13 ms·

Here in the ultra-dense Netherlands, threats to insects are magnified. As such, it's easier to point to specific causes. Butterflies: 50% reduction in 50 years

by fleddr 4y ago

Here in the ultra-dense Netherlands, threats to insects are magnified. As such, it's easier to point to specific causes. Butterflies: 50% reduction in 50 years. Beetles: 75% decline since 1985. Ladybugs: 50% reduction in 20 years. Across the border in Germany: a 75% decline in flying insects since 1989. It doesn't take much of a scientist to see the trend. I've been hiking the forests here multiple times per week for 20 years. You can clearly see how some groups are disappearing whilst others remain. There's several root causes but the primary one is a lack of native plant diversity. Since agriculture over here is done in close proximity to forests, the soil becomes acid due to the nitrogen disposition. This benefits the growth of a handful of plants at the expense of all others. In some of our forests, the soil is now so acid that snails no longer develop a case and bird eggs collapse. In this plant monoculture, insects depending on a specific host plant disappear. Outside (protected) forests, things aren't much better. Even the tiniest of strips of grass that would normally produce wildflowers, are aggressively mowed down. People's gardens are designed to be as hostile to insects as is possible. Secondary reasons are invasive species and light pollution. It's a sad state of affairs and one we should be deeply ashamed of. We're not talking about some iconic predator requiring hundreds of acres of wild forest just to survive. We're talking about insects that require little space, healthy soil, a flower, and for it to be left alone. We can't even offer that.

