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Where have all the insects gone?
- throwawaygal7 5y agoI think it's all the people having yards sprayed for ticks and mosquitos
- CoastalCoder 5y agoSignificantly fewer wasps this year in my little corner of coastal New England. More stink bugs in the past few years. Honeybees and bumble bees seem pretty consistent.
- amriksohata 5y agoAlbert Howard an English botanist observed Hindu / Indian farmers using Cow pat to fertilise their land. He dubbed this the Indore process, there was no need for toxic pesticides or fertilisers. All this modern science that at the time that was supposed to improve farming actually destroyed our biodiversity and insects.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago> All this modern science that at the time that was supposed to improve farming actually destroyed our biodiversity and insects. What is the distinction between “modern science” and “science”? Are you claiming that the development of the Haber-Bosch process and other fertilizers, pesticides, insecticides, and fungicides did not increase yields? What is “improve farming”? It does not seem to be a small feat to go from feeding 1.5B people to 8B people in 100 years, at far more calories per person. Granted, the long term effects very well may have destroyed biodiversity and insects, but the immediate problem at the time was hunger and malnutrition. Although, one can make the case that the loss in biodiversity and insects is inevitable with excess human population, in which case the development of technologies increasing yield would be responsible for leading to the possibility of excess humans existing.
- kfprt 5y agoI'd say modern science is concerned with selling something while science is the discovery of what currently exists.
- sammalloy 5y agoWhere I live, we first noticed the insects and then the birds disappearing around 2010. That was also around the time that the local climate changed considerably, and the summers became unbearably hot. Construction has also removed many of their former habitats in my area, while decreasing rainfall has led to drier conditions. The last of the local bee population near me disappeared around 2018.
- kibbleble 5y agoA relevant essay: "No More Creepy Crawlies" by Anthony Pearce https://reckoning.press/no-more-creepy-crawlies/ https://reckoning.press/no-more-creepy-crawlies/ The magazine also has a lot of cli-fi stories posted for free, so I recommend checking it out.
- melling 5y ago“Wilson is now ninety-two and lives in a retirement community in Lexington, Massachusetts. He’s the subject of a new biography, “Scientist: E. O. Wilson: A Life in Nature” (Doubleday), by the journalist Richard Rhodes. Rhodes, who’s the author of more than twenty books, including “The Making of the Atomic Bomb,”
- babycake 5y ago[flagged]
- missedthecue 5y agoIf only the government had nationalised industry, these bugs would be alive?
- ashtonkem 5y ago[flagged]
- nickff 5y agoHistorically, the capitalist countries have been much less-polluted ('cleaner') and more environmentally friendly in general than the communist countries. With respect to 'socialist' countries, the correlations depend on exactly how you define socialism, and which countries you include/exclude.
- ashtonkem 5y agoI think there’s enough contradictory information here to make clear ideological statements like that indefensible. The late USSR was far dirtier than America of the same period, yes, but neither can hold a candle to pre-EPA America or late industrial revolution England. Heck, London had a coal smoke smog in 1952 that killed 10-12K people in a week. Regardless, I find this discussion to be an unwelcome diversion. The USSR is dead, and even most communists don’t want that specific state back. The reality is that today in America we regularly let companies privatize their profits and shift their costs onto all of society. We don’t need to nationalize industry to fix that, and as you correctly point out that might not be sufficient, but we do need to regulate this.
- nickff 5y agoNorth Korea and Cuba have been disasters, and I think you're wrong about the USSR being cleaner than pre-EPA USA. China has been a mess throughout its self-professed communist history as well; you may dispute its degree of communism, but it certainly has more nationalized industries (of the sort proposed in parent comments) than the USA or any other 'capitalist' country.
- rootusrootus 5y agoSometimes I don't know what to believe. Wasn't there a counterpoint posted here on HN a while back? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24133315 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24133315
- OscarCunningham 5y agoThe New Yorker doesn't read HN.
- drocer88 5y agohttps://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-silicon-valley/the-lonely-work-of-moderating-hacker-news https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-silicon-valley/th...
