Can you "change" the environment in your "local" area?

Yes.

Not climate, meaningfully, but environment.

Allowing native plants to grow rather than... Grass lawns... Will invite a ton of insects, birds, bees etc to stop by.

Yep! Maybe not as drastically as you might be envisioning though. I have 2.5 acres of swamp in Florida. I move slow and observe the effects I'm creating because it's surprising what one man's effort over only 4-years has changed.

If you're sitting at my main camp (maybe 2500sq./ft?) it's plenty hot. If you walk 75' down the trail, the temperature drops noticeably since it's heavily shaded and you're approaching a pond. Our forestry professor showed us an experiment he had laid in the forest the week before we camped there. He had 2 min/max thermometers, one under the pines and one in a glade, only 60' apart. Temperatures in the wooded area stayed stable where the glade demonstrated sharp high and low ranges.

There's a 2' wide stream I can easily dam off. With a dozen cinder blocks or bags of concrete I could radically alter the wetlands. There are a couple of spots choked by dead falls I aim to clear and that will make a huge difference in water flow. This effects the bug populations. Far more mosquitoes and chiggers near the water, and far more dragonflies eating them. Hot and dry areas attract fire ants and drive off the tiny spiders that hunt the leaf litter.

Clearing trails has been a boon for the banana spiders. They like to be in the open, but not too open. My girls are out there getting fat on bugs everyday. At this time of year they're being replaced by some other big spider that likes the same environment and spacing.

Had a young ecologist drop by to look at buying the surrounding land, really popped my eyes open to much I had missed. The low, wet areas and the slightly higher areas are very different, especially the trees. You can walk 200-300' and see a changed forest. So moving the water around, which isn't hard, and given time, you'll have a largely different environment.

As to animals, I'm working on that in the future. Most of them are down by the river, don't catch much on the trail cams. Saw some rabbits yesterday, and you might be surprised, but that was a bit alarming. Pretty wild out there so animals stay the hell away from humans and noise, not used to it. I'd probably shot 100 rounds of .22 and there were still right there! I'm worried the human population is encroaching.

Some ways I'm working to change the environment.

• Put some native mosquito eating fish in the ponds. Not sure how they fared, but there seems to be more activity. Threw a few dozen crawdads in there, no idea if they're thriving or even alive.
• Stole some pitcher plants and sundews from the swamp by my house, trying to get them going. (Illegal, I know, but it's not like I'm selling them.) Have to clear some more light around the ponds to really kick them off.
• Working on getting more flowers to attract hummingbirds and pollinators. Along with trying to stay mainly native, the lack of light really hamstrings my efforts. Which reminds me, I need to try some bee hotels out there, worked great at home. I did see honeysuckle for the first time yesterday!
• Generally slashing the crap I don't want, choking vines for example, to encourage the plants and wildlife I do want.

tl;dr You can easily and drastically alter the local environment, but heat is about all you can change for the local climate.

Yes. You can restore the natural environment for the local wildlife. Every plant and animal counts. But large scale effects like the weather would require national cooperation.

I think with 50 acres, you should be able to do a lot to combat the urban heat island effect. I say this based on my bike commute which alternates between suburban subdivisions and trails over conservation land. The trails always feel noticeably cooler, even where there are no trees casting shade. The coolest spots do tend to be where have trees and/or water nearby, but even open fields feel cooler.

We live in the area between the city and suburbs. Like the city is 3 or 4 blocks away but we have a yard. A few years ago we tore out our front lawn, planted just native plants, put in a lot of beds in the back yard, and way more native plants. We have ducks, bees, and now goats. I'm not sure if we've changed our local climate, but he have 2 families of rabbits living in our yard and more fireflies than anyone else in our immediate area.

I beats a parking lot that's for sure. Micro climate would improve. It could bring more shade, better water retention and more types of bugs and wildlife than the places around you.

As for big picture, not so much but every bit counts. Like light pollution for example. If property owners turned off or shielded one outdoor light the night sky would be a lot cooler to a lot more people. It's a collective effort and it needs to start somewhere

Trees actually do a lot of this on their own. If you want an absolutely fascinating read check out "the hidden life of trees" by wholleben.

The tl;Dr is that a forrest is an organism unto itself. Trees literally use each other for support, regulate the temperature, and terraform the ground around them (pine being the most visible example). The natural cycles and interspecies communication is jaw dropping.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/aug/09/wildlife-boosted-by-englands-nature-friendly-farming-schemes-study-finds

Haven't had a chance to read it yet, but this popped up on Lemmy recently.

You might not change the weather, but you can increase biodiversity which is still good. And you can also lower the temperature by introducing trees

This city in Colombia did.

Medellin green corridors

It really depends on how big your area is and what you mean by changing the climate. You can make your backyard way more pleasant by increasing the plant cover, which will drop temperatures in the summer and provide homes for bugs and animals if you do it right. Fifty acres might be enough for you to notice just a general cooler climate if you replaced mowed grass or farm with a dense forest. It would also help slow evaporation from the soil. But you're not gonna noticably change the amount of rain until you get into land areas comparable to a US state or maybe large city, unless you have very particular geography.

Most of that would have a cooling effect. Reducing the heat island effect of just concrete or even a grass field. Could change the humidity a bit with a pond and trees, but the effects will be minimal.

Not applying exactly to your case but an incredibly interesting evidence that it is possible https://youtu.be/ysa5OBhXz-Q

Not really, no. Like, you arent going to realistically be able to counteract the pollution going on in your area if the pollution is not already very low. You're not going to be able to change the weather other than slightly lowering temperatures in the shade. But depending on the climate of the area you might also massively increase water usage which can damage the environment. Importing non-native species can lead to invasive takeovers and damage the environment, etc.

You can make it look different and maybe lower the temperature of the floor by adding grass or in the shade by adding trees, but whatever you do is likely going to be mostly cosmetic only, and depending on what you do could potentially end up creating more damage than doing nothing.