Barnes’s W RLD
WHEN did you last see the Milky Way? Chances are it’s quite a long time ago.You can’t see it in towns and cities any more; it’s invisible to 60 per cent of Europeans; many have never seen it at all. The Milky Way is visible as a band of light across a dark sky. It’s also the galaxy that we live in.
We seldom see it these days because we fill the sky with light. It’s called light pollution but we humans find it difficult to think of light as a bad thing. We are creatures of the day and we find darkness frightening. So we protect ourselves with a comforting blanket of light – 80 per cent of the world’s population now lives under the skyglow caused by artificial light.
This deprives us of the night sky and affects us by disrupting sleep and cutting us off from natural cycles.
It also disrupts millions of nonhuman lives – millions that are essential for the health and wellbeing of the planet we live on.
Night may be alarming to us humans but it’s home and health and life to many other species.
Artificial light disrupts bird migration and affects the life cycles of plants.
Some 64 per cent of the world’s invertebrates live partly or entirely at night and artificial light prevents them from living such lives. Bright street lights attract insects and that attraction will kill a third of them.
Many others are simply unable to go about their business in the light and that is inconvenient for everything else that lives: vital pollination services are performed at night by moths and beetles.And earthworms that aerate the soil are mostly active during the night.
Great improvements can be made without compromising human safety.
The excellent invertebrate charity Buglife is lobbying to make light pollution part of the upcoming Environment Bill, and it’s an important addition.
And here’s a good thing: unlike all other forms of pollution, light doesn’t hang about once you’ve decided to do something about it.
For once we have a problem you can solve with the flick of a switch.
John Ingham is away
NOW is the time to take part in one of the world’s most important activities: sitting in the garden with a nice drink.
As you do so, you will often notice a wasp, a bee or a hornet that seems to have perched on thin air.
That’s no wasp – that’s a hoverfly, and they’re among the most talented fliers in nature. They look like fierce stinging insects but they’re quite harmless to humans. It’s a ploy to frighten off anything that might want to eat them.
It’s called Batesian mimicry – a harmless species pretending to be dangerous.
WHEN you’re sitting in the garden, or park or by an open window listen for blackbirds – melodic, laidback flute-playing from treetops and chimneys.
STAYING with the night, one of the greatest wildlife spectacles on Earth is the gathering of straw-coloured fruit bats at Kasanka National Park in Zambia.
I’ve seen 10 million of these big chunky bats filling the sky at dawn and dusk, at either end of their nightly commutes after fruit, and I’ll never forget it.
Now the site is under threat from illegal deforestation, plans for water extraction that will also be damaging to the local community, and by inappropriate plans for wind-farming on the bats’ migration route.
The bats, and the Kasanka Trust which runs the park, need your support.