A new point in history has been reached, entomologists say, as climate-led species’ collapse moves up the food chain even in supposedly protected regions free of pesticides
Reports of falling insect numbers around the world are not new. International reviews have estimated annual losses globally of between 1% and 2.5% of total biomass every year.
Widespread use of pesticides and fertilisers, light and chemical pollution, loss of habitat and the growth of industrial agriculture have all carved into their numbers. Often, these were deaths of proximity: insects are sensitive creatures, and any nearby source of pollution can send their populations crumbling.
But what Janzen and Hallwachs are witnessing is a part of a newer phenomenon: the catastrophic collapse of insect populations in supposedly protected regions of forest. “In the parts of Costa Rica that are heavily hit by pesticides, the insects are completely wiped out,” Hallwachs says.
Do you guys remember driving down the highway in the 90’s and having your car absolutely covered in the mangled corpses of insects? To the point where wiper fluid is called bug wash?
I don’t know if this is the same everywhere, but my car stays pretty clean these days.
Yeah, I’m in California’s central valley, which is a lot like the Serengeti in that it’s a grassy desert-ish thing that’s seasonally wetted by snowpack melt. It’s actually pretty swampy in its natural state. Used to be that you couldn’t drive forty minutes here without your car being a hopeless mess, especially in the late winter/spring. Now, I almost never hit a bug at all. It’s been that way for years. I pointed it out to my nature-loving MAGA mom and it freaked her the fuck out.
There are scientific studies on windshield bug death. If you want to solidify how big this insect collapse is, it’s scary. Those studies have seen up to 90% decline in certain areas. These studies also took aerodynamics into account.
I live in what should be a prairie, but it’s just hundreds of miles of farmland now. I drove five hours yesterday, and my car is still clean. It’s absolutely horrific.
I am a biology major with a focus on ecology, and sometimes I regret choosing this academic path. I have taken some ag classes, the ag majors here are multi-generational ranchers and farmers. The disregard for the damage they are doing to the environment and the way they mock advances in ag that preserve life beyond their fences is so discouraging.
I lived in Louisiana in the 90’s. If you didn’t add a mesh (think window screen) to your car grill before driving on the highway, your radiator grill would clog with bugs and you’d overheat.
I was actually thinking about this very thing last week driving across Costa Rica. Aside from ants and the occasional gnat/mosquito, we really saw very few insects across the country as a whole. So it’s a global phenomenon, and things are probably a lot worse then we realize and care to admit.
Yes, cars had to wear bras
Oh.my god. I never realized but you are absolutely right.
Nothing will meaningfully improve until the rich fear for their lives
A substantial portion of the anthropocene extinction event is the Monsanto extinction event.
Even in the past 3 years there has been a noticeable decline. We moved 4 years ago to where we now live. The first spring and summer the place was buzzing with insects. We actually made the entire garden much more insect friendly but last year there were noticeably less than the previous year and this year it’s just dire. In april I walked around our back garden which was full with flowers and I had to stay in one spot for several minutes before I spotted the first bee. I am incredibly worried and depressed from this. It’s horrifying.
In Central Florida, we were overrun in the Spring with Lovebugs, which were an invasive species. They had sticky, acidic guts which would stick to cars and ruin the paint. Every Spring, stores would have big displays of the liquid to add to your wiper fluid to remove the Lovebugs from your windshield.
Then they disappeared, nearly overnight. A few years ago, the Spring hatching was really light, and it’s been lighter each year. I saw one Lovebugs this year.
The weird thing is, scientists have no idea why, because there is no grant money to study it. They are an invasive species, so we want them to go away. Nobody is going to spend money to find out why.
In the case of Lovebugs, their eradication was a positive outcome, but whatever wiped them out, could wipe out bugs that we want to keep because they are important to the food chain.
I can’t remember where I saw it, but it was a quote from an elderly man who was sad that the vast flocks of birds he saw over the midwest as a child are no longer around. Literally just directly poisoning the earth. Madness.
Two neighbors where over yesterday and I was pointing out the insect loss I’ve seen in just a few years. They both had their mouths open in shock. “Shalafi, I never thought of that.”
We leave the porch lights on 24x7. Used to get filthy with bugs and there were tree frogs and salamanders camping out all night. Now there are none of the above.
So… You know that leaving the porch lights on 24/7 is part of the light pollution problem that kills insects, right?
the issue is, nobody cares about insects
Well I do… we need insects for a lot of reasons… but I fail to see what I can do for them. I’ve added a small water area, I don’t mow aggressively and let a portion of my garden absolutely wild… still I’m obviously having an abysmal and unnoticeable effect on the problem. So what now?
Half Life Tree confirmed
So… does at least Africa get to take a break from the tsetse fly?
