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> The scientists say there is no smoking gun on insect declines but they find the destruction of natural habitats due to urbanisation, to be key. Urbanization,
by dao- 6y ago
> The scientists say there is no smoking gun on insect declines but they find the destruction of natural habitats due to urbanisation, to be key.
Urbanization, i.e. people moving to larger cities? This doesn't seem to make sense and is inconsistent with every other report I read on this topic pointing out habitat loss and pollution from farming. I guess modern intensive farming methods correlate with small farmers moving away in favor of big industrial farmers, but concluding that urbanization kills natural habitats seems like a gross misrepresentation. Industrial farming can and should be reformed to weigh less heavily on nature without reversing urbanization.
- fvdessen 6y agoI think part of it is also the upper middle class moving out of larger cities, and buying a house with a big garden in the countryside, and then turning the garden into a sterile architectural monument.
- bryanrasmussen 6y agoSure, but when you say upper middle class I think - that must be a small portion of the population and thus not likely to be significant to causing a problem of this magnitude.
- fvdessen 6y agoIt is a small proportion of the population (5-10%) but it has a disproportionate effect because they take up the space that previously remained wild because too impractical to farm, and there was not that much of it.
- hutzlibu 6y agoWhat I increasingly observe in europe, is the opposite: diverse gardens with different flowers, bushes and trees. The sterile garden type still exists, but has gotten very uncommon. And I have seen lots of europe in the last years. So it is really cheap, to target garden owning people, when you have large areas with monoculture and insect poison everywhere.
- fvdessen 6y agoThose gardens with pretty flowers and bushes are not the natural habitat of the insects. They look diverse but are in fact as sterile as a monoculture field. Insects thrive in the unkempt parcels between fields where man never goes, and those are disappearing, replaced by well kept gardens.
- hutzlibu 6y agoIt depends. There exist the diverse looking, but sterile garden type (who do use pesticides and insectizides of all sorts to keep it sterile). But this is increasingly changing. All the garden magazines are full of it, how to make your garden more insect friendly, insect hotels, leave patches of grass uncut, flowers that have nectar for insects and not just pretty flowers. And people follow it, since years, as far as I experienced. But even the most sterile looking garden with bushes and trees is far more insect friendly, than a dead field. Because tons of insects are living in the bushes and trees alone. A big tree can feed colonies of bees, when blooming, etc. But I am of course also with you, that the fields need to get more small, with bushes between them and if possible, organic.
- 11235813213455 6y agoThere are both kinds, some are obsessed with over-pruning/mutilating trees and mowing the garden like a golf green (another heresy), some let the nature develop. For example, France has many extended private areas, with forests
- hutzlibu 6y agoBtw. insects love deadwood. But yeah, most gardeners do not .. which is alright with me to remove, if it is a hazard in a tree, but deadwood lying in a bush could be tolerable.