Alarm over decline in flying insects

[Daniël Bos]

Quite scary.
They didn't start capturing data till 89 (?) So it's quite likely far worse than the data suggests. By then pesticides of hardcore variaties had been in widespread use for decades!

[Beardie]

2 hours ago, Darrin Turnbull said:

Oh well , the windscreen isn’t so dirty anymore

Yes, I used to joke that I was an avid collector of aphids and small flies. Where did I keep them? All over the front of the car! That was in the mid-90s. The joke doesn't work now.

 

Finding the reason for the decline is going to be hampered by a lack of detailed information about the problem. As Daniel Bos states, information only started to be collected in 1989; not only this but by amateur groups who haven't identified everything they've caught. And it's almost certainly a combination of factors.

[kevinjohnsonmbe]

21 minutes ago, Beardie said:

And it's almost certainly a combination of factors.

With agriculture at the vanguard.  "Custodians of the countryside" my arse.

 

Unless it's Brexit? 

[TIMON]

With agriculture at the vanguard.  "Custodians of the countryside" my arse.
 
Unless it's Brexit? 

Surely radical Islam has to shoulder some of the blame?

[kevinjohnsonmbe]

Surely radical Islam has to shoulder some of the blame?

And sex pest MPs and bankers!

[TIMON]

Come to think of it, there were a lot of them in the dessert display at Costa today. Flying insects that is.....

[Billhook]

It is easy to blame farmers but we have come a long way from the bad old days of DDT in the 1950s.  We hardly used any insecticides on the farm from the 1980s onwards.  Even stopped using aphicides not really because I was trying to be an angel but simply because it was not cost effective.

Perhaps looking closer to home, or more accurately peoples homes which are all double glazed, ant proof, fly proof, wasp proof.  Rubbish is better recycled and buried, gardens are tended and sprayed, less vegetable patches, less scrubland, more housing, more industry, more air pollution.

You only have to read the Rentokil blurb on the website to see that all insects are the enemy and need to be wiped out.

 

https://www.rentokil.com/insects/flying-insects/