The wind screen phenomenon of fewer insects being squashed over your car wind screen being the talk of the town these days.
Scientists had previously acknowledged that insects are going extinct, but this new research proves it.
According to the research, in about 30 years from now more than 75% of insects numbers have declined at almost 60 protected areas in Germany.
What’s shocking is that the cause of this extinction is still not known.
“This confirms what everybody’s been having as a gut feeling – the windscreen phenomenon where you squash fewer bugs as the decades go by,” said Caspar Hallmann of Radboud University in The Netherlands.”This is the first study that looked into the total biomass of flying insects and it confirms our worries”, he further added.
The study is based on measurements of the biomass of all the insects being trapped in Germany among 63 nature protection areas for over 27 years starting from 1989. Insects include butterflies, moths, bees and a thousand more flying insects.
Scientists say that despite the habitat, land and weather, a decline in flying insects was seen without any logical explanation.
They stressed over ways on safeguarding these insects from extinction like strips of flowers around farmland and minimizing the effects of intensive agriculture. They also said that it was a dire need to find out the reasons behind this phenomenon.
“We don’t know exactly what the causes are,” said Hans de Kroon, also of Radboud University, who supervised the research.”This study shows how important it is to have good monitoring programmes and we need more research right now to look into those causes – so, that has really high priority”, he added.
Decline of flying insects would cause a negative impact over the entire ecosystem, as insects are a source of food to many birds, amphibians, bats and reptiles and are the major factor in pollination. Without insects and pollination, plants would die out as well.
“If total flying insect biomass is genuinely declining at this rate (around 6% per year), it is extremely concerning. Flying insects have really important ecological functions, for which their numbers matter a lot”, says Dr Lynn Dicks, from the University of East Anglia, UK, who is not connected with the study.
Via BBC
This is really sad… It somehow feels like the end of the wold is near… and the funny thing is that no one cares, as if its someone else’s job to fix things…. ( one of my friend was saying a few days ago, that he hasn’t seen a butterfly in many years, we remember that we saw many butterflies and bees when we used to go to school about 20-30 years ago) this is very sad…
I sincerely hope that we find a solution quickly to protect the world, before its too late…
Blame it on south East Asians. They eat all kinds of insects. What else will happen
Gases in the environment are killing insects.
Answer to everything is “PLANT TREES.”
and Let the Rain water seep into soil, not in (gutter then sewerage at last in ocean) from cemented ground.