newsclues 4y ago
Is there a push to move to smaller regenerative farms occurring?
- WJW 4y ago
  Yes, but the farmers are (obviously) not in favor and have been protesting heavily.
  - jorvi 4y ago
    I would replace 'protesting' with 'terrorizing'. They've been visiting politicians their homes with torches, threatening them and explicitly their kids, blockading highways with burning rubble, blocking highways with asbestos, using their tractors to rip out doors out of government buildings. What is most aggrieving to me is that the police is pseudo on the side of the farmers. The head of the police said that he 'fully understands the plight of the farmers' and will keep on a policy of de-escalation. Scant few fines too. Meanwhile a couple of climate protestors that tie themselves to a bridge get their head bashed in and then get fines of €300-5000. Clown world.
    - kapsi 4y ago
      If there were that many of organized climate protesters they would be heard as well, it always comes down to numbers and potential for violence.
    - ryan93 4y ago
      I mean placing the blame for climate change on the backs of Dutch farmers was absurd. They should have started with severe controls on importing goods from countries with high levels of pollution
      - wartijn_ 4y ago
        Do you have a source of the government "placing the blame for climate change on the backs of Dutch farmers"? The Dutch government wanted[0] to curb emissions, and since (high intensity) farms are huge polluters, some of the measurements affected farmers.But I can't remember them placing the blame on the farmers. [0] Well, they didn't really want it, but had to https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/24/dutch-officials-reveal-measures-to-cut-emissions-after-court-ruling https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/24/dutch-official...
      - donkeyd 4y ago
        > placing the blame for climate change on the backs of Dutch farmers was absurd Nobody is doing that, this is blatant misinformation that is being spread by interest groups that profit off Dutch farmers. Most of the discussion around farmers over here has to do with nitrogen. As the OP mentioned, it is causing acidification of nature areas, which is negatively impacting all sorts of wildlife. It's a mostly local problem, often caused by intensive farming and is mostly unrelated to climate change.
        naasking 4y ago
        > Most of the discussion around farmers over here has to do with nitrogen. Yes, and nitrogen fertilizer yields nitrous oxide which is a greenhouse gas implicated in climate change [1]. This is not just "misinformation", this is part of the reason behind the push to ban nitrogen fertilizer. [1] https://climate.mit.edu/explainers/fertilizer-and-climate-change https://climate.mit.edu/explainers/fertilizer-and-climate-ch...
- chickenimprint 4y ago
  How would that work? We don't have enough land as it is. And we can't pay for the additional labor small farms need, or food inflation will explode. Making agriculture unproductive will just push the demand outwards like a beaker of toxic reactants boiling over. We can't impose more trade restrictions on foreign agricultural goods either, for fear of a trade war. This hopeless romanticism of small organic mom-and-pop farming is misguided. The only solution I see is huge, highly efficient, automated, but also highly regulated farms. That, and veganism.
  - b112 4y ago
    We don't have enough land as it is. Only discussing the land statement here, but we have loads and loads and loads of unused farmland. At least, that is true in Canada, and I suspect the US, and I know in the EU some are paid not to farm. In Canada, we have quotas on some things, to prevent over production. There are two real issues: * drought, or summers with few sunny days, reducing yields * random new diseases So we need that fallow land, just in case, which is why people are given inventives to have farm land, but not use it. Yet we still have so much farm land, that we sell the best of it to developers, who then create housing. We have loads of unused farmland. One last thing. China's population is going to almost halve, over the next 15 years, Russia will have a major population decline, and the most industrialized nations are the same. Canada has solved this top heavy, old age die off, with immigration. More than 30% of Canadian citizens, for example, we not born in Canada. But for those with lower immigration numbers, and low birth rates (basically the entire industrialized world), populations will plummet by 30% to 50% in the next 25 years. China had the one child program, and the birth rate in Canada is less than 1 for every 2 adults, for Canadians boen here. The rest of the West is the same. So worldwide, our population will plummet very soon.
    - rmah 4y ago
      Yes, especially on the east coast, vast swaths of what was once farmland and pasture is now forest again. For example, most of Connecticut's forests were cut down for not very productive farms before good transportation infrastructure allowed that activity to be moved to more suitable areas. It's now forest again and atlantic salmon are back for the first time in a century.
- zip1234 4y ago
  Probably better to stop propping up the small farms and let the unproductive land be reclaimed by nature. Extensively use pest resistant GMO crops to increase yields on less land and overall lessen the land needed for farming. At the same time, lessening sprawl would be quite helpful. I see plenty of people 'move out to the country' and then spray pesticides over their entire 5 acre lawn.
jgraham 4y ago