- Enginerrrd 5y agoThis was actually the article that put HN on my radar and brought me here.
- tw04 5y agoWithout the full article it's tough to say, but my refute would be about my local environment. There has absolutely been a MASSIVE decline in NATIVE insects (among other things). Instead we have more asian beetles, emerald ash borers, and japanese beetles than you can shake a stick at. So while yes, technically the numbers may remain neutral, I'm not sure we can call it a healthy distribution.
- marcosdumay 5y ago> my refute would be about my local environment Is it an urban environment? Most people's environments isn't a reasonable reference.
- tw04 5y agoThat would be spread across a residence outside of the city, one inside city limits, and a cabin in the middle of nowhere. The only insect I'm aware of that seems to still be in full force that is native are mosquitos. Dragonflies, lightning bugs, lady bugs, moths, butterflies, etc. are sadly all rare sightings.
- the-dude 5y agoWe had remarkably much insects this year in The Netherlands.
- stinos 5y agoThat was due to the weather: very good in srping, no huge heatwaves killing insects and plants, enough rain, and in some places even too much and circumstances became superb for mosquitos.
- patall 5y agoI have no knowledge in how far there have been immediate effects but several neonicotinoids have become more restricted/banned in the EU in the last 2-3 years.
- daenz 5y agoSometimes I get the sense that people hate that we exist, in the numbers that we do, because of our impact on the earth by merely existing. A self-hatred if you will. And before you respond with "if only we did X, it would be fine," consider that the difficulty of convincing/coercing lots of people to do things is also an inherent part of our existence. Also part of our existence is the incentive to cheat to get ahead (in whatever economic system you pick). We can't live like native Americans with iPhones.
- brandon272 5y agoSometimes I get the sense that people would rather put their head in the sand than discuss the realities around human impacts on the Earth. This has nothing to do with "hating that we exist", however, at a minimum we probably have a responsibility to study, discuss and understand our impacts on the Earth, and not just for what it means for other species, but for what it means for us.
- HenryKissinger 5y ago> Sometimes I get the sense that people hate that we exist, in the numbers that we do, because of our impact on the earth by merely existing. I thought you were trying to speak for the insect kingdom here for a moment.
- tw04 5y ago>We can't live like native Americans with iPhones. We probably could in the next 100 years through automation, massive reduction in population, and making things to last instead of making things to be replaced. Building a society whose values aren't based around never-ending growth. We won't, but we could.
- throwaway803453 5y agoThere is a good anti-growth counter argument/observation in Homo Deus. Population growth necessitates economic growth otherwise you end up with unemployment which destabilizes society and can lead to war. If you don't have population growth you still need economic growth to provide upward mobility to people at the bottom. Without growth you have a zero-sum game which again can lead to war. Ideally improvements in efficiency or a shift values/culture can create a world where we can have economic growth without increasing the burden on the planet.
- boringg 5y agoAnecdotally this year - almost no insects in our backyard. It was great for being outside but also really creepy. Could be a one year thing here but still noteworthy.
- Hokusai 5y agoNot just insects. Where I used to live even birds had left. A decade of stronger regulations and cleaning the closer by river made animals come back. And the river started to look less like a sewer and more like a river. The pollution that kills insects is not good for humans either.
- DantesKite 5y agoOn a side note, I noticed after the pandemic began, the birds began starving because they started eating out of our dog's bowls of food.
- agumonkey 5y agoA lot of birds are getting way closer to our windows than they used to be (lived in the same place for 40 years). These aren't angry bird (npi), usually they keep their distance with humans, but now they come very close very often.. I cannot not interpret it as a sign of risk taking facing higher needs.
- e40 5y agoIn the last month we've had 2 small birds (that don't eat peanuts we leave out for crows) come into our kitchen (wife leaves it open when she cooks). In 20 years here, that never happened before.
