28 ms·

We should build for wildlife as well as people

264 points by NotSwift 5y ago

sandworm101 5y ago
This is all well and good in the UK. Bee bricks and bat boxes are great. But the largest predators in the UK are badgers. The real difficulty is how one accommodates bear and cougars. Even large deer can be a problem. Up to 200 Americans are killed by road accidents involving deer every year. Do we continue to close schools and break out the dart guns every time someone sees a bear in a tree? Or do we develop neighborhoods with pathways through which the even non-cuddly animals can pass without conflict. That costs far more than the occasional bee brick.
- rmah 5y ago
  In fairness, I got the feeling that the author of the article was writing in the context of western Europe. While Western Europeans have a hard time understanding the large and dangerous wildlife populations that exist in North America, it's hardly surprising since they don't live there. The author's prescriptions sound like nice and (relatively) easy things people in the UK can do to make life a bit richer there. It's doubtful he'd suggest pathways for bears through American or Canadian suburbs :-).
- notatoad 5y ago
  there's simply no way to build cities in a way that accomodates bears or cougars, because they need a territory far larger than the area we could possibly provide in a city. building for cougars or bears means building dense cities that perserve as much wild space outside the city as possible for animal habitats. i like the idea of adapting buildings to be less hostile to animals that find themselves in the city, but anything that increases sprawl is the worst thing you could possibly do for wildlife.
  - Schiendelman 5y ago
    I appreciate seeing more people understand that density is our way to preservation. Thank you! :)
    - bigthymer 5y ago
      I think it is starting to be one of those things that most people on this site have come around to realizing. I'm eager to see whether it permeates the rest of society and what actions we start taking in that direction.
  - sandworm101 5y ago
    I lived in a neighborhood (Vancouver) where bears were regular back yard visitors. Cougars were around but rarely seen. Many California suburbs seem to get alone with local predator populations. I think the key is not to fence things off in a manner than gives them no easy escape route when confronted.
    - asdff 5y ago
      The big issue with California and predators is in what they end up eating in the suburbs: trash and poisoned rats. A lot of businesses in CA have a box in the back full of rat poison. The rat eats that then walks off and dies someplace, the coyote/couger/bear/owl/hawk/vulture finds the carcass, eats the poison, and also dies. There aren't many sources of high quality food in CA suburbs for predators. You don't get large populations of deer, like in suburbs out east that were clearcut from forest, since suburbs in CA are developed out of farmland or pasture or oil fields generally and there isn't much habitat surrounding most of these developments that support larger game populations like out east (compare satellite imagery of Sacramento to Cleveland and see how stark the differences in forest cover are in CA vs a typical eastern city.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
- Angostura 5y ago
  There's a lot you can do in terms of building for biodiversity that will benefit 10s of thousands of species before you have ti to worry about the handful of apex preditors that harm humans.
- zabzonk 5y ago
  > Even large deer can be a problem. In the UK also - I've had several near-death experiences in a car at night with deer in North London. Not that I want to get rid of them.
  - edgyquant 5y ago
    This happens a lot in the Midwest also. Deer are really dangerous because they walk across roads in the night and they freeze up when they see a bright light.
- ehnto 5y ago
  Adelaide is an interesting case study. There is a river and nature reserve that stretches from the hills to the coast that cuts right through the city. They do incur on the edges of it in a few locations but for the most part it's got native vegetation for the full length of it. It's one of the many nature corridors there, and the network of nature corridors continues to expand throughout suburbia. They also have a ring of parklands around the CBD all of which have native vegetation in at least some areas if not quite the whole area. They're not unique in having a river cutting through the city, but they were lucky to have the foresight of a city planner who felt there was some value in keeping the native vegetation all the way back at the city's inception. There is beautiful and diverse birdlife throughout the city and that's in no small part due to the amount of native vegetation kept around throughout the city and suburbia. From the surrounding hills, the suburbs just look like a regular forest with some buildings poking out here and there, it's incredibly green. There is about as much parklands as there is real estate in the CBD itself. https://d31atr86jnqrq2.cloudfront.net/images/aerial-city-adelaide.jpg?mtime=20190514155209 https://d31atr86jnqrq2.cloudfront.net/images/aerial-city-ade...
  - zabzonk 5y ago
    Surprisingly, London has a huge amount of parkland and multiple rivers - you only have to fly over it to see it all (or live there to experience it). And lots of varied creatures living there.
  - r00fus 5y ago
    Holy cow that looks paradisiac compared most major US cities.
    - sjf 5y ago
      The aerial view says otherwise: https://www.google.com/maps/@-34.9082898,138.5203148,29616m/data=!3m1!1e3 https://www.google.com/maps/@-34.9082898,138.5203148,29616m/...
      - r00fus 5y ago
        Zoomed out, yes the larger part of Adeliade looks similar to most cities but that part looks great from aerial as well. You can see the corridor.
- cabalamat 5y ago
  > The real difficulty is how one accommodates bear and cougars. One doesn't. Bears were exterminated in Britain 1500 years ago. And cougars were never native here. > But the largest predators in the UK are badgers. Fine by me, badgers aren't a threat to humans. > Do we continue to close schools and break out the dart guns every time someone sees a bear in a tree? No, we exterminate them like my ancestors did 1500 years ago, because they were sensible (my ancestors, not the bears). Maybe put some in a wildlife park or zoo.
duxup 5y ago
I like this idea, but once you build something with some given wildlife in mind... what happens to the rest of the wildlife? I live in an area where open areas often have a lot of trees. That's great, lots of deer, people like deer ... problem is the deer have no predators. The deer don't have to move around and love to eat certain tree saplings in particular. Result? The forested areas simply don't have those trees or bushes that the deer like to eat anymore. Forested areas that would have thick underbrush are absolutely clear cut (as far as underbrush goes) by the deer. It's so complete you'd think humans went through and clear cut the brush, but it's the deer. Worse, that impacts other animals who rely on those trees and bushes. I feel like there's WAY more balance to be considered here and second order effects we don't understand. We like to help animals we like to see / are easy to help (there are some rabbits outside my window now, I like them) but helping them might not be the best choice.
- Angostura 5y ago
  > I like this idea, but once you build something with some given wildlife in mind... what happens to the rest of the wildlife? You don't build for a particular species in mind. You build for biodiversity.
  - duxup 5y ago
    By it's nature you can only be so diverse when you've decided to build. The system is wonky to begin with, the opportunity to put wolves in my area is ... pretty much 0.
    - Angostura 5y ago
      I'm not sure what you are saying. You plant a wide range of pollinator and native trees designed to offer roosting and nesting space for birds, bats and insects. etc. Wy jump straight to wolves?
- Schiendelman 5y ago
  The concept of "building for wildlife" doesn't mean picking and choosing the cutest animals - it means trying to understand that balance and maintain it. The people who study ecosystems understand a lot of these second order effects well, and we're always learning more. The concept here is to start listening to those people.
megablast 5y ago
Can we build for people?? And not cars??
