Insects are in trouble: Three articles that explain why it matters and how you can help
Alternative title: Why and how to love bugs
In this blog, I’m going to provide a summary of, and three no-paywall links to, articles about insects. Each of these articles tells you:
Why insects are important,
Why they are in trouble, and,
Ways you can help support their recovery.
Why it matters: As I’ve said in other blog entries, the suburbs have an outsized role in creating the environmental emergency. Likewise, they can potentially have a huge impact on slowing climate change and reducing all kinds of pollution.
All of these articles emphasize the necessity of insects for ecosystem health, which, of course, means human health, as well. For example:
Insects pollinate lots of plants that we rely on. If not for insects, the plants would die.
Insects are a source of food for many other animals (and humans in many places), and provide us with products that we use.
All of these articles also emphasize the role of human activity in creating such precarious conditions for insects.
Look at a moth — and find a wonder that’s been waiting all along,
By Akito Kawahara, Photos by Carla Rhodes
I had an ah-ha moment when I read this picture-filled article and realized I needed to think more about the needs of moths when adding plants to my garden. I have to admit, I haven’t been tuned into the role of moths in ecosystem health the same way I’ve been attentive to bees and butterflies. The author knows it is common for humans to underestimate moths and helps the reader to understand how important they are:
96% of songbirds rely on moths as a food source
Moths are more efficient pollinators than bees
But they are vanishing quickly due to human impacts on the environment. Not only from climate change, but because of our continued destruction of the habitat moths rely on. Many moth caterpillars rely on only one plant, so if the plants are eradicated, so, too, are the moths.
How can we help? The author says one main way is to just start paying attention to them, which I have started to do on my iNaturalist page (see below). This helps to provide an understanding of what moths are where, which gives scientists and conservation groups better information to work with.
Laurel sphinx moth on a window screen at my houseSummer is here. Where are the fireflies?
By Dino Grandoni
I grew up in Colorado. We don’t have fireflies there, so the only way I knew about them was through books. I first saw fireflies in person when I moved to Wisconsin for a year in 1997. How completely magical they are.
Since moving to Michigan in 2007, the appearance of the first fireflies in June is something I look forward to. It has seemed to me that their numbers are declining, but that’s just my anecdotal observation, so I didn’t have a whole lot of confidence in it as truth.
This article discusses the science that is tracking different kinds of fireflies around the world and how the brightly lit human world is endangering them.
Like with other insects, the declining number of fireflies is also the canary in the coal mine for other parts of the ecosystem:
And the problem is bigger than a single type of bug. “The fireflies are the icons that tell you that the habitat is in trouble,” Cicero said.
What’s causing dramatic firefly population losses isn’t so different from the threats to other insects. The author suggests a few things people can do to protect them:
Let the grass grow: Leaving parts of your lawn unmowed and with leaf litter helps the ground retain moisture, creating a better habitat for firefly larvae.
Minimize lights at night: To reduce light pollution, only turn on outdoor lighting when you’re using it. And consider installing lights with motion sensors and timers.
Reduce the use of pesticides: Many broad-spectrum insecticides go after beetles. And fireflies are, technically, a type of beetle.
Don’t you dare rake your leaves this fall
By Dana Milbank
Dana Milbank is an opinion columnist, but he consults a number of entomologists for this column.
He specifically talks about the ways that people living in urban areas, including us suburbanites, have reduced the plant and insect biodiversity of our yards through habitat destruction and pesticide use. This is creating an imbalance that permits some insects, like mosquitoes, to thrive, while other insects struggle.
“In the wilderness, where there’s more diversity of organisms, you have a better balance. In places where it’s become urbanized, a few species that are extremely dominant create outbreaks and all kinds of unstable circumstances.” A more robust and diverse insect population means fewer pests. More bees, butterflies and spiders mean fewer mosquito bites.
This, he notes, is just one dire outcome of the way we’ve managed our human-dominated environments:
Multiple studies show that the overall insect population is declining by 1 percent to 2 percent per year, which means losing perhaps a third of all insects on the planet within 20 years — moving us toward what’s often called an “insect apocalypse.”…It’s hard to overstate how ruinous this could be. If this mass extinction of insects isn’t reversed, it will decimate the entire food chain, threaten crop pollination and generally cause havoc. Some bird and mammal populations are already shrinking even faster than the bugs are.
He includes some very easy-to-do, practical solutions. (And I believe it really is this easy). Among them:
Stop mowing
Stop raking
Turn off exterior lights at night
Replace grass with native shrubs and plants
Ask your representatives to support legislation that protects pollinators
Perhaps one of the hardest ones:
“…we’ll also need to get people to stop thinking of bugs as icky things to squish but, rather, as valuable animals to conserve.”
In other words, Love Bugs. Here are four to start with, which I found in my own yard. They are, Eastern Calligrapher, four toothed mason wasp, a green bug that I’m not sure of and which has not yet been identified on my iNaturalist webpage, and a goldenrold soldier beetle.
Thank you for reading! If you’ve gotten to the end, you deserve a video of cute raccoons. Here they are, from just last night, eating algae (I think) from the pond.