It's good to see a comment that recognises that this "bug splatter on the windshield" data is mostly just an easily observed hook to connect the measured declines to people's everyday life experiences. The topic seems to come up here ever few months, and there's always a significant percentage of the discussion devoted to aerodynamic effects, or changes in insect distribution specific to roadside habitats. Those converstations often feel like "middlebrow dismissal": people who think the fact they can come up with a plausible alternate explaination for the data given a few seconds thought means it's likely that the studies are totally flawed and can be ignored. Meanwhile if you dig in to the actual evidence, the studies based on vehicle data show a small negative correlation between vehicle age and number of impacted flying insects (i.e. older cars have slightly fewer splats, not more). More importantly, the general trends of declining biomass of (especially, but not only) flying insects reproduce over a wide range of methodologies and habitats. For skeptical readers, there are some links to studies in a previous comment I made on a previous thread on this same general topic [1]. Having said that, I think you've missed one of the big factors that's likely to contribute to the decline: the widespread use of insecticides (especially) and herbicides in industrial agriculture. Studies on bees show that even insects exposed to something much lower than the LD50 of certain insecticides experience behavioural changes that dramatically decrease their survival rates. And because "pest" insects typicaly have short lifecycles and rapid reproduction rates, they're often best placed to evolve tolerances for the insecticides, so there's pressure on farmers to use more and more to get the same effect. For anyone who's interested in an introduction to this topic aimed at the general public (like me!), but written by a Professor of Entomology, I can recommend Slient Earth [2]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31278206 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31278206 [2] https://bookshop.org/p/books/silent-earth-averting-the-insect-apocalypse-dave-goulson/18273081?ean=9780063088207 https://bookshop.org/p/books/silent-earth-averting-the-insec...
- fleddr 4y ago
  I happen to study/photograph insects as an amateur and can casually confirm the collateral damage pesticides have on insect life. A common manifestation of it is to find lethargic insects. Bodily fully intact and seeming healthy, yet barely able to move. Insects normally skittish that you can simply pick up. I'm not talking about insects at the end of their life cycle or them being very cold. There's something very wrong with these individuals, I believe studies suggest their brains are messed up from the pesticides.
dutchbrit 4y ago
It’s also sad to see what people are doing to their gardens over here. Fake grass, no plants/just bricks. Not to mention the municipalities mowing nice patches of grass/plants/flowers where insects thrive.
- Beltalowda 4y ago
  One thing I've noticed after moving back to the Netherlands is how absolutely obsessed people are with keeping things "tidy". In a way, it's nice I guess, at least sometimes, but it comes with some serious costs too. This is not unique to the Netherlands, but we're probably the best (or worst?) at it, except maybe Singapore.
  - bamboozled 4y ago
    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/24/let-fallen-leaves-lie-gardeners-in-netherlands-town-urged-eindhoven https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/24/let-fall... Article from today, “let fallen leaves lie”
    - Beltalowda 4y ago
      It just so happens I live in Eindoven, so I guess some more explaining is needed. They're working with the leafeblower now. I hate those contraptions so much.
      - dutchbrit 4y ago
        As a fellow Eindhovenaar I hate the leaf blowers too!
    - noasaservice 4y ago
      I blow them off my wood deck, so they don't rot and damage the wood. I let them lie on the rest of my 1.6 acres. And the 1 acre that's forested, we're working on trying to de-invasive-ize the forest and try to help rehabilitate it. Its just 2 of us, but we're trying.
lettergram 4y ago
While I don’t disagree with those two points I don’t know if they’re the primary cause. I also think it’s important to put it into context. 1. These insects weren’t really robust to begin with. Take the monarch butterfly in the North America. They actually needed primarily milkweed to survive. A single point of failure (milkweed) can cause the population to collapse. When we put up houses and converted land to farms, you’re correct we killed many of the native species, but those species were HIGHLY tuned to a particular niche. In 100-200 years it’s likely the insects that survived will re-occupy new niches. 2. Insects typically need a much smaller range to survive, so hikes in the same woods as when you were a kid doesn’t add up. Unless there was another massive environmental issue - such as pesticides or chemicals like DDT which have a secondary impact. Personally, that bird egg analogy sounds exactly like what the US saw with DDT and the collapse of the eagle population. 3. In the 1950s in the Midwest there had already been farmland all over for 50+ years. Same with Ireland (for hundreds). The insect populations have only noticeably declined in the last few decades. Unfortunately, we don’t have enough historical data to confirm what it is exactly. Even in the 1970s you’d have solid layers of bugs on windshields driving between cornfields. Now, nothing. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_in_insect_populations https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_in_insect_population... To me, this indicates a chemical or set there of, as the most likely culprits. EDIT: DET -> DDT
- vidanay 4y ago
  DDT not DET
- data_maan 4y ago
  > In 100-200 years it’s likely the insects that survived will re-occupy new niches. Do you have any data to back this up? Also, the problem is that not many insects ARE going to survive. > The insect populations have only noticeably declined in the last few decades. This is probably outright misleading, since you don't have the data prior to those decades. The common mistake is that people use their own lifespan as a measure for things. --- Everybody talks about the gender pay gap and ethnic diversity these days, but biodiversity is not on the radar :(
  - 4y ago
donkeyd 4y ago
Wow, it's refreshing to see a Dutch person write down the impact of nitrogen as facts. Around me, its seems like slowly everyone is starting to doubt/deny the impact of nitrogen and whether it's something we need to care about. I'm starting to feel less at home in this country by the day because of it (and all the upside down flags consequently).
- fleddr 4y ago
  It's a worldwide thing. An urbanized population does not care about nature. At all. Modern life is almost fully abstracted away from it, and it seems fine to destroy it for as long as our delicate lifestyle remains intact. Every once in a while, we watch a documentary like Planet Earth. It inspires even the most cynical stoic. And we feel terrible about our negative role. But the next day we go on as usual. And as soon as a tiny thing is asked of us to better the course, we resist like a maniac.