- foxyv 5y ago
  Oddly enough, this would probably also solve a lot of problems for wildlife as well. Reducing sprawl and increasing habitat.
- darrenf 5y ago
  "As well as people" being in the headline certainly implies that the article's author would answer yes to the former.
- kfarr 5y ago
  Yes, my initial reaction as well -- we don't really build for people in the US, we build for cars. If we truly built for people, we wouldn't have sprawl and ridiculous vehicle infrastructure that affects wildlife so much.
- b0rsuk 5y ago
  Is there any website where I can get city populations listed in number of cars?
neolog 5y ago
There's really interesting research on integrating native ecology into the human environment. Douglas Tallamy's recent book on native-plant ecosystems [1] stands out. [1] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07NMH5GH5 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07NMH5GH5
sailorganymede 5y ago
Build for problems means everything gets encompassed surely? Good solutions will take into different facets of a problem.
jimkleiber 5y ago
The problem I see is that wildlife don't pay property tax. It seems more and more trees are being torn down in my city to make way for new buildings—houses, stores, etc. And I thought about why it might be happening and I stumbled on the idea that buildings increase property value, property value increases property tax, cities (in the US) often run on property tax. Perhaps some wildlife areas can have economic value, such as tourism, but I struggle to see how leaving certain places wild and untouched fits with the incentive of property tax. Any suggestions?
- h2odragon 5y ago
  Recognize the monetary value of the civic services they provide! Raccoons should be paid at least half as much as a human "sanitation engineer", right?
- marapuru 5y ago
  Growth is the thing cities and business focus on. They may call it sustainable growth but it's still growth at it's core. If you could somehow prove that wildelife areas generate some sort of growth, short and long term, economically focused.
- actually_a_dog 5y ago
  > Any suggestions? How about we recognize the inherent value of green space and nature to humans? For instance: Mental Health Benefits: * Stress and violence reduction. * Improved concentration. Physical Benefits: * Enhanced health. * More rapid healing. * Improved environmental conditions. Social Benefits * Crime reduction. * Increased workplace productivity. * Safer driving. * Economic stimulation. * Positive effects on children. (Details and citations at https://www.udel.edu/academics/colleges/canr/cooperative-extension/fact-sheets/human-benefits-of-green-spaces/ https://www.udel.edu/academics/colleges/canr/cooperative-ext...) People in general are way too quick to reduce things to dollars and cents.
  - jimkleiber 5y ago
    I agree it has those benefits and if I imagine those would create a higher quality of life, then each property that does have homes or businesses could be worth more. So city revenue could go up because 1) each parcel is higher in value or 2) the city could even charge more premium property tax rates to be in such a high quality city. In other words, the city maintains itself more as a luxury good than a commodity.
big_curses 5y ago
This is going to come across as a nitpick on the title, the idea is taken farther in the article and I think it's an important distinction. No, we should not build for wildlife. We should only build for people and what is good for people's lives. The only question then is, "what is good for people?". If not harming the biodiversity in a region and having more green spaces are good for people (which they likely are), then we should do it, but it is not the case that, as the article says, "whenever we build something...it's our responsibility to accommodate wildlife that would be displaced otherwise". Our only responsibility is to our own lives and the rights of others, animals do not have rights and cannot even conceive of them. If people want to help animals because it makes them happy, that's great, but we don't owe any moral responsibility to them.
- jklinger410 5y ago
  The good news is that what is good for humans is to maintain biodiversity and what's good for biodiversity is good for animals. We are currently deficient in this area, so even if the world was full of big_curses we would still need to make some progress in protecting wildlife, if even for our own selfish reasons. But you are wrong that animals don't have, or cannot conceive of, having rights and that we don't "owe" them anything. The truth is that we owe all living things the right to exist in the same way your rights are granted by the constitution. It may be a tough to shake off a barbaric mindset like the one expressed above, but if you don't want society to leave you behind, I suggest you try.
  - big_curses 5y ago
    > The good news is that what is good for humans is to maintain biodiversity and what's good for biodiversity is good for animals. Exactly, which is why I'm generally in support of building things in a way that maintains biodiversity. But we should be doing it for us as the principle driving this action, even if the outcome seems the same. > But you are wrong that animals don't have, or cannot conceive of, having rights and that we don't "owe" them anything. The truth is that we owe all living things the right to exist in the same way your rights are granted by the constitution. Which animal can grasp a philosophically grounded conception of rights? If they can't do that, they do not know of rights. Certain species of primates may react to what they perceive as fair and unfair, but this is founded in emotion and social habits, not reason, which is required for a conception of rights. You will never see an animal respecting your rights, they simply happen to act in a way that doesn't directly infringe on them, but only sometimes. Also, I should clarify, just because animals don't have rights doesn't mean it is good for us, as individuals, to do anything we want to them at any time. Unnecessary cruelty is not good for an individual psychologically, in addition to the fact that it does not add to your life in any way.
AlbertCory 5y ago
I like the idea of biodiversity on the roof. I would like it better if they'd consulted some roofing contractors about what that might do to the roof. Like, for example, the rain getting into your house because some animal has forced a hole in the surface.
softwaredoug 5y ago
I've been researching how to make my yard more insect friendly, and a couple themes have crept up: 1. Don't mow your lawn, or mow less of it less frequently. Bugs need tall grasses, and tall grasses hold moisture, attract other bugs (ie prey). They flower and help pollinators. Mowed lawns are like a desert for them. 2. Change outdoor lights to be motion activated, instead of always on. Light pollution interferes with all kinds of bugs, given their attraction, and some bugs like fireflies use light for their own purposes 3. Don't spray insecticides or treat your lawn 4. Turn over part of your garden to wildflowers and native plants, let it get a little overgrown in that boundary. Even a few square meters can make a difference 5. Try to learn to tolerate / love insects more. They're closest thing we have to aliens to interact with! There's of course exceptions (ticks, mosquitos...), but so many of them are beneficial. And I wish we had vaccines for malaria, lyme, etc so we had to stress about insect caused maladies :(
- actually_a_dog 5y ago
  Great points. FYI, at least in NorCal, native plants are typically much hardier than regular grass and other plants used for landscaping. In other words, they're well adapted to periodic drought conditions, so, you probably won't have to water them at all.
- yellow_lead 5y ago
  Although it's restricted by HOA in many areas, one alternative is also to not have a lawn. Grow native species, food, anything that homogeneous non-native grass.
- ocdtrekkie 5y ago
  Bear in mind, in many suburban neighborhoods, you will get fined for not mowing your lawn, and then the city will mow your lawn, and charge you for doing it.
- Miraste 5y ago
  Fascinatingly, we do have a vaccine for Lyme disease but no one manufactures it because of a poorly-informed media frenzy. Further reading: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2870557/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2870557/
yellow_lead 5y ago
