A note from the author of this update:
Regular readers will know that these updates are usually fairly lightweight affairs that contain a certain amount of what I like to think of as humour. Usually they are sprinkled with my own photographs as well.
This one off is different. I felt there was no room for levity and accordingly, apologise for this (brief) change of direction. It is very important to me though, and whilst I can only hope that you might have enough time and patience to make it to the end of this writing, I thank you in advance for letting me vent!
Headlines like this that have been appearing right across the media in the past few days have been the inspiration for writing this blog update:
World's insects could be wiped out 'within a century' as scientists warn they are dying out eight times faster than mammals
- Insects are dying out eight-times faster than mammals, birds and reptiles
- Study suggests that insects could become extinct in 100 years at this rate
- The decline, described as a worldwide crisis, is blamed on intensive agriculture
- Scientist say we have entered the first mass extinction since the dinosaurs.
INSECTS
Are we about to destroy 480 million
years of insect evolution and symbiosis?
At any given time, it is estimated that there are ten
Quintilian (10,000,000,000,000,000,000) individual insects alive.
That's about 200 million insects for every human on the planet,
depending on which estimate you use. And yet man is not only capable of
eradicating every last one, but has already begun travelling that road.
Even scarier is the fact that we have not even been able to
describe all of the insect species on earth yet: in fact, it is estimated that
there are many more undiscovered species than we currently recognise.
How many warnings do we need that it would mean catastrophe
for not only the insect population if we fail to act, but the human race itself
would be doomed. I have reports dating back 30 years that address this issue,
yet STILL it falls on deaf ears.
Now given that most folk have an inbuilt dread of insects and
would possibly welcome a world without them; let’s just get this argument out
of the way once and for all shall we.
Those of us who belong in the Entomophobia camp, usually seem to hold
the following views: if insects disappeared, there would be no more mosquito
bites and far more significantly, the scourge of insect-spread diseases, like
malaria and dengue fever, which infect millions and kill hundreds of thousands
of people a year would be over. Farmers would also no longer need to use
insecticides — more than 500 million pounds of the chemicals are used annually
just in the United States alone.
For starters approximately 80% of the world’s plants rely on
pollination to reproduce: the vast majority of pollination is carried out by
insects. Therefore, most of the plants on earth would soon disappear, we cannot
possibly pollinate such vast numbers by hand. So what, I hear you say? Here’s
what…between 50 and 90 percent of the human diet by both volume and calories,
depending on the country, comes directly from flowering plants.
Secondly, if the insects are all gone, a lot of mammals and
birds will also die out. Insects are the primary food source for birds,
amphibians, fish and reptiles. Even those animals that don’t eat
insects will have no fruit or foliage to eat. Ghoulishly, all the resulting
dead trees and animal carcasses — and human bodies — would linger around far
longer, decomposing much slower than they would in a world abuzz with insects.
That would necessitate at the very least new ways of dealing with the dead, and
at worst, new diseases appearing as a result.
Thirdly, no more honey or silk. Both are produced by insects
of course. Insects are the main drivers of many of our ecosystems on land and
in freshwater. The cycling of nutrients such as carbon and nitrogen through the
ecosystems would come to an abrupt end.
Without insects, the
environment would simply fall apart.
So what are the causes
of this catastrophe?
The biggest threats are that of intensive agriculture and pollution in the
forms of pesticides and fertilisers.
A lot of it is also to do with
uprooting hedgerows and producing huge monocultures which don't leave space for
anything else to thrive. Global warming is another factor, despite what Mr Trumpton
says!
So what is to be done? Reversing the land use from so much
intensive farming and urban sprawl. Planting wild flower meadows: outrageously
in my opinion, some farmers are being paid by the government to do this
already. When they should be caring for our planet as a matter of course.
Schooling! Inspiring the next generation and imbuing them
with a sense of understanding of just how important the insects are. There is a
huge bias towards vertebrates, and even just the ‘pretty ones’ amongst them. TV
programmes like Springwatch are guilty of paying less attention to the
invertebrates than they should. We are told they have a ready audience of
millions of nature-loving people, so instead of wasting air time by chortling
over ‘in’ jokes and inventing silly names for animals, why not educate us about
THE most populous species on earth?
Replace pesticides with more sustainable crop-growing
practices.
I have only scratched the surface of this enormous subject,
and will by default have omitted some important factors. However, what I do
know is that I love nature and the natural world, and that includes the
insects. They were here long before us and will probably be here long after we
have gone, unless! We carry on in
our stupid, blind way and kill them off for good. In my own small way I have witnessed an alarming decrease in insect species right here in the South of England. Many species I would see in large number each year, have seemingly disappeared.
Call me odd, call me a weirdo, mock me, laugh at me if you want, but PLEASE......believe me, this is not scaremongering or fake news. It will come to pass unless we change our ways.
I don't expect you to love invertebrates as I do but we can all do something to help. Make your garden wildlife friendly, put up bug hotels. Pressure your MP to get changes in the law regards habitat loss and pesticides. Educate the children that insects are not to be feared: of the huge numbers of insects, only a tiny amount, one percent, are harmful to humans. Most insects are harmless or actually beneficial.
We must start listening and act now.
