May 7thInCERT May 7
A word from MC Sask's Climate Emergency Response Team
InCERT May 7, 2023
Problem: CBC recently posted an article on lawns. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay/lawn-grass-climate-action-1.6810711 They sum up the problem like this:
- There are over 40 million acres (1.62 million hectares) of lawn in the U.S. More water and fertilizer is used on lawn grass, than corn and wheat combined in Canada and the U.S.
- In North America, more emissions are produced by lawn mowers each year than all the cars sold in Canada in 2022.
- Lawn care accounts for almost one-third of all residential water use in the U.S.
- Canadians spend billions of dollars on their grass each year and the average person spends 150 hours tending to their lawn annually.
- (Tallamy, an entomologist) hopes people understand how crucial (saving insects) is at a time when we are facing a global crisis of insect declines. Insects need native plants not lawns. (Note; insect declines is one of the reasons that birds are also in decline, some prairie birds by 50% since the 1970’s. https://www.canada.ca/en/environment-climate-change/services/environmental-indicators/trends-bird-populations.html ).
Solution: Remove some of your lawn and plant native plants instead. If you are new to native plants consider starting slowly. Nature Regina is advocating 1 sq.m. per person. This would create only a small dent to the problem, but people would gain an appreciation for prairie plants. More importantly, you begin to understand the need to protect our native prairie here in Saskatchewan where less than 15% exists. Here are some articles that help you transform your lawn and yard:
https://www.npss.sk.ca/rsu_docs/documents/2017-spring-newsletter.pdf
https://www.npss.sk.ca/rsu_docs/documents/a-water-wise-lawn.pdf
https://pollinator.org/pollinator.org/assets/generalFiles/MoistMixGrass_157.2017.ver3.pdf