GM: the insects’ friend
SIR – There is a connection between Ann Willis’s letter (August 23) on the Prince of Wales’s opposition to genetically modified crops and R Allan Rees’s letter of the same day on the observable decline in insects.
I would not want to contradict the Prince. However, the general assumption that GM is less favourable to insect life than natural farming methods misses the mark.
GM is aimed at engineering crops resistant to insect attack instead of killing the insects with pesticides. In this respect, GM would be beneficial to biodiversity.
Cumbernauld, Lanarkshire
SIR – I would urge the ecologists at University College London and the University of Gloucester to think twice before asking people to trap wasps (report, August 23).
Some years ago, after suffering a plague of the insects, the council in St John’s Wood, London, paid young boys to trap wasps in jam jars. The eager youngsters were very successful but a side-effect of depleting the wasp population was not noted until later.
When the cricket pitch at nearby Lord’s turned brown, it was discovered the cause was a plague of leatherjackets (cranefly larvae), which would normally be kept in check by wasp predation.
Meddling with nature invariably has unforeseen consequences.
Onslunda, Skåne, Sweden