Specifically for roofs, I'm curious how much more expensive and lasting a nature-roof is. For example, take a residential house. The roof needs to be able to sustain the weight of the soil and collected water. Roofs are typically built with slopes so that the water doesn't collect. Now you have to design the structure to support that. Drainage is an interesting problem too. How do you drain the water without losing your soil and soil nutrients? I think a solar roof is a better use of the roof, if installed properly.
agentultra 5y ago
Sounds like a great idea. One of the many factors increasing tick populations in Canada are roads. They subdivide forested areas and migration paths for deer which are the primary hosts for deer ticks. Which means deer stay closer together and so do the ticks. Along with the warmer climate it's turning into an epidemic. It may not be perfect but starting to build affordances for wildlife seems like a fantastic idea for our health and theirs.
- asdff 5y ago
  If we can build an overpass over a freeway for some teensy town of 400 people, it should be no issue at all to construct a handful of overpasses for wildlife. Imo the issue with these proposals is that these wildlife bridges are almost always dramatically overbuilt and overlandscaped to look natural for humans, and cost hundreds of millions of dollars, when just a simple bridge and a fence funneling wildlife to the bridge would do. A deer doesn't need the bridge to look like a perfect natural feature. They walk along roads as it is just fine if that's where they are heading. We just assume they want some natural looking thing but I don't think there is data suggesting that these sorts of wildlife overpasses are more effective than a simple cheap ugly one.
  - megablast 5y ago
    Yes, building more thing is the solution. More concrete and construction work.
kderbyma 5y ago
I would love to see more hybrid building in areas which can support them natively, which is the key (native species) - but I also would love to see combinations of aquaponics and LEED engineering coming together with new biomaterials to build more forest like ecosystems inside of our cities
- kderbyma 5y ago
  and combined with reusable structures and prefab components like DIRTT and others
tellmedoyouread 5y ago
That's a good idea but first we should fix ourselves. Daily we produce so much toxins that ultimately harm the animals, so if we want to fix anything we should fix ourselves.
fmajid 5y ago
French highways have built-in crapauducs (toad-ducts) to allow toads to safely cross: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crapauduc https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crapauduc
throwawaysea 5y ago
This is a lot harder than people anticipate. While we can "patch up" gaps in supporting wildlife with things like highway crossings (example: https://apnews.com/article/north-america-mountains-us-news-wa-state-wire-wildlife-36755628e4c44fdabb01cb9599fa5aef https://apnews.com/article/north-america-mountains-us-news-w...) we have bigger ecological problems that are harder to fight. For example, invasive species of plants and animals are very hard to manage and require concerted efforts to establish native species while removing non-native species. Whether Asian carp or Scotch Broom or whatever, the widespread footprint of invasive species has distorted our ecology so much that minor accommodations from how we build may amount to a blip on the radar. My point is not to say this isn't worth talking about, but to draw attention to a larger need for something like an "environment corps", funded to just put in the hard labor required to address these other widespread issues affecting health of wildlife and our environment.
throwaway984393 5y ago
Oh jesus christ, "green roofs"? "Bee bricks" ?? This is ridiculous turd-polishing. The problem isn't that we haven't made our buildings more freaky, it's that we've destroyed natural ecosystems. So restore the natural ecosystems. Have less buildings. Leave more undeveloped land. Reintroduce predators. Remove invasive species. Allow nature to take over (it will). And news flash: hedgehogs and bees are only being saved because humans think they're cute. What we actually need more of are creepy crawly insects, weeds, grasslands, bushes, forests, wetlands. You know, that "undeveloped" land that was here before we bulldozed it all and installed strip-malls on top.
- betwixthewires 5y ago
  If you read the article it tells you that only 1% of the earth's habitable land has human development on it. There's plenty of space for nature to thrive, and it does. The big problem for me is externalities that affect that untouched world. Industrial and agricultural runoff, different pesticides and things like that.
  - shreyshnaccount 5y ago
    sure, but some of the largest and most important ecosystems which contribute a lot to the overall stability of the earth are being completely obliterated. I remember reading that the Amazon is now a net carbon dioxide producer due to over-utilisation of natural resources. surely that can't be good, right?
  - jbay808 5y ago
    That's true, but area is not the only important metric. It only takes a thin sliver of highway cutting through a forest to segment an habitat, break migration paths, and strongly affect ecosystems. The article is mainly about green roofs, but wildlife bridges would perhaps be an even more important example of "building for wildlife". https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/wildlife-overpasses-underpasses-make-animals-people-safer https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/wildlife-...
    - 5y ago
dukeofdoom 5y ago
Need a green corridor across the continent, instead of border wall. Border river with crocodiles. That way we can be environmentally friendly with the migrants escaping climate change down south
dkarl 5y ago
The title does a very effective job of conflating the goal of benefit for humans with the goal of benefit for "wildlife." Probably intentional, possibly with good intentions, but definitely a bonanza for the green roof industry trade association whose message is uncritically trumpeted in the first three paragraphs. Yep, it's a fluff piece, probably planted by that industry group. However, it's a fluff piece about some potentially really cool stuff, so I think it's important to separate what the piece works so hard to conflate: benefit to humans, versus benefit to "wildlife." Biophilic design is about improving human well-being by incorporating natural elements that provide physical or psychological benefit to nearby human beings. There's an inevitable self-centered tendency, when people see and enjoy "nature" in the built environment around them, to assume that the benefit goes both ways, and the article encourages readers to believe that these two concerns dovetail conveniently: > By making our buildings just a little more accommodating to this complexity, we could reap ecological rewards as well as personal ones. It will take more than carpeting roofs and walls with plants to stop the biodiversity crisis – but it could be a stimulating start. However, providing local, immediate benefits to human beings by accommodating "natural" elements in the built environment is a fundamentally different aim from providing global, long-term benefit to human beings through healthy ecosystems. The latter concern is dominated by global warming and will be for a century. Biophilic design will have a modest impact on global warming, if any. Biodiversity and habitat loss are also concerns, and biophilic design will only benefit the narrow category of species that can survive alongside us in cities. The argument for combining the two concerns is basically that it's easy. Biophilia is an easy sell because it's about human benefit, and if we can leverage that for ecological benefit, it should be a win/win. However, I think catering to biophilia is a double-edged sword. People can very easily be fooled by the sight of a few bees and butterflies outside their window into thinking that they are living in harmony with nature, and nature is thriving. It's a cliché for people in rural places to laugh at environmentalists in cities, believing that 1) city-dwelling eggheads don't understand how big and wild nature is, while rural folks who are "closer to nature" can look outside and see that nature is doing fine, and 2) if anything is harming nature, it must be those dirty industrial cities, not agriculture and rural land use. City-dwelling people are equally