  - donkeyd 4y ago
    > as soon as a tiny thing is asked of us to better the course Well, I also see a lot of people who do the tiny thing but not the big thing. Plenty of people around me are reducing their meat intake (and are vocal about it), because climate change, but still fly on airplanes, some multiple times a year. It's so incredibly frustrating that many people are just green washing their lives, but are oblivious to the fact they're not really doing much at all. I do have massive respect for the people I do know that have quit eating meat and are now doing all their travels by train.
    - fleddr 4y ago
      Respectfully, I think your take on this does not work. If before you have a frequent flyer that regularly eats meat, and next they stop eating meat, that is to be celebrated. It's still massive progress. Further, their footprint from flying may improve over time as airlines are investing in sustainability. From flying 3 times a year to 2 times a year is big progress. From eating lots of meat to somewhat less, is progress. By implying footprint perfection, it all becomes very reductive and people will reject it. With that mindset, you'll be able to find "dirt" on anyone. I mean, how very polluting must David Attenborough be? As for bettering the course regarding insects, I wasn't even suggesting CO2 reduction. Just introducing some small spaces where wildflowers can grow, and they will come. It takes almost nothing.
geysersam 4y ago
I'm surprised you didn't mention pesticide usage as one of the reasons. Or is that not an important factor?
- fleddr 4y ago
  It most definitely is. But even without pesticides, insects cannot survive without plant diversity. At least most groups can't.
toss1 4y ago
Yup. Visited the US Midwest (Minnesota) recently and driving from the airport city to another smaller city, started going out into farmland. At first, it seemed like a nice bucolic change. But soon, it took on a far darker aspect - this was a barren monoculture, as far as the eye could see, for dozens of miles. Where to the birds, reptiles, amphibians, mammals, and insects live? The land is not only covered with chemicals to kill or repel any now-unwelcome residents, but there is simply no usable habitat (and a thin row of trees every mile or so doesn't count). It was a truly dystopian experience, and more so by knowing that this goes on for thousands of square miles. This is not our grandparent's farmland anymore. This is not nature. This is one species becoming a literal plague on the planet. It is not sustainable.
- anon84873628 4y ago
  At one point during the development of California agriculture, there was an idea that farms should only be 160 acres in size, since that was what was manageable and profitable for a smallholder family. I wonder what the land would be like if we had managed to enforce that. There would probably be more crop diversity at least, and habitats in between the farms. Kind of like anti-trust enforcement for the land itself
  - willnonya 4y ago
    The only thing you can know for sure is that it would have driven up prices and reduced supply.
    - toss1 4y ago
      Nonsense It could have just as easily driven innovation towards efficiently working those kinds of plots, reduced topsoil loss and degradation (reducing fertilizer costs), reduced requirements for pesticides (lower costs again), and improved yields driving down prices. Especially now with accelerating agri-robotics developments, mid-sized farms like that can take best advantage. That kind of comment shows that you are using zero knowledge of growing, farming, or that complexities of soil chemistry and soil biology even exist. Not helpful. If you have some such actual knowledge, show some. Sheesh.
moffkalast 4y ago
> some groups are disappearing whilst others remain Speaking of those that remain, I can say beyond reasonable doubt that there is an insane percentage increase in stinkbug populations in recent years. Fuckers get absolutely everywhere.
bmitc 4y ago
And what's crazy is that everyone thinks it's going to be electric cars that somehow saves us. When the fact of the matter is there is a ton of stuff we can start doing today that would positively impact the environment. It's pretty easy: * Restore lawn areas to native plants: small (wildflowers), medium (bushes), big (trees) * For areas that are kept as lawn, simply mow less. Allow plants to flower. Don't treat clover as evil. Support multiple grass types. Stop using chemical fertilizers and stop trying to feed the grass. Feed the soil with organic fertilizers and compost. That's it! It reduces maintenance costs and time, reduces the use of gasoline, reduces noise pollution, and vastly improves soil health, insect and wildlife health, and increases pollination of our own food. It's a literal win-win. And yet, no one does it. They turn their lawns into wastelands and never even use them. I've heard that lawns should be compared to deserts but that even that is disregarding the biodiversity that deserts have over lawns.
- namaria 4y ago
  There is no salvation. Whatever was Earth before human civilization is in a death spiral. What comes next is anyone's guess. Elites are massing wealth to get off planet, and when the mass migrations really start and mid income countries start becoming failed states on their path, I hope you are in a place that can hold you safe for the remainder of your time here.
  - Cryptonic 4y ago
    I think it's a fantasy of the elites. There is no planet B. Not in the time frame we talk about. By far.
    - bmitc 4y ago
      I agree that it's a fantasy. For one, I think Mars is just a power play by the likes of people like Musk and Bezos. It doesn't even make sense to view Mars as a backup for Earth because, at least currently, Earth is still alive and Mars is already completely dead. It's like saying "we're going to kill off the only planet that can sustain us to get to a planet that cannot sustain us". It's mind boggling that we can get people excited about electric cars and Mars but cannot get those same people to realize the reality that Earth is the only planet known to mankind that can sustain us.
alexitosrv 4y ago
Your last paragraph nailed it! It's a shame. Today HN is on roll of realistic but pessimistic landscape that hits hard.

