[Arnt]

I don't get this. The Mojave desert 81,000km² according to some random page on the net. How can 20,000 panels make a dent in that? Are they building in some crucial sectors? I imagine they're building in the zones that have steady sunshine all day.

[talldatethrow]

Environmentalists do this all the time.

My town has a large popular off highway vehicle park open for at least 50 years. It's probably less than 0.1% of the surrounding area that basically gets zero use.

They now want to close down this off-road park, to preserve the land for future use. They're finding rare special lizards there. A rare butterfly. Who knows. People are starting to think they import these things and then "find" them and use it as an excuse to close the place down.

Thousands of people have enjoyed this off-road park on their dirt bikes for decades. But now leftists want to preserve it for future generations, damn the current ones. As if the other 99.9% of dirt hills around the off-road park aren't enough.

[Arnt]

That trick requires a very rare butterfly or something, which is another way of saying that it doesn't work while there are still 99.9% unaffected areas. It only works when most habitats have been ruined already, thereby making the species very rare.

[talldatethrow]

More evidence they probably bring the species in themselves prior.

You can't tell me that with hundreds of thousands of basically untouched acres of hills available, this lizard or butterfly decided that a noisy area full of 2 stroke motorcycles was their best bet.

[avar]

I don't know about your case, or where you live.

But generally you're not taking into account that the location of your town isn't random, it's probably the most desirable area for habitation in those hundreds of thousands of acres.

That's why people settled there in the first place, e.g. at the mouth of a river, an oasis or wetland in the middle of a desert etc, pick your local equivalent.

So it's entirely possible in the general case that some mundane area just outside of town is the only remaining habitat for an endangered species.

It'll be there because the species's original habit is where the town is now located, and that there's a limit to how far away they could get before being entirely unviable.

Likewise, the location of the off-road park won't be random either. Those tend to be located in areas with an abundance of certain landscape features.

Just as humans might pick those for recretation, some animals might pick them because they provide an ideal habitat.

And I think lizards and butterflies care less about noise or traffic than you think.