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Comment by gempir | Hacker News Reader

> The National Trust, which owns the land, has previously warned pilgrims not to do so, as the area is ecologically sensitive, but it seems that people still do so.

Ah okay, laying a few stones is ecologically sensitive, but if a billion dollar company wants to dig up the entire beach for a cable, that's not a problem.

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> Ah okay, laying a few stones is ecologically sensitive, but if a billion dollar company wants to dig up the entire beach for a cable, that's not a problem.

The billion dollar company is monitored by ecologists and other professionals to make sure they build things according to environmental impact laws and follow their permits (e.g., after digging, restoring the top soil, etc).

Randos moving and stacking stones, especially in large numbers, may alter habits for (small) animals and cause erosion:

* https://www.ausableriver.org/blog/leaving-no-trace-rock-stac...

* https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/conservation...

* https://www.nps.gov/articles/rockcairns.htm

You would think so but not the case for the construction of the controvsersial A69 highway in France. Infractions are fixed through authorization change ...

https://france3-regions.franceinfo.fr/occitanie/tarn/albi/au...

Almost as if ecoologist are not listened to. What a surprise ...

> Around the beginning of the construction work, between 2022 and 2023, criticism of the project was given national media coverage, with several associations highlighting its negative environmental impact, as well as its high price for users and the fact that the current free expressways bypassing the towns of Puylaurens and Soual would be incorporated into the motorway and made toll-paying.[1][2] The project received unfavourable opinions from the National Council for the Protection of Nature [fr][3] and the Environmental Authority [fr].[4] Throughout 2023 and early 2024, demonstrations were organised, bringing together up to several thousand environmental activists. On 27 February 2025, the administrative court of Toulouse annulled the environmental permits, leading to the suspension of the construction work.[5] On 28 May, the administrative court of appeal of Toulouse, allowed the work to resume awaiting the final judgement planned for the 11 December 2025.[6]

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A69_highway_(France)

Seems to illustrate my point: large projects are high profile and may be scrutinized. People making changes to the local environment in ones and twos will hardly be noticed individually, but if enough ones and twos are added up over time, in aggregate they can cause problems.

* https://www.nationalparkstraveler.org/2025/09/visitors-remin...

* https://friendsofthesmokies.org/blog/dont-move-rocks/

* https://www.hrwc.org/stop-stacking-rocks-in-the-river/

Certainly not as serious as oil spills or climate change, but it is also simpler for you to deal with than you trying to solve those two big issues: all you have to do is not touch/move the stones/rocks.

Beaches are extremely dynamic environments and can heal in ways that other areas can't.

Still, people laying stones seems way less invasive, then digging it all up. So yes, people will continue to be there and the digging is once, but the impact seems literally deeper.

My yard got dug up to run a sewer line. They filled it in after and planted seed. I couldn't possibly tell you where it happened now.

If they'd left a big pile of rocks in the spot, I'd bet I could find that.

When we're talking damage to a sensitive environment an ecologist would have the opposite answer to yours. If you dig up a natural environment you can't "plant seed" to reclaim it.

An ecologist would readily note that we do restoration work on damaged environments on a regular basis, so it is clearly possible to undo some level of damage. They'd also likely note that consulting an ecologist as part of the process might limit the damage in a way that a bunch of Harry Potter fans making a pile would not know.

Not doing anything might indeed be better for the environment alone in isolation, but has to be balanced with other considerations, like the benefits of a power cable carrying clean power from wind farms to replace coal.

It is also entirely possible to plant native, locally appropriate seeds in a reasonably natural fashion. I am obviously not proposing a layer of lawn sod.

Where is the big damage in putting stones on a spot? So sure, that spot and the area around will be in use, so sensitive life won't prosper there, but apart from that?

> Where is the big damage in putting stones on a spot?

I think that's a question for the ecologists.

My guess, though, would be that part of the concern is people visiting the site on an ongoing basis as a tourist location, which won't happen with a buried power line.

I have literally never heard anyone associated with the environmental movement say:

"This area is ecologically insensitive. I'm not too worried what you do here."

