FOX CROSSING, Wis. (WFRV) – A retracted scientific study has Fox Crossing rescinding its “No Mow May” initiative based on the village’s sustainability committee.
“One of the primary academic studies from Lawrence University that seemed to back the science behind the No Mow May program was found to have errors or faulty conclusions and had to be retracted by its authors,” a memo from the village reads.
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No Mow May is an initiative first adopted in England in which municipalities do not require residents to cut their grass or maintain a certain length in May. Appleton became the first city in the U.S. to adopt the practice, which was imported by Lawrence University assistant professor of geosciences and environmental sciences Relena Ribbons, a co-author of that study.
“We just wanted to zone in on what happens if, during the month of May, people don’t mow their lawns?” Ribbons said. “Capturing the bees with sweep nets, putting them in mason jars, and identifying them, which was a great way not to kill the bees that we’re trying to conserve. Part of that study was just trying to get some baseline information of what it looks like when we mow and when we don’t mow.”
The study, conducted in 2020, led to Appleton being the first American city to adopt No Mow May. Appleton, along with Green Bay, De Pere, and Oshkosh, among other local communities, continues to provide No Mow May, which is entirely voluntary for homeowners who would like to participate.
“Some people asked, ‘Do you have to do it?’ we explained, ‘No, it’s an optional thing.’ But we found it’s not that effective,” Fox Crossing director of development George Dearborn said. “We found that very limited people have expressed any interest in doing No Mow May.”
That, coupled with the retracted study, was enough to sway Fox Crossing’s sustainability committee to end No Mow May in 2024.
“We in the village encourage natural yards, so that’s the approach that we suggest with people,” Dearborn said. “We think that our technique of natural yards and natural areas, we do community gardens as well, we think that’s a better way to encourage that.”
Ribbons is adamant that the errors in the study were minor and that they were only retracted to be fully transparent. Otherwise, she claims that the findings and conclusion are unchanged.
“There was a copy-and-paste error. And so we were concerned about that. There were some individuals who really didn’t like that we didn’t kill the bees. There were three bees that were challenging to identify out of the whole host that we gathered in the study. We have a second year of data from the 2021 study that shows that trends are still pretty strong,” Ribbons said. “We found that no mowing led to greater floral diversity and greater abundance of bees.”
Just because Fox Crossing does not have No Mow May in 2024 does not mean that residents cannot contribute to helping pollinators. He also said that the eight-inch grass length ordinance is only enforced on a complaint basis.
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“If you establish a native lawn, you don’t have to mow it,” he said. “We’re not going to aggressively enforce [the eight-inch ordinance] in May anyways, but we had a few people that seemed to think they can just let their yard grow with weeds and junk, and that’s just not the purpose of this.”
Ribbons have a second study from 2021 that is being peer-reviewed. That study was expanded to collect data from Oshkosh and Wausau in addition to Appleton, comparing yards side-by-side that did and did not mow, and bees were harvested for the study.
