We Are Losing The Insects

David Trammel's picture

This has gotten more and more attention lately, kind of like the proverbial canary in the coal mine

Insect collapse: ‘We are destroying our life support systems’

Scientist Brad Lister returned to Puerto Rican rainforest after 35 years to find 98% of ground insects had vanished. We knew that something was amiss in the first couple days,” said Brad Lister. “We were driving into the forest and at the same time both Andres and I said: ‘Where are all the birds?’ There was nothing.” His return to the Luquillo rainforest in Puerto Rico after 35 years was to reveal an appalling discovery. The insect population that once provided plentiful food for birds throughout the mountainous national park had collapsed. On the ground, 98% had gone. Up in the leafy canopy, 80% had vanished. The most likely culprit by far is global warming. “It was just astonishing,” Lister said. “Before, both the sticky ground plates and canopy plates would be covered with insects. You’d be there for hours picking them off the plates at night. But now the plates would come down after 12 hours in the tropical forest with a couple of lonely insects trapped or none at all.” “It was a true collapse of the insect populations in that rainforest,” he said. “We began to realise this is terrible – a very, very disturbing result.”

With the insects, goes the birds.

David Trammel's picture

Chris Martenson over on Peak Prosperity has this sobering look beyond just the loss of the insect population.

https://www.peakprosperity.com/blog/114741/collapse-already-here

The list of what we are losing goes on and on.

Serinde's picture

I know it's spring when the flowering currant blooms in mid March. I was out doing something or other by the cold frame which is right next to the currant and was astonished by the humming of a good proportion of the honey bees in the neighbourhood. And a few bumbles, too. Beekeeping is quite popular at the moment, and not a passing phase, I hope.

Anyone with eyes to see understands what Chris Martenson has catalogued. We are quickly ruining the only world we humans have evolved to live in. But nature is, if nothing else, resilient even if that means we seemingly doing our level best to ensure there's no place for our kind. And like the kings of old, we are taking all manner of other creatures with us to ease our passing (as a great man once wrote). Stupid, really. Surely our mission as GWs is to push back HARD against this in all the ways we can?

As young Grete Thunberg memorably told Davo, 'I want you to panic.

And then I want you to act.'