The Collapse of Insects

General discussion on entomology
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alandmor
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The Collapse of Insects

Post by alandmor »

A well illustrated and sobering look at the collapse of insect populations worldwide.

https://www.reuters.com/graphics/GLOBAL ... lZLVkbomCY
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Re: The Collapse of Insects

Post by Trehopr1 »

And all of it do directly or indirectly to us and our activities.

I remember well in the early 1990s researchers were already lamenting the demise of Amphibians in assorted places; and how they are the first indicators of a stressed ecosystem.

Naturally, other things follow in turn with the passing of years and a continued decline of environments. All of the factors (which we are all aware of here) that impact nature negatively are still at work and continue unabated.

I can't even read books like this because I have seen vast (negative) changes in just my lifetime here. It's such a vicious circle of debauchery on the part of humans.

Despite all our acquired knowledge the decline of the natural world continues.... 😩
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Re: The Collapse of Insects

Post by livingplanet3 »

Certainly, there are multiple factors involved with insect decline, but it appears that the use of pesticides / herbicides is overwhelmingly to blame -

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-ne ... 180972839/

The danger posed to the environment by pesticides has been well known for over 60 years, and yet, their use (and misuse) has increased immensely over that time.

A 1978 documentary from the PBS series NOVA -

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Re: The Collapse of Insects

Post by Chuck »

I have no proof, but I suspect spraying for Gypsy moths in my area two years ago wiped out the Saturnids and Sphingids.

Mark Scriber cited pesticides and intentionally introduced parasites for the cause for the drop in Sats. And he's not alone.

Chillingly, and I've long tried to kick the global warm fanatics (not believers, the myopic raving fanatics) to understand this from Scriber ("Climate Driven..) [2013] "....to always include ....as the overarching conservation issues of habitat destruction,
disturbance, fragmentation, or pollution that may be more easily recognized. Historical climates and
evolutionary phylogenies may also need to be included when planning for current or future
management"

In other words, you can't just fix one thing- they ALL need to be fixed.

But your government doesn't care, wherever you are. Agriculture- often wasted on biofuels- is expanding at an alarming rate. Forget the monoculture issue, the problems with deforestation- they spray the s**t out of the plants with stuff that kills a significant level of the food chain, drifts around, and drains into the waterways (where, if it's not clear, it kills aquatic larvae which feed fish.) Nobody is going to throttle a multi-billion dollar industry.

Now, on the positive (sort of note) I believe there is some level of fate to humans. I believe whether our house of cards collapses next week or not, we'll end up at the same place- gone or stone age. Kinda like All Roads Lead to Buffalo- take any road you want, and somehow you'll still end up in the hole called Buffalo. So it's some consolation, if you agree.
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Re: The Collapse of Insects

Post by kevinkk »

Unless you watch documentaries, read or just pay attention, most people don't notice these things, clearly, pesticides go where they're not wanted,
and kill indiscriminately. Habitat loss is the effect of population. We may see pictures of hungry people in advertising, but there is a lot of
food waste in industrialized nations.
Forget climate change, look to the biomass of hominids, some birth control would go a long way to slowing down the destruction. I read once that
people will have more children so they have someone to take care of them in old age. All the myriad cultures will never get together, empire
builders will never give up the lifestyle. If someone we can all agree on would show up and take charge of things, great. Maybe it'll happen
after the next stone age. The lack of real cooperation and quest for power will be our undoing. I'm 58, I figure it'll be someone else's problem,
will things annoy me in the meantime? Probably. Will the blatant hypocrisy of our own government in the USA make my brain numb? That's
already happened.
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Re: The Collapse of Insects

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Consider, we (Charlotte D. Brou & Vernon A. Brou Jr.) have kept capture records by and for thousands of specific insect species every day of every year without fail here in Louisiana for the past 53 years. No one, I repeat, no one has accumulated population data such as this for over 5 decades. You ask, well, what is your opinion, what does the data indicate. Our data, all self-funded research began with a few light traps and culminated with a current trap inventory of numbering about 450-500 automatic-capture insect traps. Our light traps have never been turned off, ever since 1969. Our research concentrated on moth fauna and examined the phenology of thousands of species based upon billions of wild-captured adults. The answer to this quandary involves a quagmire of ever changing influences of every conceivable variety imaginable. Our most involved and largest timewise published study involved the Sphingidae of Louisiana, covered 30 consecutive years (1970-1999) in which we reported capturing 83,889 wild adult Sphingidae specimens within the state of Louisiana. That study resulted in revealing that the majority of N.A. sphingid phenology information published going back centuries before were in fact baseless personal anecdotal opinions. We have continued all along until today captured Louisiana hawkmoths, currently numbering about 200,000 wild adults, including the discovery of two new unexpected species at the AESS. But we have similarly kept detailed capture date record for tens of thousands of other wild-captured Louisiana insects. In fact, our research is so very voluminous, it is stored on 50 terabytes of digital data storage. We probably require another half century to study just the research we have collected, but have yet to publish. Additionally, we have numerous hundreds of yet to be published manuscripts on Louisiana insects in various amounts of completion/incompletion.