by fleddr 4y ago

newsclues 4y ago

Is there a push to move to smaller regenerative farms occurring?

WJW 4y ago
Yes, but the farmers are (obviously) not in favor and have been protesting heavily.
- jorvi 4y ago
  I would replace 'protesting' with 'terrorizing'. They've been visiting politicians their homes with torches, threatening them and explicitly their kids, blockading highways with burning rubble, blocking highways with asbestos, using their tractors to rip out doors out of government buildings. What is most aggrieving to me is that the police is pseudo on the side of the farmers. The head of the police said that he 'fully understands the plight of the farmers' and will keep on a policy of de-escalation. Scant few fines too. Meanwhile a couple of climate protestors that tie themselves to a bridge get their head bashed in and then get fines of €300-5000. Clown world.
  - kapsi 4y ago
    If there were that many of organized climate protesters they would be heard as well, it always comes down to numbers and potential for violence.
  - ryan93 4y ago
    I mean placing the blame for climate change on the backs of Dutch farmers was absurd. They should have started with severe controls on importing goods from countries with high levels of pollution
    - wartijn_ 4y ago
      Do you have a source of the government "placing the blame for climate change on the backs of Dutch farmers"? The Dutch government wanted[0] to curb emissions, and since (high intensity) farms are huge polluters, some of the measurements affected farmers.But I can't remember them placing the blame on the farmers. [0] Well, they didn't really want it, but had to https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/24/dutch-officials-reveal-measures-to-cut-emissions-after-court-ruling https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/24/dutch-official...
    - donkeyd 4y ago
      > placing the blame for climate change on the backs of Dutch farmers was absurd Nobody is doing that, this is blatant misinformation that is being spread by interest groups that profit off Dutch farmers. Most of the discussion around farmers over here has to do with nitrogen. As the OP mentioned, it is causing acidification of nature areas, which is negatively impacting all sorts of wildlife. It's a mostly local problem, often caused by intensive farming and is mostly unrelated to climate change.
      - naasking 4y ago
        > Most of the discussion around farmers over here has to do with nitrogen. Yes, and nitrogen fertilizer yields nitrous oxide which is a greenhouse gas implicated in climate change [1]. This is not just "misinformation", this is part of the reason behind the push to ban nitrogen fertilizer. [1] https://climate.mit.edu/explainers/fertilizer-and-climate-change https://climate.mit.edu/explainers/fertilizer-and-climate-ch...
chickenimprint 4y ago
How would that work? We don't have enough land as it is. And we can't pay for the additional labor small farms need, or food inflation will explode. Making agriculture unproductive will just push the demand outwards like a beaker of toxic reactants boiling over. We can't impose more trade restrictions on foreign agricultural goods either, for fear of a trade war. This hopeless romanticism of small organic mom-and-pop farming is misguided. The only solution I see is huge, highly efficient, automated, but also highly regulated farms. That, and veganism.
- b112 4y ago
  We don't have enough land as it is. Only discussing the land statement here, but we have loads and loads and loads of unused farmland. At least, that is true in Canada, and I suspect the US, and I know in the EU some are paid not to farm. In Canada, we have quotas on some things, to prevent over production. There are two real issues: * drought, or summers with few sunny days, reducing yields * random new diseases So we need that fallow land, just in case, which is why people are given inventives to have farm land, but not use it. Yet we still have so much farm land, that we sell the best of it to developers, who then create housing. We have loads of unused farmland. One last thing. China's population is going to almost halve, over the next 15 years, Russia will have a major population decline, and the most industrialized nations are the same. Canada has solved this top heavy, old age die off, with immigration. More than 30% of Canadian citizens, for example, we not born in Canada. But for those with lower immigration numbers, and low birth rates (basically the entire industrialized world), populations will plummet by 30% to 50% in the next 25 years. China had the one child program, and the birth rate in Canada is less than 1 for every 2 adults, for Canadians boen here. The rest of the West is the same. So worldwide, our population will plummet very soon.
  - rmah 4y ago
    Yes, especially on the east coast, vast swaths of what was once farmland and pasture is now forest again. For example, most of Connecticut's forests were cut down for not very productive farms before good transportation infrastructure allowed that activity to be moved to more suitable areas. It's now forest again and atlantic salmon are back for the first time in a century.
zip1234 4y ago
Probably better to stop propping up the small farms and let the unproductive land be reclaimed by nature. Extensively use pest resistant GMO crops to increase yields on less land and overall lessen the land needed for farming. At the same time, lessening sprawl would be quite helpful. I see plenty of people 'move out to the country' and then spray pesticides over their entire 5 acre lawn.

