Thirty years ago, in the book , Bill McKibben proposed the idea of nature—like a species—going extinct. “Our comforting sense of the permanence of our natural world, our confidence that it will change gradually and imperceptibly if at all, is the result of a subtly warped perspective,” McKibben wrote. “Changes that can affect us can happen in our lifetime in our world.”



One of those changes has been brought to the fore in an alarming study published in the journal Biological Conservation, which claims that more than 40 percent of the world’s insect species could go extinct in the next three decades. Scientists from the China Academy of Agricultural Sciences and the universities of Sydney and Queensland reviewed 73 existing reports of insect declines from around the world. They found that insect biomass is falling by 2.5 percent a year since McKibben published his seminal work, eight times faster than the rate of decline for mammals, birds, or reptiles.

The reasons for such a staggering rate of extinction will come as a surprise to no one. Loss of habitat (due to intensive agriculture, deforestation, and urbanization) takes the number one spot, with pollution from synthetic pesticides and fertilizers a close second. The new classes of insecticides introduced in the past 20 years (e.g., neonicotinoids and fipronil) have been especially damaging because they are used routinely and sterilize the soil, killing everything in it. The study also cites biological factors such as introduced species and disease-causing microorganisms. Climate change, which is naturally affected by all of the above, is also a cause.

While these practices have always been environmentally unfriendly, they have generally been pursued under the notion that nature is fundamentally and infinitely resilient. As McKibben puts it: “In the past, we spoiled and polluted parts of that nature, inflicted environmental ‘damage.’ But that was like stabbing a man with toothpicks: though it hurt, annoyed, degraded, it did not touch vital organs, block the path of lymph or blood. We never thought that we had wrecked nature. Deep down, we never really thought we could.”

But it turns out we can, and have. Lead author of the new study, Francisco Sánchez-Bayo, an honorary associate at the School of Life and Environmental Sciences at the University of Sydney, bluntly translates the findings in an interview with The Guardian: “In 10 years, you will have a quarter less, in 50 years only half left, and in 100 years, you will have none.”

Insects represent 70 percent of all animal species on the planet. They pollinate 75 percent of all the crops in the world, which of course become the food that fills up our grocery store shelves and our bodies and our children’s bodies. Insects comprise the base of many food chains and webs, without which countless other species can’t survive: birds, bats, fish, reptiles, and mammals of every size and description. It’s absurd to even attempt to catalog the cascading effects of catastrophic insect die-off here. Best to resort to the study’s “highlights” (an irony if there ever was one):



In addition to the 40 percent threatened with extinction, one third are currently classed as Endangered.

“Affected insect groups not only include specialists that occupy particular ecological niches, but also many common and generalist species.” We’re not talking about a rare moth with a crazy-long proboscis that pollinates some deep-jungle orchid. We’re talking about the insects in your backyard: Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths), Hymenoptera (bees, wasps, ants), and Coleoptera (beetles).

“Four aquatic taxa are imperiled and have already lost a large proportion of species.” That’s four separate taxonomic groups either threatened or gone.

Fast-breeding pests that are tolerant of pollutants, like flies and cockroaches, will likely fill the vacancies left behind and continue to thrive due to warmer global temperatures and the disappearance of their slow-to-breed predators. Entomologist Don Sands underscores the importance of “insects as moderators of other pest populations.” Without them, he told CNN, “we have insect populations that flare up and ruin crops.”

While the study presents a comprehensive and systematic look at the drivers behind these dramatic declines, it is based on reports primarily from North America and Europe. More research is needed in Africa, South America, and Asia to generate a truly accurate assessment of global insect populations.

Even without that data, however, Sánchez-Bayo doesn’t mince words about the implications of continued species losses: “This will have catastrophic consequences for both the planet’s ecosystems and for the survival of mankind.”

In other words, what we will experience in our lifetimes goes beyond McKibben’s idea of an end; it is the actual structural and functional collapse of the natural systems which have supported life on Earth for the last 400 million years.

The study urges the “rethinking of current agricultural practices” in favor of “sustainable, ecologically-based practices” to “safeguard the vital ecosystem services they provide.” Yes, even scientists feel compelled to refer to natural systems as “services.” A 2017 study reporting Germany's decline of total flying insect biomass went so far as to calculate that such “ecosystem services provided by wild insects have been estimated at $57 billion annually in the USA.”

Frame it as a get-and-spend scenario that threatens the long-term viability of human life, and maybe, just maybe, Monsanto will listen. But probably not. Time to convert your property to an insect-friendly island.



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