Imagine you have a large circular area of native forest. All the populations living there are essentially homogenous, some species might form small groups but overall they can all interact directly, share the same resources, and mix genetic information.

Now humans come in, and instead of one continuous piece of land, you have segments of native forest surrounded by roads or semi-urban pathways. You can then imagine the populations as segmented bubbles.

This model of bubbles of native land surrounded by human landmarks is a tool ecology can use to predict how populations develop and interact. There are a lot of different permutations depending on size, biome, types of obstacles, and so on. But one of the most basic analysis you can do is detect bubbles that act as "sources" and bubbles that act as "drains" or "sinks". A source is a bubble with an excess of individuals, those are likely to cross the obstacles in their way and find themselves into other bubbles, supplying new individuals. Drains are bubbles where due to insufficient numbers, human activity or other factors, a species can't sustain a good number of individuals by themselves - they need immigrants from other bubbles.

This dynamic between sources providing new individuals and drains is fundamental for a metapopulation to exist even when the area is severely degraded by human activity. Imagine your well kept backyard providing bees to your neighbor with a sub-optimal one, for instance. This new metapopulation of bees is stable, even though the environment isn't ideal.

Ya, grass isn't inherently a bad thing. A lawn where I live in some serious desert is grotesquely wasteful, an appreciated lawn in other regions not so bad.

It's not the grass, it's capitalism. It's the eradication of native species for profit, and the spreading of fossil fuel derived fertilizers and poisons to support conspicuous consumption (real-estate values, golf, keeping up with the Joness, etc) that is problematic.

Except most grass, especially border areas like front lawns and street medians as well as corporate-owned lawns like around a drive-thru or suburban offices, gets zero use. It's one thing to have a dedicated play area in a yard or park that's cut grass; it's another thing to have the entire property as cut grass.

Everyone in my neighborhood has large cut grass lawns. There's mostly retired folks here are very few children. I spend a lot of time outside yet can literally count on one hand the number of times I have seen people out in those yards for a purpose other than cutting the grass. If you're not going to use it at least let the dandelions grow so the bees have something to eat!

Nah, manicured lawns can't coexist with healthy ecosystems. They're hugely wasteful in general. There are alternatives that are equally nice to run on like clover and many areas have their own soft ground cover that's native. The best thing about native plants is that they're almost always lower maintenance. It just doesn't make sense to keep wasting water and other resources on lawns imo.

I recently let my garden grow wild and it's crazy how many flowers came up on their own. Now I've got all kinds of little critters and birds I hardly ever see elsewhere. The only thing I pull are goat head weeds because fuck those things lmao

Really hard to play ball. Really is this the best defence for manicured lawns?