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Earth

Insect Populations Collapse in Protected Nature Reserves (theguardian.com) 64

Insect populations are crashing in supposedly protected nature reserves worldwide with climate change emerging as the primary driver of biodiversity loss for the first time in human history. Ecologist Daniel Janzen, who has monitored Costa Rica's Guanacaste conservation area since the 1970s, documented the collapse through light trap photographs that showed 3,000 moth species in 1978 versus virtually none today using identical methods.

Similar declines are occurring globally with flying insects dropping 75% across 63 German reserves in under 30 years, US beetle numbers falling 83% over 45 years, and Puerto Rico experiencing up to 60-fold biomass losses since the 1970s. Recent research published in BioScience found climate change now drives decline in 91% of imperiled US species, narrowly surpassing habitat destruction.

Insect Populations Collapse in Protected Nature Reserves

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  • by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Thursday June 05, 2025 @04:44PM (#65430446)
    Cleaning bugs off my car windshield periodically. That doesn't happen anymore because those bugs are dead and gone permanently.

    I'm sure that's fine and I'm sure we can focus on important issues like woke and trans instead of part of our entire food chain collapsing... Ain't moral panics fun?
    • by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Thursday June 05, 2025 @04:48PM (#65430458)

      Well, on the plus-side, there was never a better time to observe with fascination how completely incapable the human races is, how immature and without insight. In the past, doing stupid things could be attributed to knowledge not being available. No such excuse this time. The willing helpers of the perpetrators of the evil are ignorant by choice.

    • by JamesTRexx ( 675890 ) on Thursday June 05, 2025 @05:54PM (#65430604) Journal

      But look on the bright side, with any luck nature will collapse far enough to wipe us out before the AIs mess up everything.

    • I blame farming monoculture and Monsanto for that.

    • by eth1 ( 94901 )

      Cleaning bugs off my car windshield periodically. That doesn't happen anymore because those bugs are dead and gone permanently.

      I'm sure that's fine and I'm sure we can focus on important issues like woke and trans instead of part of our entire food chain collapsing... Ain't moral panics fun?

      I think this is also due to cars becoming more aerodynamic for fuel efficiency. My newer cars will get bugs on the flatter areas of the front, but rarely the windshield anymore, unless it's a particularly large one that the slipstream can't get out of the way fast enough.

  • by fjo3 ( 1399739 ) on Thursday June 05, 2025 @04:44PM (#65430448)
    For at least the last 20 years, I've noticed I no longer have to pull over to clean my windshield because it was covered by bug corpses. Not even in the Spring. I do not miss them, but at the same time I know they *should* be there, and their almost total absence is an ominous portent of the future.
    • I like to think of it as they've run out of feature ideas for the Matrix, and now the machines are just working on removing the bugs.

    • I believe the windshield test has become the standard measure of insect abundance - I guess it has been well over a decade since the time when a long drive would leave my car looking like a murder scene!
      • No need for any device or thing to see the bugs have buggered off. Just be lazy and, if you some space with a lawn, and freedom from a home owners association, don't cut your lawn in the spring. My lawn is half dandelion and half clover much to the annoyance of my weed-n-feed neighbours. Normally the flowering spring-weeds are thick with bugs. This year, nothing. Spent a lot of time looking for bugs in the clover and dandelions this spring. They've been there every year, in declining numbers, but this sprin
      • > I believe the windshield test
        Almost, it's the license plate test. same surface area, not washed during journey etc...

    • by PPH ( 736903 )

      1. Better vehicle aerodynamics.

      2. Farmers have gotten smart about not setting their hives along the edge of the orchard adjacent to the highway.

      • Better aerodynamics? That's an assumption not born out by the evidence. The Hummer is not particularlyaerodynamic. SUV's are not nearly as aerodynamic as almost all cars from the late 60's and 70's.
        • by PPH ( 736903 )

          SUV's are not nearly as aerodynamic as almost all cars from the late 60's and 70's.

          True. But then the results of any test would be invalid unless it was repeated over time with the same vehicle. Sure, a Hummer will squash more bugs. But you can't use that to say anything about insect populations over time unless you've been driving that same Hummer for the past 20 or 30 years.

          • My windshield this Spring is just as messy with bug splats as ever. There's no change. It's so bad that I have to use a scrubber or razor blade to get them off.

      • You don't spend much time outside do you?
        • by PPH ( 736903 )

          Lots. And I have an advantage that most other people don't. Still driving a now 46 year old vehicle with a vertical windshield.

    • For at least the last 20 years, I've noticed I no longer have to pull over to clean my windshield because it was covered by bug corpses. Not even in the Spring. I do not miss them, but at the same time I know they *should* be there, and their almost total absence is an ominous portent of the future.

      I always figured a big part of that was expanded use of agricultural pesticides. The thing that gets me with this story is it's inside the nature preserves, so the answer isn't local pesticide use, it's something much larger.

      Which does feel weirdly foreboding. I don't think most bugs have a particularly large range. Give them enough local plant life and they should thrive.

      And the nature preserves should be pretty free of pesticides, meaning something else, like climate change, is causing the issues.

      • Pesticides spreads outside the designated area, insects roam over large areas, wetlands have been drained and converted to farmlands, ditches have become covered to make farming more efficient, farms are monocultural and only grow a single or few crops - and don't have animals. Many insects depends on natural manure. Many insects depends on different types of weed like nettles. The list goes on.

  • Fake news! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by gweihir ( 88907 )

    Right? Right?

    In other news, the human race continues to self-desctruct out of greed, arrogance and sheer incapability to do better.

    • I think the beetles have moved to my garden. I had to spray (which I hate to do) for potato beetles in my garden last week end.

      There is also no shortage of some small beetle with an orange band across its thorax.

  • by Teun ( 17872 )
    The Indonesian name for a mosquito net is Klamboe, 10-15 years ago I would need one over my bed to get an undisturbed sleep, since several years there are no more stinging mosquito's here in The Netherlands.
    • I still had them visit me too often last year (in the middle of the polder in Zeeland) and spotted one on occasion even this "winter", but so far the nights have been quiet. Even when I left my window open by accident.

      Haven't seen a bee in two or three years around here though, and it was rare before that despite or because of all the farmland around here.

  • ....there's plenty of humans and livestock at least!

    https://ourworldindata.org/wild-mammals-birds-biomass [ourworldindata.org]

  • When I first moved into my San Diego house in 2003, the front porch light would be covered with flying insects at night. We had a huge thriving Bird population. Now I hardly see insects and birds are much less in number (except for the pigeons, who feed off of the humans). Along with one of the prior Slashdot stories talking about how people are cloning animals and lessening genetic diversity thereby making them much more susceptible to diseases/pathogens, It's a bit scary how much humanity is messing up th
  • Interestingly, mosquito populations have been steady or increasing over time.

    https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.... [wiley.com]

    Ticks seem to be a bigger issue as well (maybe more awareness), compared to when I was a child.

  • Climate change is the process whereby you explain some observation that you don't actually understand.

APL is a write-only language. I can write programs in APL, but I can't read any of them. -- Roy Keir

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