jgraham 4y ago

It's good to see a comment that recognises that this "bug splatter on the windshield" data is mostly just an easily observed hook to connect the measured declines to people's everyday life experiences. The topic seems to come up here ever few months, and there's always a significant percentage of the discussion devoted to aerodynamic effects, or changes in insect distribution specific to roadside habitats. Those converstations often feel like "middlebrow dismissal": people who think the fact they can come up with a plausible alternate explaination for the data given a few seconds thought means it's likely that the studies are totally flawed and can be ignored. Meanwhile if you dig in to the actual evidence, the studies based on vehicle data show a small negative correlation between vehicle age and number of impacted flying insects (i.e. older cars have slightly fewer splats, not more). More importantly, the general trends of declining biomass of (especially, but not only) flying insects reproduce over a wide range of methodologies and habitats. For skeptical readers, there are some links to studies in a previous comment I made on a previous thread on this same general topic [1]. Having said that, I think you've missed one of the big factors that's likely to contribute to the decline: the widespread use of insecticides (especially) and herbicides in industrial agriculture. Studies on bees show that even insects exposed to something much lower than the LD50 of certain insecticides experience behavioural changes that dramatically decrease their survival rates. And because "pest" insects typicaly have short lifecycles and rapid reproduction rates, they're often best placed to evolve tolerances for the insecticides, so there's pressure on farmers to use more and more to get the same effect. For anyone who's interested in an introduction to this topic aimed at the general public (like me!), but written by a Professor of Entomology, I can recommend Slient Earth [2]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31278206 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31278206 [2] https://bookshop.org/p/books/silent-earth-averting-the-insect-apocalypse-dave-goulson/18273081?ean=9780063088207 https://bookshop.org/p/books/silent-earth-averting-the-insec...

fleddr 4y ago
I happen to study/photograph insects as an amateur and can casually confirm the collateral damage pesticides have on insect life. A common manifestation of it is to find lethargic insects. Bodily fully intact and seeming healthy, yet barely able to move. Insects normally skittish that you can simply pick up. I'm not talking about insects at the end of their life cycle or them being very cold. There's something very wrong with these individuals, I believe studies suggest their brains are messed up from the pesticides.

dutchbrit 4y ago

It’s also sad to see what people are doing to their gardens over here. Fake grass, no plants/just bricks. Not to mention the municipalities mowing nice patches of grass/plants/flowers where insects thrive.

