David Stang's Blog...

• Don't Mow the Lawn

• Feed the Animals

Don't Mow the Lawn

First draft: April 12, 2012. Last update: April 13, 2012

Lawns have become part of our world, and surround every house in our suburbs. Even apartment buildings in the city may have a few square feet of lawn in front.

Some think our love of lawns might be traceable to our descent from early humans, who learned to walk upright in the savannah plains of Africa. Standing upright was a convenient means of seeing over the grasses, and spotting approaching predators. It also allowed for tracking prey.

Having a lawn makes great sense if you are expecting raids from the neighbors – as early man had to expect. But today, when neighborhood raiders are soon locked up, grassy yards seem to be vestigial, like an appendix: serving no purpose, providing no benefit.

Of course, that is wrong. A bright green, freshly mowed lawn, neatly trimmed shrubs, and orderly rows of flowers all prove one thing: we have conquered natural forces that all conspire to produce random, unordered arrangements of plants. If we can conquer nature, we must be superior beings. And the beauty of a lawn is that, unlike a tree or shrub, it needs lots of attention every week. So a perfect lawn must mean you are on top of your game, and have nothing much better to do. Only the idle rich can make time to mow or afford to pay someone else to do it. If you do it all well enough, you might win the battle for your street, and be declared the most idle, most rich.

Conquering nature and your neighbors comes at a price.

Wasted weekends. We spend hours mowing our lawns.

Wasted acreage. According to studies of NASA satellite imaging the country’s number one irrigated crop is, you guessed it, lawn grass. In fact, American lawns cover more than 40,000 square miles, ironically, a land area larger than the state of Kentucky.¹

Wasted gasoline and oil. According to the EPA, about 54 million Americans mow their lawns each weekend, using 800 million gallons of gas per year. ²

Mowing generates greenhouse gases. One mower will put about 88 pounds of CO₂ into the air every year.³.

Mowing pollutes the air. Small engines emit disproportionately large amounts of carbon monoxide, volatile organic compounds and nitrogen oxides that contribute to smog⁴.

• A 2001 study showed that some mowers produce the same amount of pollution (emissions other than carbon dioxide) in one hour as driving a 1992 model vehicle for 650 miles (1,050 km).⁵

• According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, one gas mower running for an hour emits the same amount of pollutants as eight new cars driving 55 mph for the same amount of time⁶

• According to an EPA study prior to the Clean Air Act of 1990, the 20 million small engines sold in the U.S. each year contribute about one tenth of the total U.S. mobile source hydrocarbon emissions, and are the largest single contributor to these non-road emissions.⁷

• Another estimate puts the amount of pollution from a lawn mower at four times the amount from a car, per hour.⁸

• Another study finds that a single gas-powered lawn mower used 45 minutes each week for a year is equal to driving 22,000 miles in a new passenger car.⁹

Catalytic converters that are functioning properly will reduce the pollution, but with or without them, mowing pollutes.

Mowing pollutes ground water. The EPA states that 17 million gallons of fuel, mostly gasoline, are spilled each year while refueling lawn equipment.¹⁰ That's more than all the oil spilled by the Exxon Valdez, in the Gulf of Alaska.

Lawn maintenance – fertilizer, insecticides, herbicides – has consequences.

• We use fertilizer, which then flows into our streams and watersheds...

• We use insecticides, kill indiscriminately, persist, and contaminate the environment. For instance, if you “control grubs”, you not only kill Japanese beetle larvae, but you kill firefly larvae.

• We may use herbicides to control brush, to prevent small plants from emerging in our sidewalks and driveways. Such herbicides then flow into our waterways... and kill our tadpoles and frogs and …

Green Deserts. In the course of creating the perfect lawn, we create a green desert, in which nothing can thrive. Squirrels don't dare run across a big lawn for fear of massacre from the air, from cats, from dogs. Birds don't alight for a snack, because the lawn offers nothing to eat – except perhaps earthworms for robins. The monoculture of a lawn provides a useless habitat for everything except a grazing animal.

Alternatives to Mowing

Is there an alternative to a lawn? One that makes more sense?

Restore what was once where your lawn now is. I think a field, a marsh, a lake, or a forest all make more sense than a lawn. Such natural places need no maintenance. They support the wildlife that once lived in your neighborhood. They provide way-points for migrating birds. They sequester carbon.

Create a wild area. If you can't give up mowing your lawn, consider converting a back corner of it to a miniature wild place. If you can get 2 or three neighbors who adjoin that corner to do the same, you'll be able to create a habitat big enough for a rabbit to find cover, a bird to raise a family...

Hire a goat. Google, Yahoo, and other forward-thinking companies have hired goats to do what mowing previously did, at about the same annual cost and with no fuel consumption, noise or air pollution.¹¹

Plant sand. In arid parts of this country such as much of California and Arizona, attempting to cultivate a lawn requires massive watering. Sand and the original vegetation would be a far better choice.

۞

Feed the Animals

First draft: April 9, 2012. Last update: April 12, 2012

“Don't feed the animals” is common wisdom. This advice is so often repeated that we could think it must be good advice. You can get the advice from a park ranger, from a sign at a pond, from your next door neighbor.

The advice is so widely held that surely it must be true. But a little thought leads us to a different conclusion.

Common Arguments Against Feeding

We are encouraged to “feed the birds”. However, birds are animals, so the advice must mean, “don't feed the mammals”.

What's wrong with mammals? What could possibly be the risk in feeding them? Here are some “risks” that I've heard of.

You will create a dependence. Yes, we will. During a hard winter, a mammal you feed might survive, rather than die. It might be healthier in the spring, and have more and bigger babies. This is all good, I think.

