where did all the bugs go? (sprays pesticides on lawn) why are there fewer birds than there used to be? (cuts down weeds and bushes and tall grass) what a mystery
where did all the bugs go? (sprays pesticides on lawn) why are there fewer birds than there used to be? (cuts down weeds and bushes and tall grass) what a mystery
Since people are reading this, let me rant a bit:
One of the things you can do, as an individual, to help your local environment, is grow flowers. Even if you live in an apartment, just a flower pot on a windowsill helps - even tiny urban gardens have an outside impact on pollinators.
If you have a yard, you can replace invasive grasses with native species and nectar-rich flowers. Don't use herbicides or pesticides. Leave leaf litter alone over the winter to provide habitat for insects. Set aside a section to "go wild". Just like with flower pots, leaving even a small section of lawn without chemicals and frequent mowing can have an outsized impact on pollinators and native insects.
Lawns and gardens are a space where individual effort and individual care for the environment really does matter. You might not be able to reverse climate change, but you can make a migratory monarch butterfly's day just a little better.
And tell people! Tell people how you are gardening and how you're managing your lawn, and why. Because the most important thing you can do for the climate is talk about it.
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Even just through personal experience - I drove more than 1200 miles through the US midwest this summer. Corn country.
30 years ago I would have needed to squeegee my windshield at every gas station. This year I think I hit one bug large enough to even notice it.
My yard is mostly clover and similar ground cover, but I think my patch of lawn may be having less of an impact than industrial agriculture.
Yep. I think it's Roundup. Used to be people used chemical herbicides with more discretion to avoid harming crops, so bugs could live on weeds in patches or at the edges of fields.
Nowadays you just plant a strain of corn or soybeans that's immune to Roundup and soak your entire field in glyphosate multiple times a year. So the only insects that have food or shelter anywhere near you are ones that can live on your crop - and then you spray pesticides to kill those.
Result: millions and millions of acres of essentially sterile agricultural monocrop.
And more and more land is being turned into agricultural monocrop - not because a growing population needs more food, but because of bad laws and subsidies. Almost 100 million acres in the US - 40% of the American corn crop - is used to produce fucking ethanol, which burns more fossil fuel to produce than it replaces and is only profitable because of massive government subsidies procured by energy and agricultural lobbyists.
We are wiping hundreds of square miles of land clean of life in order to turn one fossil fuel into another less efficient fossil fuel. It's species wide insanity.
And that being said: even though agriculture is a much bigger contributor to the ongoing insect omnicide than suburban pest spraying, when you keep the chemicals off your lawn and allow native plants and flowers to grow, it does help your local bugs, and you are making an impact.
About a thousand (metaphorical) years ago, biochemistry and genetics was in still in its fairly early stages. I read articles about deciphering plant genomics and finding a way to make them naturally more resistant to insects and disease by exploiting the native resistance of certain plants. And I was a science nerd who had experienced food insecurity AND ready to head off to college.
"Hell yeah" I thought. "That's what I want to do with my life's work. Everyone gets to eat and we don't need to spray everything with poison to get there."
What we got was Roundup-Ready corn.
I'm glad I didn't go into that line of work because I may have tried to burn Monsanto to the ground and come to regret it later in a federal prison.
I have driven through one of the grass growing areas of Australia (wheat, barley, all the animal feed, etc)
It's so dead other than the specific grass grown in that field
It was nice getting into a beef raising area where there were trees and wild plants
Not denying there are less insects nowadays, but part of that is also due to cars being much more aerodynamic nowadays though
That's been tested by driving old cars, and no, that's not it.
https://www.kbb.com/car-news/have-you-noticed-fewer-bug-splats-on-your-windshield-scientists-have/
Wired reports, “the research included vintage cars up to 70 years old to see if their less aerodynamic shape meant they killed more bugs, but it found that modern cars actually hit slightly more insects.”
Modern cars aren't necessarily that much more aerodynamic, anyway. Depends on when you're talking about. Porsche and Chrysler both found just about the most optimal shape for cars back in the 1930s. Chrysler didn't stick with it, but Porsche did, and the basic idea was rediscovered by everyone else later.