Beltalowda 4y ago
One thing I've noticed after moving back to the Netherlands is how absolutely obsessed people are with keeping things "tidy". In a way, it's nice I guess, at least sometimes, but it comes with some serious costs too. This is not unique to the Netherlands, but we're probably the best (or worst?) at it, except maybe Singapore.
- bamboozled 4y ago
  https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/24/let-fallen-leaves-lie-gardeners-in-netherlands-town-urged-eindhoven https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/24/let-fall... Article from today, “let fallen leaves lie”
  - Beltalowda 4y ago
    It just so happens I live in Eindoven, so I guess some more explaining is needed. They're working with the leafeblower now. I hate those contraptions so much.
    - dutchbrit 4y ago
      As a fellow Eindhovenaar I hate the leaf blowers too!
  - noasaservice 4y ago
    I blow them off my wood deck, so they don't rot and damage the wood. I let them lie on the rest of my 1.6 acres. And the 1 acre that's forested, we're working on trying to de-invasive-ize the forest and try to help rehabilitate it. Its just 2 of us, but we're trying.

lettergram 4y ago

While I don’t disagree with those two points I don’t know if they’re the primary cause. I also think it’s important to put it into context. 1. These insects weren’t really robust to begin with. Take the monarch butterfly in the North America. They actually needed primarily milkweed to survive. A single point of failure (milkweed) can cause the population to collapse. When we put up houses and converted land to farms, you’re correct we killed many of the native species, but those species were HIGHLY tuned to a particular niche. In 100-200 years it’s likely the insects that survived will re-occupy new niches. 2. Insects typically need a much smaller range to survive, so hikes in the same woods as when you were a kid doesn’t add up. Unless there was another massive environmental issue - such as pesticides or chemicals like DDT which have a secondary impact. Personally, that bird egg analogy sounds exactly like what the US saw with DDT and the collapse of the eagle population. 3. In the 1950s in the Midwest there had already been farmland all over for 50+ years. Same with Ireland (for hundreds). The insect populations have only noticeably declined in the last few decades. Unfortunately, we don’t have enough historical data to confirm what it is exactly. Even in the 1970s you’d have solid layers of bugs on windshields driving between cornfields. Now, nothing. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_in_insect_populations https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_in_insect_population... To me, this indicates a chemical or set there of, as the most likely culprits. EDIT: DET -> DDT

vidanay 4y ago
DDT not DET
data_maan 4y ago
> In 100-200 years it’s likely the insects that survived will re-occupy new niches. Do you have any data to back this up? Also, the problem is that not many insects ARE going to survive. > The insect populations have only noticeably declined in the last few decades. This is probably outright misleading, since you don't have the data prior to those decades. The common mistake is that people use their own lifespan as a measure for things. --- Everybody talks about the gender pay gap and ethnic diversity these days, but biodiversity is not on the radar :(
- 4y ago

donkeyd 4y ago

Wow, it's refreshing to see a Dutch person write down the impact of nitrogen as facts. Around me, its seems like slowly everyone is starting to doubt/deny the impact of nitrogen and whether it's something we need to care about. I'm starting to feel less at home in this country by the day because of it (and all the upside down flags consequently).

fleddr 4y ago
It's a worldwide thing. An urbanized population does not care about nature. At all. Modern life is almost fully abstracted away from it, and it seems fine to destroy it for as long as our delicate lifestyle remains intact. Every once in a while, we watch a documentary like Planet Earth. It inspires even the most cynical stoic. And we feel terrible about our negative role. But the next day we go on as usual. And as soon as a tiny thing is asked of us to better the course, we resist like a maniac.
- donkeyd 4y ago
  > as soon as a tiny thing is asked of us to better the course Well, I also see a lot of people who do the tiny thing but not the big thing. Plenty of people around me are reducing their meat intake (and are vocal about it), because climate change, but still fly on airplanes, some multiple times a year. It's so incredibly frustrating that many people are just green washing their lives, but are oblivious to the fact they're not really doing much at all. I do have massive respect for the people I do know that have quit eating meat and are now doing all their travels by train.
  - fleddr 4y ago
    Respectfully, I think your take on this does not work. If before you have a frequent flyer that regularly eats meat, and next they stop eating meat, that is to be celebrated. It's still massive progress. Further, their footprint from flying may improve over time as airlines are investing in sustainability. From flying 3 times a year to 2 times a year is big progress. From eating lots of meat to somewhat less, is progress. By implying footprint perfection, it all becomes very reductive and people will reject it. With that mindset, you'll be able to find "dirt" on anyone. I mean, how very polluting must David Attenborough be? As for bettering the course regarding insects, I wasn't even suggesting CO2 reduction. Just introducing some small spaces where wildflowers can grow, and they will come. It takes almost nothing.

