I ask this here because I feel that most other communities are likely to dismiss any impact on animals.
My siblings and I live on 5 acres in an area where wildfires are a big risk. Legally, we need to mow and/or weedeat 100 feet from any structures to reduce the risk of fire. That leaves multiple acres we aren't obligated to maintain. I can see 3 options right now.
Our neighbor has offered to help us pull up all the weeds with a tractor. This seems like a great solution except that it would be killing insects and possibly small animals and destroying the homes of many animals once.
We could mow or weedeat every year, which would be killing insects and possibly small animals repeatedly and I imagine harming the ecosystem they live in.
Or we could just do nothing, which I believe would increase the chance of a fire spreading through our property.
Does anybody live in a similar situation or have any thoughts?
Fires will see those same animals burning to death, and without a habitat if they do escape the fire.
You'll also be homeless, traumatised, minus all your sentimental belongings, and have to rebuild the home with all the environmental impact that entails - fossil fuels, cutting down trees for wood, concrete, replacing plastic goods and so on.
Neither option is impact free on animals and the environment.
Thanks for your answer
Veganism doesn't give an answer.
Why not leave it and fill it with local, native wild flower seed, try to find ones that bees and insects love. The insects are dying, we should be helping them.
Thanks for your input -- I'll look into that option. I don't know anything about that route, but I live in an area where the weeds take over everything each spring, so I'd be surprised if wildflowers could outcompete them
If it's a large enough area they'll find a spot. I have a side yard filled with weeds but every year the flowers still push through. Definitely depends on the weeds though I guess. Only thing I found that beats the "Mouse Ear" plant is clover. You could just sow clover throughout, it's persistent enough to compete with almost everything, never needs to be mowed and the bees LOVE it.
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You want a solution that keeps your property safe, and is as permanent as you can make it. You don't want to be doing this every year or season if you can do it once and be done.
Not sure about your specifics, but perhaps you can pull the brush (possibly by hand if you are worried about harming animals during the removal), and then place something on the ground that would prevent larger plants from growing. Something like larger stones, a dense brick lattice, or maybe just pouring concrete slabs. There are ways to make any of those options look nice.
Thanks for the suggestion! It's mainly grassy plants, so I'll need to look more into what would keep that from growing since I'm not sure if I'm willing to spend the time and money pouring 5 acres of concrete
Try to learn what kind of plants you have on your property, then use your neighbor's offer of a tractor to mow/pull out everything if it's mostly invasive.
Then learn about native plants to your area and slowly work on re-seeding with native plants. Oftentimes when you plant something like native plants you'll need to do additional mods through the year to let the natives compete well with the non-natives that are already established there. You can do all this in small sections over years, and eventually you'll have a beautiful native meadow that you can still mow/manage as needed but will better support the wildlife and (hopefully) be a little more fire resistant. You can also choose areas closer to the house to keep irrigated which should extend your fire barrier, and provide year round food and water to the wildlife.
That's a lovely suggestion, thank you!
/u/Grazet wrote
Yes. (I'm tempted to write "Yes, of course.")
.
The default definition of veganism is
I would say that fire safety - although an unusual example -
definitely comes under the consideration of "possible and practicable".
Problem is, many vegans forget and want to push what is practicable so far... That it becomes ideological and not practical.
I should have clarified that I wasn't intending to ask whether it was vegan -- I posted here because it was the only place I could think of which would seriously factor in the impact of a fire or maintaining the property on animals, rather than answering whether the time would be worth it to protect my house.
Thanks for your view! From yours and other comments it definitely seems like the risk of fire outweighs harm to animals from maintaining the property
I live in a country where certain people have stopped cleaning their rural properties, leaving tall grasses or weeds grow, for ill conceived environmental concerns.
As a result, a large percentage of the country has been burning the entire summer with catastrophic results, lots of areas totally destroyed, many animals either killed or having lost their habitats, and also human casualties.
I rest my case.