As a long time gardener I have been aware of the declining number of Monarch butterflies and bees. When I looked to see if anyone had noticed there was an Insect Apocalypse on its way, I found several articles. Jeane – I remember one long ago summer when the bugs were terrible. Recent reports of dramatic declines in insect populations have sparked concern about an 'insect apocalypse.' Wilson, who has spent much of his life studying ants. Sune Boye Riis was on a bike ride with his youngest son, enjoying the sun slanting over the fields and woodlands near their home north of Copenhagen, when it suddenly occurred to him that something about the experience was amiss. Posted on November 29, 2018 | Leave a comment. Wilson. Tallamy has taken his own action. Makes me sad. title="MySpace">, Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window), Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window). The story, whose eerie tone recalls an episode of Stranger Things, tracks the decline of the decomposers and pollinators that keep our planet healthy, and chronicles the mounting alarm that has attended their collapse. To Brooke Jarvis, it’s a harbinger of doom. How much worse can it get than that?”, When Tallamy spoke at our local Spring Garden Symposium a couple of years ago he noted two threats, “Humans’ war on weeds and vast farmland planted with the same few crops. It’s alarming. Behind the Cover: The Insect Apocalypse Inside the process for creating this cover. “If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. 11/27/2018 The Insect Apocalypse Is Here - The New York Times I am doing what I can to support these ‘bugs’ but it will take more. As a former beekeeper aware of threats to bees I also plant cardinal flowers, obedient plant, buttonbush, culver’s root, and turtlehead and welcome every kind of bee that visits. Jean – Doug Tallamy’s book was a revelation to me too. We suddenly realize that particular chore has not been necessary for years. (CNN) — It’s being called the unnoticed apocalypse: The number of insects is declining rapidly and 41% of bug species face extinction, scientists say. Global climate change is having devastating consequences and some of these may be out of our control, but we can at least not contribute to the collapse of natural systems that we’re now seeing by not purchasing products containing glyphosate or plants pretreated with neonicotinoids. The insect apocalypse is here. One of my neighbors Martha Rullman, read this column and sent this response? How do we change the downward trajectory insects and species in general are experiencing? When his parents took him driving, he remembered, the car’s windshield was frequently so smeared with insect carcasses that you almost couldn’t see through it. Here a green bee-eater, Merops orientalis, feeds on a butterfly (credit: Dr. Raju Kasambe [CC BY-SA 4.0], from Wikimedia Commons). Taking a big view of the so-called Insect Apocalypse finds some possible winners among the losers, plus a lot of things we don’t know yet. When insects go extinct, other species follow. While the volume of scientific research on the threat of species … I remember as a child having to scrape bugs off the windshield regularly on car trips. The NYTimes wrote about the Silence of Bugs earlier this year. The is where they drink and lay their eggs. With an article by Sally McGrane in  the NYTImes in 2017 they  sounded the alarm. Wilson. Just remember, a lot of them are in the soil, not flying around in the air. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.” —E.O. ... Read the cover story “The Insect Apocalypse Is Here. What does it mean for the rest of life on Earth? In Krefeld, Germany, a group of amateur entomologists set traps to collect insects in the hopes of tracking trends in the local population. Commonweeder – Eleventh Blogaversary – Hooray! The first reports of an “insect apocalypse” came from a study done on some isolated nature preserves in Germany. I have intimately observed the insect and bird life, and there has been an undeniable decline in both, especially just in the last decade. Unfortunately, bug populations are dropping precipitously. Before there was Tallamy, there  was E.O. Studies from across the world show that insects are declining. But other causes include habitat loss, the killing of native weeds, single-crop agriculture, invasive species, light pollution, highway traffic, and climate change is possibly the newest threat. Download : Download high-res image (317KB) Some of  us can remember years when driving through the summer nights required hours of cleaning the car windows, removing all the dead bugs. The Insect Apocalypse Is Here – What does it mean for the rest of life on Earth? Discovering and understanding the role of each species is a critical pillar in E.O. The German Krefeld Entomological Society, a group of mostly amateur naturalists, have been keeping records of insects for over a hundred years. He now lives in a rural area between Philadelphia and Baltimore. He couldn’t recall the last time he needed to wash bugs from his windshield; he even wondered, vaguely, whether car manufacturers had invented some fancy new coating to keep off insects. Almost two centuries on, Darwin would probably be thrilled and horrified: People are abuzz about insects, but their discussions are flecked with words such as apocalypse and Armageddon. I hated having to drive at night because of all the bugs. A recent article in The New York Times Magazine describes this phenomenon in an article titled “The Insect Apocalypse Is Here,” and asks, “What does it mean for the rest of life on Earth?”, “[E.O.] We all have work to do – and that means we all need information to begin. Then