Until they define some map or scale of what "ecologically sensitive" means, I put zero weight on that statement. It's meaningless. They say it about everything because it is their job to do so.

I'm guessing you also haven't asked. All places are very much not the same degrees of sensitive and important.

A common trick in mining is to send surveyors to an area they don’t want so the various interests just so happen to decide that the area being surveyed is the one with historical / ecological significance. After that has been established they send surveyors for the area they do want.

Why wouldn't those various interests just complain about the next area being surveyed? Why would they stop after the first?

The ecological studies also cover the surrounding areas. They can’t say that absolutely everything is significant so to make the stronger case they pile the significance into the area they think is the likely site to be developed. Then the miners are ‘responding’ to the feedback by relocating to a less significant location that already has been ecologically studied and deemed insignificant.

That's not how environmental surveys work, or the process for challenging them. They absolutely must include detailed information about the actual site and the activity proposed to occur at that site.

Subsequent developments can take advantage of the initial survey but must still provide an environmental study about how their own activity will impact their specific site.

The #1 reason for environmental surveys being deemed invalid in court is the course of action you discussed: developers trying to avoid scrutiny by not being sufficiently specific about what they are actually planning to do or where.

The miners were doing mining surveys for internal use only, the environmentalist were submitting the cultural / environmental surveys as complaints which they’re allowed to do as part of the law the local government made for itself since it was government land that was being leased. It was more of a public consultation process, if no one complained then that’s fine too. The miners already have strict environmental regulations they have to follow regardless of where they build. Having seen these submissions it’s often stuff like, there is a river and since rivers are where people tend to congregate if we were to look we might find some ancient stone age human artifact despite no such thing ever being found within 100s of kms. Also rivers move, especially small ones.

If you say no 100% of the time, your work product won't be worth much.

It costs political capital to do so.

OK. What are some ecologically unimportant places in England? Somewhere I could throw up a nuclear power plant without anyone raising a fuss.

I think here it's worth distinguishing between actually ecologically important, and the ability of campaigners to raise environmental arguments to try to prevent development when their underlying reason is something else (i.e. not wanting a nuclear plant in their back yard). There are definitely ecologically unimportant places in England, but it's almost certain that if you try to put a power station there somebody will raise an environmental concern anyway. This will probably eventually be dismissed, but you can gum up the works procedurally for a pretty long time.

I mean that's my point, if the campaigners are not willing to be honest about ranking the places they actually care about beforehand (and occasionally letting a project happen), I'm not going to listen to anything they do say.

You started here with "associated with the environmental movement". That's not the same as everyone campaigning on a local issue who puts "environmental issues" into their big list of why some local development shouldn't happen: most of those people aren't associated with the environmental movement at all.

I guess my point is that I think the problem is nimbies, not environmentalists, and since I think we need a faster and cheaper planning system in the UK I think it's important to identify the actual problem. Getting the Campaign to Protect Rural England or whoever to produce a ranking of places by importance does nothing if we still have a system where local residents can raise objections about building on locations at the bottom of the ranking and it takes forever to push something through.

Sure, the environmentalism movement has sufficient independent organizations such that each of them can protest some site as environmentally sensitive while the others stay quiet. I'm sure some would conclude that this position of universally banning any human development everywhere is a pure accident and that distributed agreement to do so has no evidence of systematic coordination.

I can believe there is no systematic coordination across these organizations, but if I had to meet someone in San Francisco and I knew nothing about where and there was no way to coordinate, I think we'd both end up in front of the Ferry Building on the Embarcadero.

I think the point here is that there are two categories of "environmentalists", one of actual environmentalists who go out on the weekend and plant shrubs and monitor the Lesser Black-Tailed Whatever, and the other of people who don't want you to build something for other reasons but are willing to claim to be environmentalists to stop you. There's overlap between the groups of individuals, but their organisations are different.

The first group are generally willing to say "hey, here's a map of critical Ramsar-protected coastal wetlands and surroundings, we don't want you to put a pipe anywhere BUT if you really have to then this section is regrowth and was drained in the 60s".