- makeitdouble 5y agoWe've seen the same phenomenon in multiple directions. Crows were usually near habitations, and we've seen a lot more deeper in the forest, and smaller birds that were hiding in the forest have been more adventurous and come to our balcony. I don't know how good/bad of a thing it is, but surely there seems to be something going on. For what it's worth, people also seem to have rediscovered the forest, and I hope will get more emotionally involved in its maintenance and preservation.
- agumonkey 5y ago
- mainah 5y agoUp here in southern Maine we had many insects, including pollinators all summer long. Still have a few bumblebees hanging around in the few remaining wildflowers. A strange one was a parasitic wasp that would harvest inchworms and leave them in piles in my shed! Took a while to catch it in the act.
- nemacol 5y agoSomehow mosquitos, stink bugs, and asian lady beetles persist in my area. It is amazing to see every other type of animal come back stronger with the waning of industry.
- MivLives 5y agoAll these, and ticks, so many ticks. My roommate got lyme disease walking through are back yard which has next to no plant life and is mostly concrete.
- salynchnew 5y agoAnts, birds, and spiders are all tick predators. FWIW, it sounds like there is a lack of natural predators for ticks in your area.
- nemacol 5y agoYou are right, I forgot ticks. This spring while hunting mushrooms I would pick 10+ off of my pants after every trip out. I have a pill bottle with dozens of them from taking the dogs for a walk. almost always itty bitty little devils.
- adrian_b 5y agoI believe that bugs (Heteroptera) might be more resistant to common pesticides than other insects. Where I live, in Europe, several species of bugs have become quite abundant in recent years. On the other hand, most other kinds of insects, e.g. butterflies, dragonflies, beetles, crickets, grasshoppers, various kinds of wasps and flies etc. have become exceedingly rare compared to how abundant they were when I was young.
- rib3ye 5y agoI feel like if this were true we would be seeing a major decline in the sales of pesticides, at least on consumer-level volume. Has anyone dug into those numbers?
- salynchnew 5y agoNot sure this would hold true. The most efficient way to manage insects in a home (consumer) environment has nothing to do with pesticides. For example: Ants are best managed caulking ingress points. Silverfish are best managed by reducing humidity. Bed bugs typically require professional fumigation. Flies & roaches by removing/storing food sources, etc.
- zsmi 5y agoPesticide use is down 40% since 1992 but it's complicated by a number of factors. The biggest being the chemical formulas, concentrations and dosages have not stayed constant over time. zhttps://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/us-pesticide-use-is-down-but-damage-to-pollinators-is-rising-68635 https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/us-pesticide-use-...
- redprince 5y agoThe observed decline in total insect population is collateral damage and not the driver of pesticide sale.
- orev 5y agoA lot of pesticide use on the consumer side comes from pest control companies where people have a recurring service that preemptively sprays the entire yard and house. The customer just sees that they don’t have bugs, and assumes it’s because the service is working. For there to be a decline in sales, consumers would need to be purchasing products only in response to an infestation, but with such a service, they aren’t doing that. And the pest control company has no incentive to tell people “by the way, you can cancel the service now because everything is extinct”.
- WalterBright 5y agoI used to use a lawn service, and told them no pesticides or herbicides.
- jerry1979 5y agoAnecdotally, while driving along Minnesota's segment of I94 in the '90s, one would have to stop and scrape the bugs off the front window and grill. Today, this is no longer a problem.
- jonnycomputer 5y agoSame here, but in California's Central Valley.
- srcmap 5y agoRemember need to scrape off bugs from windshield after each trip thru I5 ~10 years ago. No need to do that anymore..... On the other hand, in my back yard, I grow a lot veggi, strawberry with worm casting from kitchen scraps. I do still lot of insects. A lot of birds nested around my house. Produce 10-15 young birds. I found a very cool looking giant tomato worm a size of my biggest finger. It ate half of (7 ft height ) tomato plant in 2 days. The Strawberry, cucumbers, other veggies grow with worm casting taste SO much better than from anything store .
- jonnycomputer 5y agoA lot of those drives of mine were on highways between planted fields.