vulnerable to the illusion that seeing a few isolated wild plants and animals means seeing healthy intact ecosystems, as illustrated by the architect quoted in the article as saying, "You realise how much complexity there is in nature" (when you're looking at birds in your garden in the middle of London.) Biophilic thinking complicates people's thinking about environmentalism in a direction that undermines our focus on global warming. We have got to the point where I think most people understand how a person living in a metal high-rise surrounded by concrete and getting to work through a mechanized tube can be living more "in harmony with nature" than someone living in a bucolic setting at the end of a long driveway miles outside the city. Even people who hate this idea and would dispute it understand the logic behind it. We have spent decades getting people to think in terms of carbon footprints and direct and indirect energy use, and the conflation of biophilia with environmentalism takes people back to the concrete, simplistic idea that you can judge the environmental impact of a lifestyle by how "natural" its aesthetic is. So, while biophilic design is a positive thing locally, we shouldn't promote illusions about its environmental impact. We shouldn't mistake investment in biophilic design for investment in global environmental outcomes. And we should be extremely skeptical of an article about green roofs that serves as an uncritical platform for an industry association that makes money from building them. (I still think green roofs are great, by the way.)
beebeepka 5y ago
It's not just buildings. Almost everything is framed this way. "Not harmful to humans" has been common for as long as I've been alive. Food, water, air, radiation/light or sound. It's like if something is not known to be harmful to humans, then we are not supposed to worry our pretty heads with it. Well, I do care about all sorts of things that I can eas6 ignore/shield myself from but are harmful to others, including other living beings. I guess that makes me weak, or so I've been told
seanwilson 5y ago
> These visions of wildlife atop city buildings aren't just picturesque, they're often hailed as one solution to the world's rapid loss of nature. Livestock takes up about 40% of the habitable land on earth (80% of all agriculture land) to supply only 20% of global calories (https://ourworldindata.org/land-use https://ourworldindata.org/land-use). The world is producing 3 times more meat than it was 50 years ago so we're eating much more than we used to as well (https://ourworldindata.org/meat-production https://ourworldindata.org/meat-production). Animal products clearly aren't substantial, are destroying ecosystems, and taking up a crazy amount of land that could be rewilded. People generally don't want to hear about this and would rather discuss things like "wildlife atop city buildings", non-industry farmed animals (which take up even more land) and technological solutions (which we don't have time to wait for) instead.
b0rsuk 5y ago
My 2 cents: If your home has a garden, consider planting some *thorny* bushes. People love fertile and friendly varieties with high yields. To you, thorns might seem like an unnecessary annoyance, but plenty of birds and small animals like to build nests there. Little birds are often ambushed by bigger ones, like magpies or jays. A nesting box can be taken over by a woodpecker, who is very happy to widen the entrance. But both of them will stay away from a wicked mass of thorns. Birds nesting there won't be the same species as in a nesting box, but filling much the same role in the ecosystem (for example lesser whitethroat).
hbarka 5y ago
I remember reading an article about the effect of highways creating a virtual perimeter that the genetic diversity of the wildlife within it degraded to such a low variation over generations and as a result those animals were exhibiting negative defects. Here’s an example where we’re finally thinking about undoing some of the harm: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/animals-are-using-utahs-largest-wildlife-overpass-earlier-expected-180976420/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/animals-are-using-... I believe in some European countries they do these more frequently.
fleddr 5y ago
I just want to chip in to confirm that with only minor actions and pretty much no sacrifice on your end, you really can help A LOT of small wildlife. Not only do you help it, it quite simply makes your environment nicer too. Should you have a garden, even if small, don't go for exotic plants, select local ones. You can easily optimize the ones attractive to bees and butterflies. Combine with one of those insect hotels (be sure to get a deep one) and presto...you just created a brand new ecosystem that is fun to watch. Minimize lawn surface to what has actual real utility, use the rest for plants, bushes, trees, a simple pond. You're going to be amazed at all the stuff that appears the next season. Have some tall bushes with dense foliage and the first bird nest will soon appear. Clean dead leafs from your path for your safety, but nowhere else. Its nutrition for a very complex and rich ecosystem of soil animals. Don't kill everything that moves with pesticides, only take care of plague insects forming a real and direct threat. A bat box is the cheapest thing, and your reward is sustaining these stunning animals, as they clear out excess mosquitos. Their appearance can be timed nearly to the minute every single day, just before sunset. Shut down needless lights, allow nocturnal wildlife to do their thing and stop confusing moths. The above costs near-zero effort at near-zero cost. The effect is that you're sustaining a complex web of life, from mesofauna to larger insects, snails, amphibians, flowers, birds, bats. Just casually observing all this buzz from the garden chair is wonderful. Quite a lot better than the sterile "tiles and lawn". Even better is to get a macro lens and capture it all, you'll be set for life with an amazing hobby. Do it. Give wildlife a little room, and give it a chance. It will blow your mind how it will thrive. If still not convinced, might I add that the above is 100% compatible with the lazy. Once it's in place, it's pretty much inaction from there.
- prawn 5y ago
  I'm not convinced an insect hotel does anything useful. Ours and any others I've seen get taken over by spiders and webs just about instantly. And the spiders here already have enough places to live!
  - fleddr 5y ago
    This just shows you still have the wrong mindset in wanting to manage outcomes. The goal of an insect hotel is not to maximize insects you like to see or think are pretty. The goal is to create a habitat normally found in nature itself. A place to nest or even overwinter. Because our concrete jungle has few of such places. After creating the place, you let it play out. In your case, spiders seem to dominate it. So what? Spiders are a valuable part of the ecosystem. If they become too numerous, birds will thin the herd as will parasitic wasps. In my garden, I do get a fair amount of various bee species in the hotel. 80% of them won't have a successful life cycle due to other predatory insects. Not only is that normal, it's supposed to happen. Insects have a ridiculously numerous offspring. I also see the opposite happening. Thin-waisted predatory wasps hunting baby spiders, stuffing them in their hotel room for their larvae. Anyway, if you still believe the spiders are out of control in your place, it means your garden has too few songbirds. In an urban environment, highly common songbirds and spider wasps are the top predators of spiders.
re-al 5y ago
We should sue the government for all the bad designs that they have forced on us for so many years. Without holding historical errors to account, we are bound to repeat well-meaning busy-body interference from planners etc.
rhacker 5y ago
> Some of that floor area will go into multi-storey buildings but some will be provided by ever-expanding urban sprawl, which will leave even less space for wildlife. I don't think we're ever going to erase this. We keep saying, time to tackle urban sprawl. I don't think we have the ability. I think the urban sprawl IS the reaction to density. It happens again and again. For every human that likes living in a city there's another one that hates living in a city.
imvetri 5y ago
We should build wildlife for people. hahaha
Kinnard 5y ago
Most of all wild humans!