The second group are just obstructing you by any means they can and want to push you to a neighbouring town, who will also obstruct you. They'll switch to heritage listing, archaeology, noise complaints, smell, neighbourhood character, the moral character of your workers, or literally anything they can use to shut you down. They're not going to accommodate you by shifting the pipe slightly left because they're generally motivated by not having a pipe near them at all.

Sure, the John Does who make up Climate Action Now CIO say yes through that instrument and will go over the next Tuesday to No Building Ever CIC to say no through that instrument. There is neither any distinction of any significance to the legal structures they use to block things nor is there any value in saying "I'm not going to block this through Company A; I'm going to use Company B". Whether one uses Blue Eyes White Dragon or Exodia The Forbidden One, one is doing the same thing.

Those people certainly exist, but so do actual environmentalists.

As a matter of politics, prevalence matters more than existence. And since the actual environmentalists nonetheless act as rearguard for the others, the distinction is faint.

What do you mean "the distinction is faint"? The distinction is clear and obvious: does this thing have actual ecological value, and does this group suggest viable alternatives?

I mean "since the actual environmentalists nonetheless act as rearguard for the others, the distinction is faint". i.e. it's not interesting to me that person A wears mask M1 and suggests viable alternatives and then puts on mask M2 and opposes them. If they extend this to a system where A wears M1 to suggest alternatives S1 and oppose S2 and B wears M2 to oppose S1 and suggest S2 that doesn't change my evaluation of them.

The fact that A is part of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Environmentalists and B is part of the Environmentalist Church of Latter Day Fundamentalists and that these are entirely different organizations with entirely different objectives does not change the fact that they arrive at the same Schelling point consistently as a co-ordinated multi-prong action.

There is no distinction to me between such players and a single person playing both roles. It's a pretty standard organizational Sybil attack constrained by the number of times they have to visit Companies House. Though I suppose if you are eager to distinguish between them, then that's the point where we must drop the discussion.

If I'm reading you right, you're suggesting that if person A and person B have different proposals that inconvenience you in vaguely similar ways, you believe they are functionally identical people, even if they're fighting each other too.

This seems nuts to me! It's a very conspiratorial way of seeing the world. It seems like it would take a huge amount of coordination for persons A and B to fake their own conflicts.

Slough

Swindon? They do have the magic roundabout.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Roundabout_(Swindon)

Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough!

It isn't fit for humans now

City of London? Does it have much ecology left? Then again I suppose too many people would raise a fuss...

Birmingham?

Can you be more precise? Like an actual area on the map. Because when I look at England's map of greenbelt areas [1] literally everything around Birmingham is protected.

[1] https://www.cpre.org.uk/interactive-map-of-englands-green-be...

Green belt areas mostly are not markers of ecologically important areas. They're a planning tool that largely exists to prevent urban sprawl. A lot of the green belt area is unremarkable commercial agricultural land.

Once you crush the red and blue pills and snort them you can't unsee the environmental damage of agriculture.

I think they were joking. In a literal sense, cities require green spaces for water management. Otherwise you end up like Chicago where they paved everything and flood constantly.

I mean, not really, right? Permeability would help, but the first and second principal components of our flooding situation are the fact that we're built on a flat swamp, so water has no natural place to go, and we're built around an undersized combined sewer system that would be dazzlingly expensive to replace.

Anywhere in London would be good. There's nothing else worthwhile there.

Salford

Especially in the case of the UK which famously permits seabed trawling in the Marine "Protected" Areas.

https://oceandesk.org/destructive-bottom-trawling-occurs-in-...

We need heroes like this: https://planetwild.com/missions/21-underwater-sculptures-ita...

Maybe the company has at least made committments to restore it to the way it was after?

Yeah, isn't it crazy how that works?

There's some open space near my house with a fenced off area saying to stay on trail to protect the ecosystem, but of course oil and gas companies can drive their trucks through to setup fracking rigs.

Humanity collectively benefits by having electrical infrastructure so there can be more of us who can accomplish more things. I'm so sick of these effectively Original Sin arguments dressed up as pretending to care more about some fish or shore birds than about your fellow humans. I'm not sorry for existing, and I want lots of cheap power :)

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