Fortunately, woodland creatures don’t hire lawyers

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Cake day: June 13th, 2023

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  • I am an environmental consultant, too. You’re correct that they often re-route or change their designs based on habitat, though this isn’t always the case. They can determine if the impact is major, or if it can be reversed or off-set. An example would be a mine that goes through woodland caribou habitat. They’ll still mine the fuck out of it, but then they’ll be required to reclaim it back to what it was. The rub is that people think reclamation is a fast or sure thing, but it’s neither. Some ecosystems, like those that support caribou are really hard to re-establish, but operators can get on with a commitment to restore, and a couple of contingencies in case the reclamation doesn’t work.

    @terranoid@lemmy.cafe yes, this is a thing in consulting, but often with the smaller, more cowboy firms. Bigger firms can push back a bit, and say ‘hey, look. we really don’t recommend this, here’s the risks’ or flat refuse service if they can take the hit.

    @owsei@programming.dev yes, generally, consultants are hired to do things like rare plant surveys or wildlife sweeps. It’s not the EPA or other regulators doing this and the operators don’t have the capacity or expertise to do it themselves usually.


















  • While you aren’t wrong about them being good to use in Ag, the scenario where you can do both is more limited.

    You can’t drive a combine harvester under panels, to harvest the crop you just protected for instance, unless you place and design your panels carefully. It’s ok for pasture in that sheep and the like can get in and chow down and it provides shade though.

    For a parking lot, it’s easier, as shown, but also fuck cars, they’re their own environmental disaster

    They are using them on closed tailings facilities (mining) to add additional land use or gain benefit where there wasn’t really a good land use to begin with.

    I think urban settings are where panels will ultimately shine, as you can concentrate them without taking up other land uses - it’s just an add on and doesn’t detract from existing or future uses like using them in an ag field would.