- cookrn 5y agoI love creating little sanctuaries and do think they’re useful as pockets of support and diversity. Also, the Tomato Hornworm is an awesome creature and results in a Hummingbird Moth. I try to feed them vegetative branches and keep them separate if I can so that they hang around and we still get tomatoes.
- thisiscorrect 5y agoCould that be explained by improved aerodynamics of cars now compared to then? Has that been studied?
- neonate 5y agohttp://web.archive.org/web/20211026171800/https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/11/01/where-have-all-the-insects-gone-e-o-wilson-silent-earth http://web.archive.org/web/20211026171800/https://www.newyor... https://archive.md/t9nf6 https://archive.md/t9nf6
- jtdev 5y agoBig chem selling pesticides like there’s no tomorrow.
- friedman23 5y agoIn my back yard when I was a kid there used to be thousands of these horrible beetles in the grass. You would step on them everywhere you walked and they smelled terrible. They are gone now but so are the dragonflies and the butterflies. I don't think whatever we did was worth it.
- 29athrowaway 5y agoOutdoor lights disturb insects. At night I turn most of my outdoor lights off.
- juloo 5y agoMost ? I mean, I have a single outdoor light, above my front door.
- subsubzero 5y agoMaybe the author doesn't see insects as they are in a heavily populated city with exterminators everywhere. Down in Southern California I have seen more bees this past year than I have ever seen. A few things I do feel like I see alot less than I used to see is dragonflies and praying mantis. I remember as a kid I used to see so many of both, now I may see one or two a month(dragonflies), and praying mantis once or twice a year.
- hinkley 5y agoI have a crap ton of bees visit my flowers and happened to get chatted up one day while outside garden gin by someone who keeps bees. If memory serves he’s about 10 blocks away, so I never would have solved that on my own just by walking around looking for hives. Could be you have new neighbors. Half of my bees are bumbles (at least one nest in my yard), maybe the odd mason, and hoverflies. But I’m on an edge of a garden district, less than a mile from a river, so I see lots of things. I’m pretty sure I’m part of a corridor between the two.
- mint2 5y agoDo you mean honey bees because those would be more like looking to cows or sheep population as a metric of general wild animal population. My area of SoCal is HOA/office park “landscaped” with near zero variety of plants for miles around. There are very few flying insects in my yard. I did attract some caterpillars this year, but they are very particular about plants. The caterpillar on the native gooseberry stays there, the tomatoes get hornworms and the other plant gets budworms. Bugs can be very specific and the grass and office park shrub monoculture around is not supportive of a diverse insect population.
- mod 5y agoI've had a different year, as well. Fewer bees seemed pretty obvious, but more wasps this year, including a swarm of wasps that I didn't even know swarmed--they normally have 3 or 4 wasps on a relatively small hive. But I've got lots and lots of mantises this year. One evening, attracted by the lights of my workshop, I counted 6 mantises climbing around my windows at the same time. I've continued to see them elsewhere, though one at a time. I've never seen more than a few per season, previously.
- 5faulker 5y agoAll that talk about invasive species without talking about the humans...
- throwawayfear 5y agoBecause it is misanthropic to talk about it that way. You're describing thinking conscious beings that have needs and that are born without their choosing. Construing people as an invasive species is not going to be productive or win you any points in a serious conversation on the subject.
- trutannus 5y agoThis won't be popular, but remember just 10 years ago when people were talking about the environmental advantages of a mass die-off of humans? It was trendy for a bit to spitball about how much better off the environment would be with an x% decrease in human population as a result of a global death event. In fact, "we need a new plague" was a running joke on online environmentalist forms for a while. Funny how an actual pandemic made those same people glibly taking up the advantages pull a 180 when it was their grandmother who was in the x% who were going to die.
- rsj_hn 5y ago> remember just 10 years ago when people were talking about the environmental advantages of a mass die-off of humans No. I recommend finding better friends, or choosing different online reading material. We live in an age of information abundance as well as opinion abundance. Your attention is valuable, and there are better communities and reading options out there.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- trutannus 5y agoThis reply is oddly presumptuous for no good reason.