there were years when we did not see these clouds of butterflies. Wilson began his career as a taxonomic entomologist, studying ants,” the article notes. How do we change the downward trajectory insects and species in general are experiencing? ... We have a new global tally of the insect apocalypse. I’m trying to help in the effort to curb this trend…trying to remain hopeful…. It was summer. The widespread, rampant use of pesticides and herbicides, especially neonicotinoids and glyphosate, is wiping out insects, many of which are important pollinators and which other species, including birds, depend on. Before we’ve lost irreplaceable species and ecosystems forever. Where had all those insects gone? My kids have never had that experience. The locations matched with a succession of A new meta-analysis of 73 studies finds that industrial farming practices, especially the use of synthetic pesticides and fertilizers, are to blame for a global “insect apocalypse.” More than 40 percent of insect species worldwide are on the fast-track to extinction, the study found. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation, Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. The New York Times Magazine (12-2-2018) article The Insect Apocalypse is Here by Brooke Jarvis reveals to people like me, who rarely pay attention to most insects, that the population of bugs in the world is declining. Specifically, something was missing. © 2017-2021, E.O. Echinacea, cone flower, and butterfly. The late folksinger and social activist Pete Seeger (1919-2014) sounded many alarms, but a recent article in the New York Times Magazine struck a different but somewhat similar chord: the declining population of insects worldwide. Overheated end-times terms have popped up … Summary. No more. Small things tend to get overlooked. In “ The Insect Apocalypse Is Here ,” her disquieting feature for The New York Times Magazine, Jarvis uses the disappearance of bugs as the hook for an epic inquiry into the degradation of the natural world. Now I am wishing them all back. We’re collecting all the bugs that splat on our car’s windshield. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.” —E.O. While the absence of insects may not be immediately noticeable to a lot of people, but this is a critically important problem, and scientists need to do A LOT more to try to bring the damage that’s being done to the public’s attention. Wilson’s Half-Earth, a call to protect half the land and sea in order to manage sufficient habitat to reverse the species extinction crisis—insects included—and ensure the long-term health of our planet. The New York Times Magazine (12-2-2018) article The Insect Apocalypse is Here by Brooke Jarvis reveals to people like me, who rarely pay attention to most insects, that the population of bugs in the world is declining. The Insect Apocalypse Is Here. We used to think it was gross, but now I am frightened and sad. The insect apocalypse is indeed upon us, according to the first global scientific review of insect population decline. This week, we hit the road in rural Texas for our weirdest experiment yet. Now he has 861 species of moths and 54 species of breeding birds that feed on insects. Our town has bird and bug loving public parks – and we are thinking about others. The Insect Apocalypse Is Here In the United States, scientists recently found the population of monarch butterflies fell by 90 percent in the last 20 years, a loss of 900 million individuals; the rusty-patched bumblebee, which once lived in 28 states, dropped by 87 percent over the same period. This is a frightening development. But this absence, he now realized with some alarm, seemed to be all around him. These products are made by giant chemical companies Bayer, Syngenta and Monsanto. The Insect Apocalypse Is Here What does it mean for the rest of life on Earth? This piece originally appeared in the Fall 2019 edition of Xerces’ biannual publication Wings. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation, Inc. HALF-EARTH PROJECT and HALF-EARTH DAY are registered trademarks of the E.O. But strangely, he wasn’t eating any bugs. The Half-Earth Project is bringing this grand goal to life, so future generations may have the opportunity to accidentally swallow a bug. The insect apocalypse is coming. ... Local declines of insect populations such as wild bees and butterflies have often been reported, and insect abundance has declined very rapidly in some places even without large-scale land-use change, but the global extent of such declines is not … Others were beginning to notice the lack of bugs, but no one else had a record of what was. Unlike my friends who are birders, I did not know that almost all birds need insects to feed their fledglings. Insects are high in protein and vital. The. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.”. Discovering and understanding the role of each species is a critical pillar in E.O. Insects are a case study in the invisible importance of the common.”