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.
It most certainly does not. Source: have a tree, a lawn, and no interest in spending time raking leaves.
I’ve got two big sycamores in my front yard, and they both are currently dropping leaves the size of dinner plates in enough quantity to completely cover large portions of the yard. If I don’t rake or mulch them, they will smother whatever ground cover that’s underneath them. I know this because I tried leaving them one year and it took the next three years to get all the mud pits left behind in the spring to fill back in.
It really depends on how many leaves we’re talking; a thin, evenly distributed layer? Yeah that’s just mulch and is great. A thicker layer that turns slimy and dense? That grass is a goner. Area and species of leaves probably pays a big part I imagine. I have an area near a fence where the leaves piled up and were left a year and now there’s no grass there, even a couple years later (there’s a super embedded layer of decomposing leaves that’s blocking everything else out even after removing the bulk of the leaves)
Of course, there’s never room for nuance in these conversations.
Since HOAs were mentioned, I assume the previous comment was about the US (unless there are countries in the Old World where they are as prevalent, but I know of none). Domestic honey bees aren’t native to the US, and many native bees are endangered for many different reasons. In the rest of the world as well, honey bees aren’t the only bees, or the only pollinating insects, and each pollinator has their plants of predilections, some species of plants depend entirely on some species of insect, so insect biodiversity is very important. Protecting native bees in the Americas has particular stakes, because they’re the most adept at pollinating the native plants which are the cornerstones of several ecosystems.
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/
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.
Brings nutrients into your soil so you have a healthier lawn
That has not been my experience. The leaves wreck the ph of the soil and block light from letting grass grow.
Not much grass growing when it’s -20 out but you might have too many leaves so they don’t decompose fast enough during your winter
Yeah that’s definitely the issue here. There’s still a layer of wet leaves by the time the grass wants to start growing in the spring.
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
If you leave them all in place they all turn into free mulch and compost anyway. And you avoid using the fossil fuels to power the mower you don’t need in the first place.
You will want to be sure to sift them a little, as there will be a lot of stones in them, in my experience.
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:)