264 points by NotSwift 5y ago

This is all well and good in the UK. Bee bricks and bat boxes are great. But the largest predators in the UK are badgers. The real difficulty is how one accommodates bear and cougars. Even large deer can be a problem. Up to 200 Americans are killed by road accidents involving deer every year. Do we continue to close schools and break out the dart guns every time someone sees a bear in a tree? Or do we develop neighborhoods with pathways through which the even non-cuddly animals can pass without conflict. That costs far more than the occasional bee brick.

rmah 5y ago
In fairness, I got the feeling that the author of the article was writing in the context of western Europe. While Western Europeans have a hard time understanding the large and dangerous wildlife populations that exist in North America, it's hardly surprising since they don't live there. The author's prescriptions sound like nice and (relatively) easy things people in the UK can do to make life a bit richer there. It's doubtful he'd suggest pathways for bears through American or Canadian suburbs :-).
notatoad 5y ago
there's simply no way to build cities in a way that accomodates bears or cougars, because they need a territory far larger than the area we could possibly provide in a city. building for cougars or bears means building dense cities that perserve as much wild space outside the city as possible for animal habitats. i like the idea of adapting buildings to be less hostile to animals that find themselves in the city, but anything that increases sprawl is the worst thing you could possibly do for wildlife.
- Schiendelman 5y ago
  I appreciate seeing more people understand that density is our way to preservation. Thank you! :)
  - bigthymer 5y ago
    I think it is starting to be one of those things that most people on this site have come around to realizing. I'm eager to see whether it permeates the rest of society and what actions we start taking in that direction.
- sandworm101 5y ago
  I lived in a neighborhood (Vancouver) where bears were regular back yard visitors. Cougars were around but rarely seen. Many California suburbs seem to get alone with local predator populations. I think the key is not to fence things off in a manner than gives them no easy escape route when confronted.
  - asdff 5y ago
    The big issue with California and predators is in what they end up eating in the suburbs: trash and poisoned rats. A lot of businesses in CA have a box in the back full of rat poison. The rat eats that then walks off and dies someplace, the coyote/couger/bear/owl/hawk/vulture finds the carcass, eats the poison, and also dies. There aren't many sources of high quality food in CA suburbs for predators. You don't get large populations of deer, like in suburbs out east that were clearcut from forest, since suburbs in CA are developed out of farmland or pasture or oil fields generally and there isn't much habitat surrounding most of these developments that support larger game populations like out east (compare satellite imagery of Sacramento to Cleveland and see how stark the differences in forest cover are in CA vs a typical eastern city.
  - deleted 5y ago
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Angostura 5y ago
There's a lot you can do in terms of building for biodiversity that will benefit 10s of thousands of species before you have ti to worry about the handful of apex preditors that harm humans.
zabzonk 5y ago
> Even large deer can be a problem. In the UK also - I've had several near-death experiences in a car at night with deer in North London. Not that I want to get rid of them.
- edgyquant 5y ago
  This happens a lot in the Midwest also. Deer are really dangerous because they walk across roads in the night and they freeze up when they see a bright light.
ehnto 5y ago
Adelaide is an interesting case study. There is a river and nature reserve that stretches from the hills to the coast that cuts right through the city. They do incur on the edges of it in a few locations but for the most part it's got native vegetation for the full length of it. It's one of the many nature corridors there, and the network of nature corridors continues to expand throughout suburbia. They also have a ring of parklands around the CBD all of which have native vegetation in at least some areas if not quite the whole area. They're not unique in having a river cutting through the city, but they were lucky to have the foresight of a city planner who felt there was some value in keeping the native vegetation all the way back at the city's inception. There is beautiful and diverse birdlife throughout the city and that's in no small part due to the amount of native vegetation kept around throughout the city and suburbia. From the surrounding hills, the suburbs just look like a regular forest with some buildings poking out here and there, it's incredibly green. There is about as much parklands as there is real estate in the CBD itself. https://d31atr86jnqrq2.cloudfront.net/images/aerial-city-adelaide.jpg?mtime=20190514155209 https://d31atr86jnqrq2.cloudfront.net/images/aerial-city-ade...
- zabzonk 5y ago
  Surprisingly, London has a huge amount of parkland and multiple rivers - you only have to fly over it to see it all (or live there to experience it). And lots of varied creatures living there.
- r00fus 5y ago
  Holy cow that looks paradisiac compared most major US cities.
  - sjf 5y ago
    The aerial view says otherwise: https://www.google.com/maps/@-34.9082898,138.5203148,29616m/data=!3m1!1e3 https://www.google.com/maps/@-34.9082898,138.5203148,29616m/...
    - r00fus 5y ago
      Zoomed out, yes the larger part of Adeliade looks similar to most cities but that part looks great from aerial as well. You can see the corridor.
cabalamat 5y ago
> The real difficulty is how one accommodates bear and cougars. One doesn't. Bears were exterminated in Britain 1500 years ago. And cougars were never native here. > But the largest predators in the UK are badgers. Fine by me, badgers aren't a threat to humans. > Do we continue to close schools and break out the dart guns every time someone sees a bear in a tree? No, we exterminate them like my ancestors did 1500 years ago, because they were sensible (my ancestors, not the bears). Maybe put some in a wildlife park or zoo.

duxup 5y ago

I like this idea, but once you build something with some given wildlife in mind... what happens to the rest of the wildlife? I live in an area where open areas often have a lot of trees. That's great, lots of deer, people like deer ... problem is the deer have no predators. The deer don't have to move around and love to eat certain tree saplings in particular. Result? The forested areas simply don't have those trees or bushes that the deer like to eat anymore. Forested areas that would have thick underbrush are absolutely clear cut (as far as underbrush goes) by the deer. It's so complete you'd think humans went through and clear cut the brush, but it's the deer. Worse, that impacts other animals who rely on those trees and bushes. I feel like there's WAY more balance to be considered here and second order effects we don't understand. We like to help animals we like to see / are easy to help (there are some rabbits outside my window now, I like them) but helping them might not be the best choice.