What will happen to the animals when you die? They will need to get all of their food from other sources. This will likely mean leaner times for most. Some may need to find new territories. That process, in fact, is active today. I can't look out my window today and see all the animals I've ever fed. Most have moved away to neighboring territories. In some cases, neighboring critters may have moved even farther away. It is nothing novel for an animal to find alternate food sources or move.

There is no doubt that my death will be a great inconvenience for many of them. But before I die, many generations of animals will have come to my feeders, and benefited.

Animals you feed will forget how to find their own food. This is silly. Foxes, coyotes, racoons, opossums and other predators hunt all night long. Squirrels search for nuts and seeds all day long, before and after visiting our platform feeders. Deer browse their way to and from their bowl. Even your dog, domesticated for the last 30,000 years, knows how to put terror into the heart of a chipmunk or squirrel. And your cat, domesticated for the past 4,000 years and handsomely fed, is a member of a species that kills 100 million songbirds each year in the U.S. Forget forgetting. Mammals, whether domestic or wild, can take care of themselves.

Animals will become imprinted, and lose their fear of humans. Mammals don't imprint. Birds imprint, and we feed them without teaching them to follow us around. Mammals could lose their fear of you if you insisted on being present while they fed, but a platform of seed suspended near a tree won't make your squirrels easier to catch. A tub of corn and molasses in your back yard won't make your deer easier to harness at Christmas time.

Feeding will attract mice and rats. Maybe. If no foxes or other predators find their way to your food, mice or rats might find a meal. But any predators attracted to your food will find mice and rats handy snacks on their way to and from it. With a balanced community of wildlife, you'll likely have an unnoticeable load of field mice, and no rats at all.

Feeding isn't natural. Correct, but neither are highways, suburban yards, or any of the other ways we have changed the world. Feeding can make up, a little bit, for our habitat destruction. We should do one more unnatural thing: feeding those whose food has been taken from them.

Providing an artificial food source causes adults to produce large families which the natural food supply can't support.¹² We don't seem to worry about birds producing more babies than “the natural food supply can support”. We may not worry about birds because we know they will disperse to areas that can support them, and because we know that their mortality rates are so high. This applies to mammals, too. Feeding certainly can increase family size, but most mammals don't like to be crowded, and will move on to new territories when this occurs. People who have fed mammals for many years will tell you that they have about the same number at their feeders this year as they did last year or the year before. Do these animals move to territories lacking a food supply? No, they will usually move to a territory where there are “vacancies” created by unnatural mishaps, such as encounters with cats and cars.

Wild animals have specialized diets and can die from the wrong foods¹³. I am not recommending providing human food to wild animals, and am not recommending feeding baby animals at all. If you find an orphaned baby, call a wildlife rehabilitator for guidance on what to do. For other mammals, provide seed, grain, dry dog food or dry cat food.

Why We Should Feed

If there are no solid arguments against feeding, are there any good arguments for feeding? Yes, indeed!

Feeding will draw animals. From your window, you will see more squirrels, more foxes, more wildlife. At night, through an open window, you may hear baby raccoons purring. Life is good. Being surrounded by wildlife is good.

Feeding increases the number of animals, not just the number of critters around your house. Animals that are well-fed are healthier. They have more babies. Their babies are healthier. And because our feeding will be attracting wild animals, not sheep or schools of fish, these animals will disperse on their own as their local population builds. You will be supplying animals to your nearby fields and woodlands, where they will fill vacuums created by windows, traffic, and hunting.

Feeding will make an animal happy. Unlike people, animals are hungry nearly all the time. There is every reason to think that they feel as we do when we are hungry. We eat and feel good. They will feel good when they eat. Feed them, and take credit for making them feel good.

Thoughts on Feeding

The issue should not be feed/don't feed. It should be how to feed, what to feed, when to feed. Here are some thoughts.

Provide the Right Food. Squirrels don't normally eat sunflower seeds or peanuts in the wild, but they like them for their taste and high fat content. A diet that is exclusively sunflower seeds and/or peanuts results in a calcium deficiency that can lead to metabolic bone disease in infant squirrels, but squirrels in the wild will always forage to supplement whatever you have put in your feeder. If you are concerned, then add calcium to their diet in the form of poultry supplement, cuttlebone, or bones from your meals. Squirrels will gnaw on antlers, bones, and even mortar to meet their calcium requirements.

Keep feeders filled! The suburbs are filled with empty bird feeders, which benefit no one. Some claim that bird feeders need be filled only in the winter, but I've noticed that birds seem to eat year-round. If you want birds year-round, feed them year-round.

Place feeders so that they can be seen from inside your house. In such locations, you'll see the most action, and get the biggest reward from your feeding dollar. If you can't see your feeders, you'll be less likely to notice when they are empty and refill them.

Don't feed your wild animals to your cat or dog. In the U.S., cats kill hundreds of millions of birds and small mammals a year. A recent study estimated that in rural Wisconsin alone, cats kill 39 million birds each year¹⁴. When an animal is bitten by a cat, even if it is not killed on the spot, it will likely die from infection – over 100 different bacteria are found in cat saliva.

Don't feed your wild animals to each other. Put platform feeders close to trees, so squirrels can find safety from predators. Put all feeders near shrubbery of some sort, so that diners can escape from other diners.

Make water available to all, 24x7. An empty bird bath is not as useful as people seem to imagine. All of your visitors need both food and water. The ideal is a small pool in the ground, with a stone beach that will allow everyone to climb in and out. Keep this filled with a hose. If it attracts mosquitoes, that your birds and frogs can't control, control them with a mosquito Dunk.

If this all seems reasonable, why does everyone seem to argue against feeding mammals? My guess is that the wisdom involved is the same that once convinced us that the world was flat or that tomatoes were poisonous. The emperor has no clothes. Feed the animals.

۞