. Insects are at the heart of food webs, being consumed for example by birds, bats, small mammals, reptiles, amphibians, spiders, and other insects. (You can unsubscribe anytime). The global health of insect populations is far more complicated than previously thought, new data suggests. Many years ago, when we lived on 30 acres of fields in Heath, we enjoyed the Monarch migration in late summer when there were flocks of Monarchs fueling up on the mint that was running rampant in a field. Lisa – Knowing you, I’ll bet you’ve got more bugs than a lot of people. Bugs bug people, but life without these vital creatures would be bleak. The insect apocalypse, and why it matters ... archive. Brooke Jarvis reports: Sune Boye Riis was on a bike ride with his youngest son, enjoying the sun slanting over the fields and woodlands near their home north of Copenhagen, when it suddenly occurred to him that something about the experience was amiss. The report, released by researchers at the Universities of Sydney and Queensland and the China Academy of Agricultural Sciences, concluded that 40 … All around the world, insect species are dying at alarming rates. The New York Times Magazine (12-2-2018) article The Insect Apocalypse is Here b y Brooke Jarvis reveals to people like me, who rarely pay attention to most insects, that the population of bugs in the world is declining. The “unnoticed insect apocalypse” should set alarm bells ringing, according to conservationists, who said that without a halt there will be profound consequences for humans and all … In summary: Human activity is to blame. For a moment, Riis was transported to his childhood on the Danish island of Lolland, in the Baltic Sea. As a former beekeeper I was fairly familiar of bees, but it was all those other insects that I ignored. With other, less-studied insect species, one butterfly researcher told me, “all we can do is wave our arms and say, ”˜It”™s not here anymore!”™”‰” Still, the most disquieting thing wasn”™t the disappearance of certain species of insects; it was the deeper worry, shared by Riis and many others, that a whole insect … The importance of insects is unquestionable, as is the fact that insect populations are in steep decline around the world. Manicured lawns in the United States are so prevalent that, added together, they are as big as New England. The Insect Apocalypse Is Here, by Brooke Jarvis. By Dominique Mosbergen There have been warning signs for years about plummeting insect populations worldwide, but the extent of the potentially “catastrophic” crisis had not been well-understood — until now. And why hadn’t he noticed? Doug Tallamy’s book was a huge consciousness raising experience for me; it totally changed the way I looked at insects in my garden. Beth – You and I and a lot of other gardeners are doing what we can to support insects and birds in our own gardens – and in our communities. Milkweeds, crucial to the beautiful monarch butterfly, are dwindling fast. is bringing this grand goal to life, so future generations may have the opportunity to accidentally swallow a bug. Some of us can remember years when driving through the summer [...] ', ' http://www.commonweeder.com/the-insect-apocalypse-is-here/ ', 5)" News of an insect apocalypse has become a familiar headline in recent years, with study after study pointing to an alarming loss in invertebrate numbers. I’m trying. He was out in the country, moving fast. The Insect Apocalypse is Here is a fascinating article and I am still taking it all in. The Insect Apocalypse Is Here. Sune Boye Riis was on a bike ride with his youngest son, enjoying the sun slanting over the fields and woodlands near their home north … Thank you, Martha. Some scientists say it might be only 30 years before all insects are extinct, so this is a really … Yet they are, in Wilson’s words, “the little things that run the natural world.” He means it literally. Those landscapes are essentially dead zones.”. Its summary for insect life was that "Global trends in insect populations are not known but rapid declines have been well documented in some places. From Brooke Jarvis at nytimes.com: Why not? I read this piece, and while I thought it was a good and in depth article, I didn’t think it did enough to succinctly emphasize the effects of pesticides and herbicides on insect life and on the food chain. But a new analysis of data from sites … Aesclepias tuberosa for the honey bees. Back then, summer bike rides meant closing his mouth to cruise through thick clouds of insects, but inevitably he swallowed some anyway. I’m a naturalist and have lived in western Massachusetts for more than 40 years. Previous research indicated an alarming decline … In the past three summers, there seemed to be a sudden sharp decline in dragonflies, fireflies, caddisflies, moths and butterflies. Now I get all excited in my small urban garden to see five Monarchs on my coneflowers, bee balm, asters  and asclepias (milkweeds). Farmers and gardeners use pesticides which kills many insects. “Insects — about as far as you can get from charismatic megafauna — are not what we’re usually imagining when we talk about biodiversity. No more. Brooke Jarvis's piece on "The Insect Apocalypse Is Here," published Nov. 27, should be required reading. Weeds and native plants are what bugs eat and where they live. Bringing Nature Home at the Master Gardener’s Spring Symposium, Not All The Essentials for the Apocalypse. And when? Here's what you can do about it However, a new study that's been described as the largest and most comprehensive assessment to … Join us and stay up-to-date on progress toward this grand goal. There is much we do not know, but we do know enough to take action now. This summer I took a class on native bees at the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens — another eye-opener. onmouseover="displayBookmark('MySpace')" onmouseout="displayBookmark('')" You added a lot of important information to my post. Some of us can remember years when driving through the summer nights required hours of cleaning … University of Georgia professor of agroecology Bill Snyder sought to find out if the so-called “insect apocalypse” is really going to happen, and if so, had it already begun. He warned: “If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. Click to view the full Fall 2019 issue. As … But all that seemed distant now. 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