The back gardens of Britain are potentially the most important nature reserve

T’S WORTH noting here that a number of drivers forced to make journeys during lockdown found surprising numbers of insects on their windscreens: like a happy return to more plentiful days. So has lockdown been a good thing for insect numbers, then?

When there are fewer vehicles on the road, the same number of insects is shared by a smaller number of windscreens. Pollution from vehicles also covers the scent of flowers: with fewer cars, more insects might be attracted to the flowers on roadside verges.

But perhaps more positively the recent ban on neonicotinoid insecticides, widely used in agriculture until 2018, might be kicking in – and the hoped-for recovery in insect numbers beginning. And of course, periods of fine weather encourage flying insects. All these things probably play a part in this apparent return to abundance.

These casual but revealing observations, shared by many, are backed up by hard research.We have 50 per cent fewer butterflies in this country than there were in 1976: butterflies are easily seen and easy to count and they give us the most obvious clues about what’s going on with insect numbers.And what’s going on is bad.

But let’s take a pause in the gloom ’n’ dooming to look at what we can do to stop it.The principles are simple enough, and they are laid out in a new publication from the Wildlife Trusts.

It’s called, with straightforward optimism, Reversing the Decline of Insects, and it lays out easy methods of doing so.We will deal with some of the public and governmental methods here, and save the things that a concerned individual can do for later. There are two main reasons for the decline of insects: the first is that we use a lot of poisons that kill them, the second is that we destroy the places where they live.

We need to reduce the amount of pesticides that farmers use: after all, 70 per cent of Britain is a farm. That needs ambitious and legally binding government targets. This Government promised to be the first in history that left the environment better than it found it: so let’s see them put that into action.The younger generation of farmers tends to favour less destructive methods. We need to give them every possible support so that they can use pesticides in lower quantities and cultivate land in a manner that benefits insects. That means serious financial incentives.

Local councils should be encouraged to give up pesticides on the land they manage, and to stop reckless mowing. Again and again in the late spring and summer, we see roadside verges jumping with insects and the next day they are mown down to the ground just to make the place look tidy.

That’s an idea we really should rise