Save the insects, save the world
Protecting Earth could be simple as mindful gardening
Lawn grass does not support diverse food webs.
Unfortunately, we humans are now in a position to declare victory in our long war on insects. The United Nations’ Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services has found a million plant and animal species, mostly bugs, to be at imminent risk of extinction. Industrial agriculture, millions of miles of road hazards, unnecessary lights, overuse of pesticides, habitat elimination, millions of hectares of sterile lawn and the widespread displacement of native plants have caused a 45 per cent decline in insect populations just in the past 40 years.
To understand how terrifying this is, you need only look to a 1987 article from the journal Conservation Biology, in which the biologist E.O. Wilson lays out a worst-case scenario. If insects were to vanish, he explained, so would nearly all flowering plants and the food webs they support. This loss, in turn, would cause the extinction of reptiles, amphibians, birds and mammals: in effect, nearly all terrestrial animal life. The disappearance of insects would also end rapid decomposition of organic matter and thus shut down nutrient cycling. Humans would be unable to survive. At the time Wilson wrote that, most of us were too interested in discovering new ways to kill bugs in our homes, lawns, crops and forests to think about how we might coexist with these essential creatures. Now we’re facing the consequences.
The good news is that there is nothing inevitable about insect decline. Each one of us can work to bring back those populations.
A green carpet out front may be a status symbol, but it’s an ecologically destructive one. Lawn grass does not support diverse food webs and vital pollinator communities: It degrades our watersheds by increasing storm water runoff and introducing nitrogen and phosphorus as well as herbicides and pesticides into our waterways. It is also a terrible plant choice for sequestering carbon. Under trees, grass fares poorly in the shade and is bad for the tree’s root systems. Restrict your lawn to the areas where you regularly walk.
You can and should strip invasive plants, such as privet and wisteria, from your property and resist the temptation to buy new ones at your local nursery. By definition, they are ecological invaders that spread to natural areas, where they displace the valuable native plant communities that better support insects. Simultaneously, you can plant more of the native plants that support the most insect species.
In general, native plants support the life cycles of 10 to 100 times more insect species than non-native plants, and a few plants (such as native cherries and willows) serve as hosts for 10 to 100 times more insects than most other native varieties.
When working to maintain that garden with all of its native vegetation, strive to minimise insecticide use. Homeowners use more insecticides per hectare than farms do, and nearly all of them are unnecessary.
Your goal is to bring insects to the section, not keep them away.
You can also build pollinator gardens — groups of plants with blooms that supply the pollen and nectar that critical insects require.
We need diverse communities of pollinator insects not only because they are important to crops but because they pollinate 80 per cent of all plants.
Although declines in honeybee populations have had a lot of press, 4000 species of native bees pollinated most of the plants in North America before the honeybee arrived from Europe. Most of these native bees are suffering from our tendency to replace blooming native plants with lawn and concrete.
Lastly, you can put motion sensors on your security lights or replace white bulbs with yellow LEDs. White lights draw insects all night long, exhausting them and making them easy prey for birds, but yellow bulbs attract few insects.
We can no longer leave conservation to professional conservationists. Along with land ownership comes responsibility for stewarding the life associated with that land. The task is not as enormous as it seems. Just take care of the life on your property. It seems easier than trying to save the entire planet, but they’re really the same thing.
You can’t reverse insect declines by yourself, but if we each do our own small part, not only can we restore insect populations, we will create the largest collective conservation effort in history — one that can and must succeed.