Angostura 5y ago
> I like this idea, but once you build something with some given wildlife in mind... what happens to the rest of the wildlife? You don't build for a particular species in mind. You build for biodiversity.
- duxup 5y ago
  By it's nature you can only be so diverse when you've decided to build. The system is wonky to begin with, the opportunity to put wolves in my area is ... pretty much 0.
  - Angostura 5y ago
    I'm not sure what you are saying. You plant a wide range of pollinator and native trees designed to offer roosting and nesting space for birds, bats and insects. etc. Wy jump straight to wolves?
Schiendelman 5y ago
The concept of "building for wildlife" doesn't mean picking and choosing the cutest animals - it means trying to understand that balance and maintain it. The people who study ecosystems understand a lot of these second order effects well, and we're always learning more. The concept here is to start listening to those people.

megablast 5y ago

Can we build for people?? And not cars??

foxyv 5y ago
Oddly enough, this would probably also solve a lot of problems for wildlife as well. Reducing sprawl and increasing habitat.
darrenf 5y ago
"As well as people" being in the headline certainly implies that the article's author would answer yes to the former.
kfarr 5y ago
Yes, my initial reaction as well -- we don't really build for people in the US, we build for cars. If we truly built for people, we wouldn't have sprawl and ridiculous vehicle infrastructure that affects wildlife so much.
b0rsuk 5y ago
Is there any website where I can get city populations listed in number of cars?

neolog 5y ago

There's really interesting research on integrating native ecology into the human environment. Douglas Tallamy's recent book on native-plant ecosystems [1] stands out. [1] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07NMH5GH5 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07NMH5GH5

sailorganymede 5y ago

Build for problems means everything gets encompassed surely? Good solutions will take into different facets of a problem.

jimkleiber 5y ago

The problem I see is that wildlife don't pay property tax. It seems more and more trees are being torn down in my city to make way for new buildings—houses, stores, etc. And I thought about why it might be happening and I stumbled on the idea that buildings increase property value, property value increases property tax, cities (in the US) often run on property tax. Perhaps some wildlife areas can have economic value, such as tourism, but I struggle to see how leaving certain places wild and untouched fits with the incentive of property tax. Any suggestions?

h2odragon 5y ago
Recognize the monetary value of the civic services they provide! Raccoons should be paid at least half as much as a human "sanitation engineer", right?
marapuru 5y ago
Growth is the thing cities and business focus on. They may call it sustainable growth but it's still growth at it's core. If you could somehow prove that wildelife areas generate some sort of growth, short and long term, economically focused.
actually_a_dog 5y ago
> Any suggestions? How about we recognize the inherent value of green space and nature to humans? For instance: Mental Health Benefits: * Stress and violence reduction. * Improved concentration. Physical Benefits: * Enhanced health. * More rapid healing. * Improved environmental conditions. Social Benefits * Crime reduction. * Increased workplace productivity. * Safer driving. * Economic stimulation. * Positive effects on children. (Details and citations at https://www.udel.edu/academics/colleges/canr/cooperative-extension/fact-sheets/human-benefits-of-green-spaces/ https://www.udel.edu/academics/colleges/canr/cooperative-ext...) People in general are way too quick to reduce things to dollars and cents.
- jimkleiber 5y ago
  I agree it has those benefits and if I imagine those would create a higher quality of life, then each property that does have homes or businesses could be worth more. So city revenue could go up because 1) each parcel is higher in value or 2) the city could even charge more premium property tax rates to be in such a high quality city. In other words, the city maintains itself more as a luxury good than a commodity.

big_curses 5y ago

This is going to come across as a nitpick on the title, the idea is taken farther in the article and I think it's an important distinction. No, we should not build for wildlife. We should only build for people and what is good for people's lives. The only question then is, "what is good for people?". If not harming the biodiversity in a region and having more green spaces are good for people (which they likely are), then we should do it, but it is not the case that, as the article says, "whenever we build something...it's our responsibility to accommodate wildlife that would be displaced otherwise". Our only responsibility is to our own lives and the rights of others, animals do not have rights and cannot even conceive of them. If people want to help animals because it makes them happy, that's great, but we don't owe any moral responsibility to them.

jklinger410 5y ago
The good news is that what is good for humans is to maintain biodiversity and what's good for biodiversity is good for animals. We are currently deficient in this area, so even if the world was full of big_curses we would still need to make some progress in protecting wildlife, if even for our own selfish reasons. But you are wrong that animals don't have, or cannot conceive of, having rights and that we don't "owe" them anything. The truth is that we owe all living things the right to exist in the same way your rights are granted by the constitution. It may be a tough to shake off a barbaric mindset like the one expressed above, but if you don't want society to leave you behind, I suggest you try.
- big_curses 5y ago
  > The good news is that what is good for humans is to maintain biodiversity and what's good for biodiversity is good for animals. Exactly, which is why I'm generally in support of building things in a way that maintains biodiversity. But we should be doing it for us as the principle driving this action, even if the outcome seems the same. > But you are wrong that animals don't have, or cannot conceive of, having rights and that we don't "owe" them anything. The truth is that we owe all living things the right to exist in the same way your rights are granted by the constitution. Which animal can grasp a philosophically grounded conception of rights? If they can't do that, they do not know of rights. Certain species of primates may react to what they perceive as fair and unfair, but this is founded in emotion and social habits, not reason, which is required for a conception of rights. You will never see an animal respecting your rights, they simply happen to act in a way that doesn't directly infringe on them, but only sometimes. Also, I should clarify, just because animals don't have rights doesn't mean it is good for us, as individuals, to do anything we want to them at any time. Unnecessary cruelty is not good for an individual psychologically, in addition to the fact that it does not add to your life in any way.

AlbertCory 5y ago

I like the idea of biodiversity on the roof. I would like it better if they'd consulted some roofing contractors about what that might do to the roof. Like, for example, the rain getting into your house because some animal has forced a hole in the surface.

softwaredoug 5y ago

I've been researching how to make my yard more insect friendly, and a couple themes have crept up: 1. Don't mow your lawn, or mow less of it less frequently. Bugs need tall grasses, and tall grasses hold moisture, attract other bugs (ie prey). They flower and help pollinators. Mowed lawns are like a desert for them. 2. Change outdoor lights to be motion activated, instead of always on. Light pollution interferes with all kinds of bugs, given their attraction, and some bugs like fireflies use light for their own purposes 3. Don't spray insecticides or treat your lawn 4. Turn over part of your garden to wildflowers and native plants, let it get a little overgrown in that boundary. Even a few square meters can make a difference 5. Try to learn to tolerate / love insects more. They're closest thing we have to aliens to interact with! There's of course exceptions (ticks, mosquitos...), but so many of them are beneficial. And I wish we had vaccines for malaria, lyme, etc so we had to stress about insect caused maladies :(

actually_a_dog 5y ago
Great points. FYI, at least in NorCal, native plants are typically much hardier than regular grass and other plants used for landscaping. In other words, they're well adapted to periodic drought conditions, so, you probably won't have to water them at all.
yellow_lead 5y ago
Although it's restricted by HOA in many areas, one alternative is also to not have a lawn. Grow native species, food, anything that homogeneous non-native grass.
ocdtrekkie 5y ago
Bear in mind, in many suburban neighborhoods, you will get fined for not mowing your lawn, and then the city will mow your lawn, and charge you for doing it.
Miraste 5y ago
Fascinatingly, we do have a vaccine for Lyme disease but no one manufactures it because of a poorly-informed media frenzy. Further reading: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2870557/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2870557/

yellow_lead 5y ago

Specifically for roofs, I'm curious how much more expensive and lasting a nature-roof is. For example, take a residential house. The roof needs to be able to sustain the weight of the soil and collected water. Roofs are typically built with slopes so that the water doesn't collect. Now you have to design the structure to support that. Drainage is an interesting problem too. How do you drain the water without losing your soil and soil nutrients? I think a solar roof is a better use of the roof, if installed properly.