- thrownaway561 5y agohttps://www.firefly.org/ https://www.firefly.org/ i remember an article about how fireflies are dying out
- akeck 5y agoHabitat is definitely a factor with fireflies. For years we had none. Then we let some of the landscaping and trees grow out so parts of our yard became more forest-like. 2-3 years ago we started seeing fireflies for the first time.
- jonny_eh 5y ago> He spent a sabbatical conducting field work on Trinidad and Tobago and in Suriname. What a great example for why we need the Oxford Comma.
- throwanem 5y agoNot applicable here, as "Trinidad and Tobago" is a single name in a list of two items. But a comma following "Tobago", while not a serial comma sensu stricto, would still aid comprehension.
- etaioinshrdlu 5y agoBut Trinidad and Tobago is just one place.
- jonny_eh 5y agoExactly, that's my point!
- jonathankoren 5y agoI'm surprised some hyphen aficionado hasn't tried hyphenating that country's name because it's "too confusing".
- BoiledCabbage 5y agoIs it any different than Bosnia and Herzegovina? Or Sao Tome and Principe?
- AnimalMuppet 5y agoThat's why they said "and in Suriname". The "in" makes it clear.
- hn_throwaway_99 5y agoExactly the point, err, comma.
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- streamofdigits 5y agoThe "puzzles" will keep pilling up. One year there will be no insects, the next year it will be a horror movie. Global human-made mass now exceeds all living biomass [0]. We are basically simply pushing the rest of the biosphere to a corner. It responds as the immensely complex, adaptive, system that it is: unpredictably. [0] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-3010-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-3010-5
- micromacrofoot 5y agoI had noticed this decline anecdotally previous years, and this summer made a concentrated effort to plant wildflowers to attract pollinators and it did wonderfully. I saw more bees and butterflies than ever. I plan to do this as long as I can and would encourage others to do the same! I was amazed by the difference.
- quasse 5y agoI've been planting wildflowers at my new house as well and it's very fun to watch which plants different insects prefer. I've noticed that Monarch butterflies ignore almost all plants in my area but they love Mexican Sunflowers (Tithonia rotundifolia). I wonder how much of that is regional, since they're supposed to like Zineas and Verbena but they've shown zero interest in mine.
- mod 5y agoAt my place the Monarchs (a couple weeks ago) were all attracted to a plant I haven't properly identified. It looks like queen anne's lace--crowns of many tiny, white flowers. We have a few similar-looking species in the region (Ozarks), and it could be any of them. Maybe worth a shot finding out if you want some other options for them!
- nanomonkey 5y agoThey absolutely love the wild fennel plants in my yard, which looks similar to queen anne's lace.
- dmux 5y agoI'm not sure if this is the plant you're describing, but in New England, Monarchs are really attracted to Milkweed. The White Swamp [0] variety may be what you're describing. [0] https://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/plant-of-the-week/asclepias_perennis.shtml https://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/plant-of-the-week/asclepia...
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- junon 5y agoAnecdotally the spiders here in Germany this year are insane.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- teekert 5y agohttps://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinfuriating/comments/pl6czq/kansas_city_missouri_decides_this_mans/ https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinfuriating/comments/pl6czq/k...
- deelowe 5y agoIt seems like all that's left around me is stinging/biting insects. Plenty of mosquitos, wasps, fireants, and carpenter bees but that's about it.
- toss1 5y agoI'm fortunate to live with a wetland on the property, and find a lot of dragonflies and even bumblebees which have disappeared from several adjacent states and are now proposed for endangered status. Yet, I now feel lucky to see even a few fireflies in a summer, when I remember loving to see fields of them blinking in the evening... wow I miss that. (and we're in real trouble here)
- ofou 5y agoElectromagnetic pollution is the main cause. Right?
- Jensson 5y agoMore like pesticides and pollution killing their spawning locations.
- AnimalMuppet 5y agoSarcasm? Otherwise: No.
