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Comment by surgical_fire | Hacker News Reader

Last thing I want in my yard is biodiversity.

I'm surprised that is even a thing.

Lawns are deserts, they support very little ecologically. Fewer insects means fewer pollinators, fewer birds, fewer frogs and lizards, fewer bats, which in turn means fewer raptors and other key predators.

They also take a heavy chemical, water, time, and fuel load to maintain. Especially in arid areas, where turf grasses need lots of support.

Who wants to live in a sterile landscape? I'd much rather see bumblebees, ladybugs, butterflies, mantises, flowers of all types, beetles, birds, amphibians, reptiles, and bats hanging out nearby.

The patch of lawn I maintain around the house partly for fire break reasons gets mowed every 2 weeks. That’s it. The bulk of my property is fields.

You think "I feel a square of grass is boring" is an unusual opinion for people to have?

In fact, yes. Much in the same way that a house is "boring" in comparison to a mud hut.

Are these people also living in mud huts for increased biodiversity? I would be surprised that people are alright with deadly nature crawling, flying and nesting next to where they sleep.

That’s a whole new perspective for me, thank you for sharing your point of view. I am much more scared of people, cars, and buildings than anything in nature. Nature is where I go to recover, and I’d want as much of it as possible in my yard. Some of it will inevitably make it indoors too, and that might not be ideal, but ohwell, it’s a whole lot better for me to have a bee in my house than constantly feel stressed by traffic and the artificality of my daily life.

And mud huts sounds pretty cool, if I get to deck it out like a hobbit hole.

By all means, I like nature. I think it is important to preserve it.

But I also see it as an uncaring force. A swarm of wasps makes no moral judgment if they attack me. A feral wolf is not giving it much philosophical thought if it decides I am dinner. A water parasite is just following the cycle of life when it lodges itself in my body.

I live in the countryside because I prefer living somewhat closer to nature than in concrete hellscapes. But I still treat it as a potential danger. With respect and at distance.

And I definitely would not live in a mud hut, unless it was my last resort.

I love the biodiversity I manage to get in my city garden, and never felt any danger whatsoever. My kids and I do a game where we get points for pointing out insects we haven't seen before.

One year we had a hornet nest in a tree, but we left them alone and they us.

There are wolves in the region now, but not in cities and they avoid humans.

I never felt any danger whatsoever from wildlife.

Of course it may be somewhat different where you are.

How exactly do you go from dandelions and clover vs. a golf course lawn, to swarms of wasps, a feral (as in domesticated then reintroduced?) wolf, water parasites and living in a mud hut?

Why are we pretending that biodiversity in nature is just the nice part?

It’s probably atypical of at least suburban US homeowner opinion and perhaps town/HOA bylaws.

Personally I keep a fairly small lawn and let the fields grow though they need to be knocked down once a year or so by tractor so they’re not totally out of control. Things like wildflower lawns and meadows are certainly a thing even if they’re not common. Many highway departments have also started putting wildflowers in medians.

Parent is down voted but mostly right. Thousands of plant species are invasive and even dangerous for house foundation: japanese knotweed, running bamboo, kudzu, mare's tail. They're almost impossible to get rid of. Even unchecked wisteria can lift foundations and crack a house's walls. Animals can be even worse: carpet beetles coming from disturbed bird nests can easily infest your wardrobe, same for the many species of clothes moths. It's very hard to get rid of them without ripping up your carpet and putting all your stuff into sealed bags for years. Wasps and bees are minor threats, but they can still be a nuisance if they decide to nest in your wall, or in your chimney, or in your loft. Biodiversity is good until you keep an eye on it. If left to itself, it almost always tends to do damage.

Your statement isn't really about biodiversity, unless your solution to all potentially problem species is "eliminate them". Everything you mention is solved by building appropriately, building well and maintenance. Water drainage, grading and envelope solves the vast majority of the problems you mention and the far more common & mundane ones, and the irony is that a bio-diverse yard handles the dynamic changes far better than a perfectly manicured lawn.

Japanese knotweed, to make an example, is not solved by drainage or building appropriately. If you get it, you have to call a specialist for a 4 year treatment and you have to wait 8 years to be free of it until you can legally avoid to disclose it when you sell, at least in UK. I'm not advocating for manicured lawn, I'm saying that biodiversity for the sake of biodiversity is dangerous.

It's also a rare problem, so not really a reason to screw over biodiversity in general.

We don't ban restaurants just because sometimes someone gets food poisoning. We just take action when a specific restaurant isn't able or willing to follow food safety rules.

At what scale do you want it? Your neighborhood? Town? State? Continent? Planet?

My understanding is that it is the kind of thing that needs to be supported from the bottom up.

I probably prefer a clear separation of nature and non-nature, with my home/backyard being the latter one, but having actual nature within a walking distance - which requires the non-nature parts to be dense, not sprawling wide.

Your NIMBYism sounds like the typical response to diversity, bio or otherwise. Try replacing "nature" with some other terms; it's not a flattering statement.

Nature preservation should come top to bottom in the form of regulation

Bottom up doesn't work and doesn't scale.

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