agentultra 5y ago

Sounds like a great idea. One of the many factors increasing tick populations in Canada are roads. They subdivide forested areas and migration paths for deer which are the primary hosts for deer ticks. Which means deer stay closer together and so do the ticks. Along with the warmer climate it's turning into an epidemic. It may not be perfect but starting to build affordances for wildlife seems like a fantastic idea for our health and theirs.

asdff 5y ago
If we can build an overpass over a freeway for some teensy town of 400 people, it should be no issue at all to construct a handful of overpasses for wildlife. Imo the issue with these proposals is that these wildlife bridges are almost always dramatically overbuilt and overlandscaped to look natural for humans, and cost hundreds of millions of dollars, when just a simple bridge and a fence funneling wildlife to the bridge would do. A deer doesn't need the bridge to look like a perfect natural feature. They walk along roads as it is just fine if that's where they are heading. We just assume they want some natural looking thing but I don't think there is data suggesting that these sorts of wildlife overpasses are more effective than a simple cheap ugly one.
- megablast 5y ago
  Yes, building more thing is the solution. More concrete and construction work.

kderbyma 5y ago

I would love to see more hybrid building in areas which can support them natively, which is the key (native species) - but I also would love to see combinations of aquaponics and LEED engineering coming together with new biomaterials to build more forest like ecosystems inside of our cities

kderbyma 5y ago
and combined with reusable structures and prefab components like DIRTT and others

tellmedoyouread 5y ago

That's a good idea but first we should fix ourselves. Daily we produce so much toxins that ultimately harm the animals, so if we want to fix anything we should fix ourselves.

fmajid 5y ago

French highways have built-in crapauducs (toad-ducts) to allow toads to safely cross: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crapauduc https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crapauduc

throwawaysea 5y ago

This is a lot harder than people anticipate. While we can "patch up" gaps in supporting wildlife with things like highway crossings (example: https://apnews.com/article/north-america-mountains-us-news-wa-state-wire-wildlife-36755628e4c44fdabb01cb9599fa5aef https://apnews.com/article/north-america-mountains-us-news-w...) we have bigger ecological problems that are harder to fight. For example, invasive species of plants and animals are very hard to manage and require concerted efforts to establish native species while removing non-native species. Whether Asian carp or Scotch Broom or whatever, the widespread footprint of invasive species has distorted our ecology so much that minor accommodations from how we build may amount to a blip on the radar. My point is not to say this isn't worth talking about, but to draw attention to a larger need for something like an "environment corps", funded to just put in the hard labor required to address these other widespread issues affecting health of wildlife and our environment.

throwaway984393 5y ago

Oh jesus christ, "green roofs"? "Bee bricks" ?? This is ridiculous turd-polishing. The problem isn't that we haven't made our buildings more freaky, it's that we've destroyed natural ecosystems. So restore the natural ecosystems. Have less buildings. Leave more undeveloped land. Reintroduce predators. Remove invasive species. Allow nature to take over (it will). And news flash: hedgehogs and bees are only being saved because humans think they're cute. What we actually need more of are creepy crawly insects, weeds, grasslands, bushes, forests, wetlands. You know, that "undeveloped" land that was here before we bulldozed it all and installed strip-malls on top.

betwixthewires 5y ago
If you read the article it tells you that only 1% of the earth's habitable land has human development on it. There's plenty of space for nature to thrive, and it does. The big problem for me is externalities that affect that untouched world. Industrial and agricultural runoff, different pesticides and things like that.
- shreyshnaccount 5y ago
  sure, but some of the largest and most important ecosystems which contribute a lot to the overall stability of the earth are being completely obliterated. I remember reading that the Amazon is now a net carbon dioxide producer due to over-utilisation of natural resources. surely that can't be good, right?
- jbay808 5y ago
  That's true, but area is not the only important metric. It only takes a thin sliver of highway cutting through a forest to segment an habitat, break migration paths, and strongly affect ecosystems. The article is mainly about green roofs, but wildlife bridges would perhaps be an even more important example of "building for wildlife". https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/wildlife-overpasses-underpasses-make-animals-people-safer https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/wildlife-...
  - 5y ago

dukeofdoom 5y ago

Need a green corridor across the continent, instead of border wall. Border river with crocodiles. That way we can be environmentally friendly with the migrants escaping climate change down south

dkarl 5y ago

The title does a very effective job of conflating the goal of benefit for humans with the goal of benefit for "wildlife." Probably intentional, possibly with good intentions, but definitely a bonanza for the green roof industry trade association whose message is uncritically trumpeted in the first three paragraphs. Yep, it's a fluff piece, probably planted by that industry group. However, it's a fluff piece about some potentially really cool stuff, so I think it's important to separate what the piece works so hard to conflate: benefit to humans, versus benefit to "wildlife." Biophilic design is about improving human well-being by incorporating natural elements that provide physical or psychological benefit to nearby human beings. There's an inevitable self-centered tendency, when people see and enjoy "nature" in the built environment around them, to assume that the benefit goes both ways, and the article encourages readers to believe that these two concerns dovetail conveniently: > By making our buildings just a little more accommodating to this complexity, we could reap ecological rewards as well as personal ones. It will take more than carpeting roofs and walls with plants to stop the biodiversity crisis – but it could be a stimulating start. However, providing local, immediate benefits to human beings by accommodating "natural" elements in the built environment is a fundamentally different aim from providing global, long-term benefit to human beings through healthy ecosystems. The latter concern is dominated by global warming and will be for a century. Biophilic design will have a modest impact on global warming, if any. Biodiversity and habitat loss are also concerns, and biophilic design will only benefit the narrow category of species that can survive alongside us in cities. The argument for combining the two concerns is basically that it's easy. Biophilia is an easy sell because it's about human benefit, and if we can leverage that for ecological benefit, it should be a win/win. However, I think catering to biophilia is a double-edged sword. People can very easily be fooled by the sight of a few bees and butterflies outside their window into thinking that they are living in harmony with nature, and nature is thriving. It's a cliché for people in rural places to laugh at environmentalists in cities, believing that 1) city-dwelling eggheads don't understand how big and wild nature is, while rural folks who are "closer to nature" can look outside and see that nature is doing fine, and 2) if anything is harming nature, it must be those dirty industrial cities, not agriculture and rural land use. City-dwelling people are equally vulnerable to the illusion that seeing a few isolated wild plants and animals means seeing healthy intact ecosystems, as illustrated by the architect quoted in the article as saying, "You realise how much complexity there is in nature" (when you're looking at birds in your garden in the middle of London.) Biophilic thinking complicates people's thinking about environmentalism in a direction that undermines our focus on global warming. We have got to the point where I think most people understand how a person living in a metal high-rise surrounded by concrete and getting to work through a mechanized tube can be living more "in harmony with nature" than someone living in a bucolic setting at the end of a long driveway miles outside the city. Even people who hate this idea and would dispute it understand the logic behind it. We have spent decades getting people to think in terms of carbon footprints and direct and indirect energy use, and the conflation of biophilia with environmentalism takes people back to the concrete, simplistic idea that you can judge the environmental impact of a lifestyle by how "natural" its aesthetic is. So, while biophilic design is a positive thing locally, we shouldn't promote illusions about its environmental impact. We shouldn't mistake investment in biophilic design for investment in global environmental outcomes. And we should be extremely skeptical of an article about green roofs that serves as an uncritical platform for an industry association that makes money from building them. (I still think green roofs are great, by the way.)