- elif 5y agoIn my neighborhood, there were 2 cases of West Nile virus detected in humans in June/July. Since then, the city have contracted a corporation called BugStars to drive down every street in my neighborhood (downtown, 10k population) and the four around it releasing poison directly into the air every Wednesday night. There was no notice given to any of us, and only after investigating were we able to figure out why everyone's beehives died the same day, and we are left on our own to coordinate which nights we need to seal the windows or breath actual poison.
- hsavit1 5y agothis is horrendous. where are you located?
- kij 5y ago99% sure reddit is leaking in, and this is just some pop culture reference https://gta.fandom.com/wiki/Bugstars https://gta.fandom.com/wiki/Bugstars
- nonameiguess 5y agoIt's fictional, but similar things have happened, like the aerial malathion bombardments of the 80s in California to combat the Mediterranean fruit fly. I lived through that perfectly fine, but do remember it being pretty controversial (but I was a kid, so not sure how reliable my memories are).
- amatecha 5y agoSo like.. lawsuit? I'd definitely be calling up a lawyer (in addition to the city/police)... that's _seriously_ effed up. What if you had a home business selling honey/beeswax? That's just the most obvious example... not to mention the human-hazardous aspect of spraying this stuff!
- NationalPark 5y agoIt's not really happening, he's describing the plot of a video game.
- pengaru 5y agoLast year I had a jarring experience driving through some of the agricultural land near the Salton Sea en route to Bombay Beach coming down from JTNP, taking back roads. The general region is desert, water and food is scarce, but through this agricultural zone there's this dense pocket of food and water on the surface. I was in a Miata with the top down, and the amount of chemicals they were using to keep the pests/insects away from this lush green oasis in a land of nothing was noxious. I hadn't exited my car, just drove through these fields on the farm roads, and it left me feeling sick with a headache and nausea well into the next day. Of course I didn't encounter a single insect, spotless windshield.
- sickygnar 5y agoI've done the same drive, thru the farmland and cattle ranches to the south of the salton sea by Brawley. God it was noxious. Despite the sea having a reputation for an awful smell, it didn't compare to the farmland below. My throat hurts thinking about it. You sometimes get a similar effect in the san joaquin valley.
- BobbyJo 5y agoDrove through Texas agricultural land in spring of 2016. Windows up, not a convertible, and I was still horribly affected for 2 weeks. My eyes and nose burned the moment we started driving by the fields, and my nose continued to run and drain for 2 weeks after.
- pengaru 5y agoI believe it, but being Texas I imagine you drove through a much larger area. The distance I traveled through this poison was relatively little: https://goo.gl/maps/v7MQNgpffP2wNCrc7 https://goo.gl/maps/v7MQNgpffP2wNCrc7 It was Box Canyon S down to 111E, stair stepping a bit through the fields...
- ChainOfFools 5y agoThe name of that road is extraordinary appropriate, though, so I imagine under the right conditions it could trap and concentrate quite a lot of the aerosolized chemicals from the croplands it opens onto just south. While on the twisties through the namesake canyon you could have been blasted with several times the concentration found in the open air above the fields themselves.
- z3t4 5y agoAbout the same amounts of pests every summer, so I'm not concerned. If the winter comes fast, like 15 C one day and -15 C the next day, many will die and there will be less of them the following spring, but at the end of the summer they have usually recovered. I think the lack of pest are due to use of pesticides and lack of habitats - rather then some doomsday coming.
- rvense 5y agoThe doomsday that is coming is because of the pesticides.
- annoyingnoob 5y agoWhere I live there are termites flying around everywhere today, its a banner day for termites all over town.
- lsiebert 5y agoThe loss of pollinators is scary. blueberries, cherries, every brassica (broccoli, cabbage etc), carrots, squash, melons, and many more are insect polliated. A few other plants can also self pollinate, but with reduced yields.
- pfdietz 5y agoAll the major staple foods are wind pollinated.
- lsiebert 5y agoWheat and corn and a number of other plants are wind pollinated, so we won't lose everything. And we'll probably keep some plants that need bees alive in conservatories through manual pollination. Still scary, in that a single disruption, like a new illness infecting crops, would have a much bigger impact.
