Look after the moths and they will look after us
HAVE you seen a Hebrew character in your garden or neighbourhood recently?
Or maybe a northern footman, or more likely just now a November moth?
These are just three of the more than two thousand different species of moth found in this country.
Being mainly active at night they do not attract as much attention as butterflies, even though there are only about 60 species of them.
Being shadowy creatures of the night moths tend to be treated with disdain, suspicion, and even fear. A Black Country name for big hairy moths is bob-howler or bobowler, the origin of which is lost in the mists of time.
There is no clear division between moths and butterflies.
Together they make up the insect order Lepidoptera, characterised by having two pairs of wings covered in minute scales which form colourful and ornate patterns.
A good rule of thumb for separating them is that butterflies generally have clubbed antennae, or feelers, but none of our moths do.
They share the same life-cycle of egg, caterpillar, chrysalis or pupa and adult.
As in the title of the children’s book, moth caterpillars are very hungry, chomping their way through the leaves of many plants, trees and shrubs.
Some of them, such as clear-wing moth caterpillars, live inside the stems of trees feeding on the internal tissues. Amongst the most conspicuous are the orange- and black-striped cinnabar moth caterpillars, often seen on ragwort.
Like a lot of other wildlife moths are in trouble, with their numbers declining.
A night-time drive on a warm evening used to be enlivened by blizzards of moths being picked out in the headlights, but this is an increasingly rare occurrence.
There are fewer day-flying moths too, although the spectacular emperor moth, with its prominent eye-spot on each wing, can still be found in Sutton Park.
This decline has profound consequences. As the charity Butterfly Conservation (which also campaigns for moths) says ‘They are an important element of the food chain and are prey for a wide range of birds, bats and other insectivorous animals. For example, in Britain and Ireland, Blue Tits eat an estimated 50 billion caterpillars each year’. If the caterpillars are not there, then blue tits’ and other birds’ numbers will fall.
Moths are also important pollinators, attracted by the night-time scent of many flowers. If their populations thrive so will the populations of many other species.
Moths really do matter.
THE United Nations biodiversity conference, COP 15, finished with a fanfare of self-congratulation, and agreements which sound really promising, such as preserving 30% of the Earth’s land and seas for nature by 2030, halting the loss of areas of ‘high biodiversity’, and moving to sustainable use of natural resources.
Nearly 200 countries have signed up to 23 targets and four goals to protect and increase biodiversity, and have promised $200 billion a year to finance them. This sounds wonderful, but experience shows that implementation often falls far short of such grand gestures.
Back in the real world most people will be unaware of the conference and its outcomes.
They either ignore wildlife and nature, or think of it as something to be enjoyed on holiday or a day out, or is only ‘on the telly’.
This contrasts with times past when there was much greater understanding of the critical role of nature in all our lives.
Our Christmas and festivities for example are a combination of religious observance, Victorian sentimentality,and much older midwinter traditions.
These traditions had connections to nature, such as decorating houses with evergreens, paying homage to the sun (the engine of nature) as the shortest day of the year passes, and generally wishing and hoping for a coming year of plenty.
Before Christianity feasting and jollity were the hallmarks of Yule in northern Europe and Saturnalia in the Roman Empire. Saturn was, amongst other things, the god of agriculture.
In modern times offerings to the unseen gods may have been replaced with the more practical but nature unfriendly fertilisers and pesticides, but in the process we seem to have lost touch with the fundamental truths of our intimate connection with, and dependence upon, nature and natural processes. Increased awareness and understanding of these would stimulate the tactical bottom-up actions needed to complement COP 15’s top-down strategic aspirations.