t need extra pollen (they have plenty of food to spare which is why we have honey as a product), and they don’t need people’s lawns (pick the leaves up before winter).
Leaving leaves is just being an asshole neighbor making safe paths for vermin to get into houses, and reduce the value of neighboring properties.
Lmfao
Bumble bees do not produce large amounts of honey.
They keep enough food for a couple of days bad weather, but otherwise they don’t overproduce at all.
And now I’m even more glad that where I live they leave the leaves under the tree. Didn’t know that bumblebees live under that leaves left under the tree. Now I wanna leave a commest about the cute bumblebees that live under the leaves that someone left under the tree.
P.S. sorry, couldn’t hold myself, sorry:)
I always mulch mine with my mower. Only bugs that might be in them is scorpions, grubs, ants, or the odd snake sometimes
wuht
How do I know when the queens are out?
Early spring would be the easiest since no other “types” of bumblebee would be flying.
A tree is like a quiet roommate, but makes a huge mess before leaving to travel internationally for half the year.