beebeepka 5y ago

It's not just buildings. Almost everything is framed this way. "Not harmful to humans" has been common for as long as I've been alive. Food, water, air, radiation/light or sound. It's like if something is not known to be harmful to humans, then we are not supposed to worry our pretty heads with it. Well, I do care about all sorts of things that I can eas6 ignore/shield myself from but are harmful to others, including other living beings. I guess that makes me weak, or so I've been told

seanwilson 5y ago

> These visions of wildlife atop city buildings aren't just picturesque, they're often hailed as one solution to the world's rapid loss of nature. Livestock takes up about 40% of the habitable land on earth (80% of all agriculture land) to supply only 20% of global calories (https://ourworldindata.org/land-use https://ourworldindata.org/land-use). The world is producing 3 times more meat than it was 50 years ago so we're eating much more than we used to as well (https://ourworldindata.org/meat-production https://ourworldindata.org/meat-production). Animal products clearly aren't substantial, are destroying ecosystems, and taking up a crazy amount of land that could be rewilded. People generally don't want to hear about this and would rather discuss things like "wildlife atop city buildings", non-industry farmed animals (which take up even more land) and technological solutions (which we don't have time to wait for) instead.

b0rsuk 5y ago

My 2 cents: If your home has a garden, consider planting some *thorny* bushes. People love fertile and friendly varieties with high yields. To you, thorns might seem like an unnecessary annoyance, but plenty of birds and small animals like to build nests there. Little birds are often ambushed by bigger ones, like magpies or jays. A nesting box can be taken over by a woodpecker, who is very happy to widen the entrance. But both of them will stay away from a wicked mass of thorns. Birds nesting there won't be the same species as in a nesting box, but filling much the same role in the ecosystem (for example lesser whitethroat).

hbarka 5y ago

I remember reading an article about the effect of highways creating a virtual perimeter that the genetic diversity of the wildlife within it degraded to such a low variation over generations and as a result those animals were exhibiting negative defects. Here’s an example where we’re finally thinking about undoing some of the harm: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/animals-are-using-utahs-largest-wildlife-overpass-earlier-expected-180976420/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/animals-are-using-... I believe in some European countries they do these more frequently.

fleddr 5y ago

I just want to chip in to confirm that with only minor actions and pretty much no sacrifice on your end, you really can help A LOT of small wildlife. Not only do you help it, it quite simply makes your environment nicer too. Should you have a garden, even if small, don't go for exotic plants, select local ones. You can easily optimize the ones attractive to bees and butterflies. Combine with one of those insect hotels (be sure to get a deep one) and presto...you just created a brand new ecosystem that is fun to watch. Minimize lawn surface to what has actual real utility, use the rest for plants, bushes, trees, a simple pond. You're going to be amazed at all the stuff that appears the next season. Have some tall bushes with dense foliage and the first bird nest will soon appear. Clean dead leafs from your path for your safety, but nowhere else. Its nutrition for a very complex and rich ecosystem of soil animals. Don't kill everything that moves with pesticides, only take care of plague insects forming a real and direct threat. A bat box is the cheapest thing, and your reward is sustaining these stunning animals, as they clear out excess mosquitos. Their appearance can be timed nearly to the minute every single day, just before sunset. Shut down needless lights, allow nocturnal wildlife to do their thing and stop confusing moths. The above costs near-zero effort at near-zero cost. The effect is that you're sustaining a complex web of life, from mesofauna to larger insects, snails, amphibians, flowers, birds, bats. Just casually observing all this buzz from the garden chair is wonderful. Quite a lot better than the sterile "tiles and lawn". Even better is to get a macro lens and capture it all, you'll be set for life with an amazing hobby. Do it. Give wildlife a little room, and give it a chance. It will blow your mind how it will thrive. If still not convinced, might I add that the above is 100% compatible with the lazy. Once it's in place, it's pretty much inaction from there.

prawn 5y ago
I'm not convinced an insect hotel does anything useful. Ours and any others I've seen get taken over by spiders and webs just about instantly. And the spiders here already have enough places to live!
- fleddr 5y ago
  This just shows you still have the wrong mindset in wanting to manage outcomes. The goal of an insect hotel is not to maximize insects you like to see or think are pretty. The goal is to create a habitat normally found in nature itself. A place to nest or even overwinter. Because our concrete jungle has few of such places. After creating the place, you let it play out. In your case, spiders seem to dominate it. So what? Spiders are a valuable part of the ecosystem. If they become too numerous, birds will thin the herd as will parasitic wasps. In my garden, I do get a fair amount of various bee species in the hotel. 80% of them won't have a successful life cycle due to other predatory insects. Not only is that normal, it's supposed to happen. Insects have a ridiculously numerous offspring. I also see the opposite happening. Thin-waisted predatory wasps hunting baby spiders, stuffing them in their hotel room for their larvae. Anyway, if you still believe the spiders are out of control in your place, it means your garden has too few songbirds. In an urban environment, highly common songbirds and spider wasps are the top predators of spiders.

re-al 5y ago

We should sue the government for all the bad designs that they have forced on us for so many years. Without holding historical errors to account, we are bound to repeat well-meaning busy-body interference from planners etc.

rhacker 5y ago

> Some of that floor area will go into multi-storey buildings but some will be provided by ever-expanding urban sprawl, which will leave even less space for wildlife. I don't think we're ever going to erase this. We keep saying, time to tackle urban sprawl. I don't think we have the ability. I think the urban sprawl IS the reaction to density. It happens again and again. For every human that likes living in a city there's another one that hates living in a city.

imvetri 5y ago

We should build wildlife for people. hahaha

Kinnard 5y ago

Most of all wild humans!