We do use odd language sometimes. Where I live, a mowed place is distinctly void of biodiversity, compared to a more ‘natural’ place. To me, who has never been in a true desert, I can see using the term, as a metaphor for a barren place. Mind you, people say that about the Great Plains too.
I dislike a lot of the terms humans use for what is beyond our ken. Nature connotes something mythical, magical. Wildlife connotes something untamed. When referring to life other than human, I prefer to us ‘non-human life’. It encompasses all the life forms that humans, in general, find incomprehensible. Trees, plants, bacteria, fungi, invertebrate life. Humans tent to ignore the fact that if these organisms live where we live, they are merely exploiting an environment. We don’t like these ‘invaders’, so seek to eradicate them. Some, like bedbugs and fleas, should be removed, but our homes are also part of the non-human world’s environment.