geysersam 4y ago

I'm surprised you didn't mention pesticide usage as one of the reasons. Or is that not an important factor?

fleddr 4y ago
It most definitely is. But even without pesticides, insects cannot survive without plant diversity. At least most groups can't.

toss1 4y ago

Yup. Visited the US Midwest (Minnesota) recently and driving from the airport city to another smaller city, started going out into farmland. At first, it seemed like a nice bucolic change. But soon, it took on a far darker aspect - this was a barren monoculture, as far as the eye could see, for dozens of miles. Where to the birds, reptiles, amphibians, mammals, and insects live? The land is not only covered with chemicals to kill or repel any now-unwelcome residents, but there is simply no usable habitat (and a thin row of trees every mile or so doesn't count). It was a truly dystopian experience, and more so by knowing that this goes on for thousands of square miles. This is not our grandparent's farmland anymore. This is not nature. This is one species becoming a literal plague on the planet. It is not sustainable.

anon84873628 4y ago
At one point during the development of California agriculture, there was an idea that farms should only be 160 acres in size, since that was what was manageable and profitable for a smallholder family. I wonder what the land would be like if we had managed to enforce that. There would probably be more crop diversity at least, and habitats in between the farms. Kind of like anti-trust enforcement for the land itself
- willnonya 4y ago
  The only thing you can know for sure is that it would have driven up prices and reduced supply.
  - toss1 4y ago
    Nonsense It could have just as easily driven innovation towards efficiently working those kinds of plots, reduced topsoil loss and degradation (reducing fertilizer costs), reduced requirements for pesticides (lower costs again), and improved yields driving down prices. Especially now with accelerating agri-robotics developments, mid-sized farms like that can take best advantage. That kind of comment shows that you are using zero knowledge of growing, farming, or that complexities of soil chemistry and soil biology even exist. Not helpful. If you have some such actual knowledge, show some. Sheesh.

moffkalast 4y ago

> some groups are disappearing whilst others remain Speaking of those that remain, I can say beyond reasonable doubt that there is an insane percentage increase in stinkbug populations in recent years. Fuckers get absolutely everywhere.

bmitc 4y ago

And what's crazy is that everyone thinks it's going to be electric cars that somehow saves us. When the fact of the matter is there is a ton of stuff we can start doing today that would positively impact the environment. It's pretty easy: * Restore lawn areas to native plants: small (wildflowers), medium (bushes), big (trees) * For areas that are kept as lawn, simply mow less. Allow plants to flower. Don't treat clover as evil. Support multiple grass types. Stop using chemical fertilizers and stop trying to feed the grass. Feed the soil with organic fertilizers and compost. That's it! It reduces maintenance costs and time, reduces the use of gasoline, reduces noise pollution, and vastly improves soil health, insect and wildlife health, and increases pollination of our own food. It's a literal win-win. And yet, no one does it. They turn their lawns into wastelands and never even use them. I've heard that lawns should be compared to deserts but that even that is disregarding the biodiversity that deserts have over lawns.

namaria 4y ago
There is no salvation. Whatever was Earth before human civilization is in a death spiral. What comes next is anyone's guess. Elites are massing wealth to get off planet, and when the mass migrations really start and mid income countries start becoming failed states on their path, I hope you are in a place that can hold you safe for the remainder of your time here.
- Cryptonic 4y ago
  I think it's a fantasy of the elites. There is no planet B. Not in the time frame we talk about. By far.
  - bmitc 4y ago
    I agree that it's a fantasy. For one, I think Mars is just a power play by the likes of people like Musk and Bezos. It doesn't even make sense to view Mars as a backup for Earth because, at least currently, Earth is still alive and Mars is already completely dead. It's like saying "we're going to kill off the only planet that can sustain us to get to a planet that cannot sustain us". It's mind boggling that we can get people excited about electric cars and Mars but cannot get those same people to realize the reality that Earth is the only planet known to mankind that can sustain us.

alexitosrv 4y ago

Your last paragraph nailed it! It's a shame. Today HN is on roll of realistic but pessimistic landscape that hits hard.