- foxhop 5y agoWe used technology to make the earth sick. The insects are fleeing to safe havens in places like my small backyard. Seriously all I did was stopped mowing, and instead use simple nudges to guide the manifestation of a natural system! So much abundance here, with some practice we all can make habitats for humans and animals (including attracting animals and humans by growing tasty food). We will rebuild stronger together, nature abhores a vacuum and will repair with us if we allow it to manifest. Thank goodness. Ref: https://youtu.be/aYewfMjRH0c https://youtu.be/aYewfMjRH0c
- silicon2401 5y agoI used to want a backyard wildlife refuge until I realized this also means having a backyard refuge for ticks. I'd love to know if there's a way around this
- WalterBright 5y agoKeep the deer out?
- imoverclocked 5y agoThere are a lot of things that eat ticks. eg: Chickens will turn ticks into eggs.
- whichquestion 5y agoOne way to lower your risk of ticks is to manage the parts of your yard you use most. Mowing paths into your yard instead of mowing the entire yard can help and allow the other parts of your yard to grow, planting patches of yard with native plants and allowing plants to grow instead of turf. If you can find a way to attract Opossum they are net tick destroyers. Keeping out deer will only help so well, as small mammals(chipmunks, mice, etc) are primarily the sustainers of tick populations.
- CalRobert 5y agoDo you get them even in the suburbs? If your yard is big enough, keep an area mowed short and a 3-5 meter buffer between that and tall growth. But that takes quite a lot of space.
- AtlasBarfed 5y agoHm, I would guess that it is the neonicotinoids pesticides. If I could point to my general recollection of the decline, I'd very vaguely point to that and when "roundup" became a thing. It does seem to be even more global than that though. So global warming is probably the main culprit. Look out the window next time you're in a jet. In america it seems like we have industrialized everything: food production, suburban housing, etc. The scale of our civilization is terrifying, and America is peanuts in terms of population (but NOT in terms of resource consumption per population, the far more important metric). The fact is economists can't estimate the value of an ecosystem, habitat, or wilderness. It's just untapped money to them if it's torn down. If economics, which directs 95% of our policy, can't get their heads out of the asses and figure out how to properly account for the existential value of nature, we are doomed. The fact that a pseudo-mathematical/pseudo-scientific area of study, one filled to the gills with venal denialist ultra-right-wing orthodoxy is the driving force of our future is not encouraging. Economics is useful in the small and medium scales, and in very limited large scales, I'm not going to sit here and tell you price theory, supply/demand, and game theory are all bunk, but the political force that is "economics" is a key contributor to our dire situation.
- WalterBright 5y agoPesticides need to be taxed to discourage their excessive and indiscriminate use.
- swayvil 5y agoMeh, crazy is like life. It always finds a way. Controlling it with laws is like herding mosquitoes with a chainlink fence. What we need is a cure for crazy (this whole obsesso, brainbound, machine-pooping culture being a symptom of that). I'm thinking psychedelics and meditation.
- kruzda 5y agoFind it interesting for this topic to be coming up after reading an article recently that goes into some detail on the concept of the perceived insect apocalypse https://quillette.com/2021/07/25/the-insect-apocalypse-that-never-was/amp/ https://quillette.com/2021/07/25/the-insect-apocalypse-that-...
- Kenji 5y agoMaybe they died of Covid lmao.
- rzz3 5y agoThey’ve all gone to my house. I solved the mystery. So many bugs :)
- gerdesj 5y ago"Wilson once stuck his arm into one of these mounds and described the pain as “immediate and unbearable.” " That's science, that is! We have systematically reduced the world's ecosystems into smaller and smaller islands and this bloke has demonstrated what happens on smaller islands: loss of diversity, fewer species.
- mensetmanusman 5y agoOne solution is indoor farming, because you can stack in 3D and have entirely controlled input and output. We would need like 100x the number of existing mechanics and mechatronics folks to keep such an endeavor operational though.