By Ted Cohen
Some voices in the Vermont environmental movement thought not mowing your lawn would help protect grassland birds from predators.
Now it’s apparently realizing that wasn’t so smart an idea.
Biologist Kevin Tolan from the Vermont Center for Ecostudies tells WCAX-TV the lack of mowing is spawning invasive plants choking off the very grass that was designed to save ground-nesting birds.
Tolan surveyed a 40-acre field of in Charlotte that was supposedly being conserved for grassland birds by not cutting it.
“In recent years it’s really been taken over by invasive plants, invasive flowers in many areas of the field that really caused a significant decrease in the habitat quality,” Tolan told the TV outlet’s Ike Bendavid.
To help conserve nesting habitats of birds like bobolinks, savannah sparrows and many others, there was a push to let conserved land grow and wait to harvest hay until the end of summer.
Environmentalists have been urging avoiding mowing between May and mid-August, the primary breeding and nesting season for ground-nesting birds.
Early mowing was seen to destroy nests and kills fledglings. Experts recommended delaying major mowing until after August 15 to give chicks time to fledge.
Now Tolan is saying not mowing the grass is seemingly counterproductive because it allows invasive flowers to spread, choking out the grass protecting bird nesting areas.