Our insect traps usage over the decades, (reported as trap hours) 99% occurred mostly at the (AESS) Abita Entomological Study Site. Over 53 years (1969-2022) numerous dozens of self-designed automatic-capture high-wattage light traps were operated for 1,390,000 light-trap hours, hundreds of semiochemical lure traps were operated for 32,400,000 trap-hours, dozens of fermenting fruit bait traps were operated for 1,270,000 trap-hours, more than 100 dung beetle traps were operated 15,341,000 traphours, and malaise traps were operated 10,800 trap-hours, on and on. For 41 years (1981-2022) all of these various traps were operated continuously 24 hours every day, 365-366 days every year at the AESS and were similarly and continuously operated elsewhere across Louisiana over 53 years.

When we see people expressing opinions about these matters, we note no one actually has provided any data or long term studies backing up their anecdotal opinions. If it were easy, which it is not, anyone could authoritatively answer these questions. Certainly, if anyone has the research and data as we do, we should be able to provide insight into these matters. But, anything we would state/publish would be poo-pooed on from mental-midget google X-purts who have no actual data. So we know better than to state our information in a non-permanent forum such as this. If we do decide to state our real findings, we may do so in a more permanent legitimate formal print format. ALL (100%) of web pages and web sites are temporary and can change dozens of time daily.

299 of our 451 entomological publications can be freely accessed at this one link alone: https://independent.academia.edu/VernonAntoineBrouJr The majority of our publications contain detailed phenograms concerning far more than 1000 species of lepidoptera alone. Just how significant are our entomological publications? The simple act of placing our 451 publications into a single volume as of 2022 would result in a book of over 1200 pages (size 8 1/2 X 11"). And we are still publishing. The only drawback involving our research is that we have been totally self-funded all these decades.
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Re: The Collapse of Insects

Post by Chuck »

Vernon, you've previously made the statement that your collecting records indicate that MV collecting on such a scale has, perhaps counterintuitively, not negatively impacted populations.

But what about other factors? Have you noticed any drops in Saturnidae, as widely reported in eastern USA?

When we look at, for example, Upstate NY, a brief history:

8000 BC: Covered with ice
1000 AD: almost subtropical
1900: 98% of forests clearcut
1940s: American chestnut, a foundational food source, is wiped out.
1970s: Elms disappear.
2000: suburbs expand rapidly
2020: Ash (which is 8% of NY trees) about 50% gone; prediction is near total loss in near future
2020: Crops changed from corn, clover, hay to beans to feed the biofuel industry
2021: Gypsy moths again defoliate large swaths of forest
2021: Gypsy moth spraying is conducted, kept quiet
2022: MV capture at a location occupied for 23 years yields one A. luna and one A. io. Zero cecropia, polyphemus, promethea, angulifera.

Papers have been published concerning the drop in Saturnids, blaming the spraying and parasites to combat the gypsy moth. However, none focused on NY. It seems nobody local is really interested (including Dept of Environmental Conservation, a political arm of the state government) in asking why moth populations have plummeted.

Vernon, has your area experienced any of above significant environmental changes? Have you noticed significant changes in any populations?
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Re: The Collapse of Insects

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Chuck, the number 1 reason for declines in populations of anything is habitat destruction. Regarding loss of forest in the easter US, the actual situation is that the majority of all eastern US forest disappearance had occurred by the early 1800s. The forest you see today is what has been grown and cut and grown and cut over and over. None of these trees are mature trees. E.g. here in Louisiana a very common tree is bald cypress. A century ago we had many trees with trunks exceeding 9 feet across. There are no such trees today like this or even half that size. In fact these trees are cut to make cypress mulch. A totally useless and highly destructive product to use around ones home or even in the tree farms industry, as it is highly attractive to termites. Termites here in the south will destroy your homes. My great-grandparents lived in a 4-room home that was made entirely of 22' long by 18-22" wide by 2 1/2" thick cypress boards. You cannot find such lumber today. For that matter it was impossible for one person to pick up these boards. Humans destroy everything they touch. When I purchased my property we live on here in 1980, there were 5 people living on my dead end, mile and a qtr long road. Today there are 36 of more homes most all are each 10-20-30-100 or more acres. My 10 acre place is the only one that didn't bulldoze and cut most all trees, as all of them over the past 41 years did. Ignorant people buy the property for the beauty of the trees and plants, and the first thing they do is destroy the property by cutting most of the trees and bulldozing all of the other naturally occurring plants. We have here some useful wild native plants and trees at the AESS (hawthorns, crabapples, blackberries, blueberries, grapes, elderberries, currants, etc. These ignorant people with more money than sense destroyed them all without ever knowing they existed. Humans are really really stupid. Quite a number of them within five years completely destroyed their properties and put their places up for sale and moved on, no doubt to destroy more nice forested areas in other places.

Here is a publication where I am the first to publish actual proof of how many broods there are in the Gulf South States of all three members of the Genus Callosamia. This is the type of information we have so far published concerning more than 1000 species of lepidoptera in louisiana. There is more to consider in successfully capturing a particular species than just turning on a MV light in a field. One has to collect when a particular species is flying, even better when the particular species is having brood peaks at a particular geographical location. Here is a link: https://www.academia.edu/39672083/THE_G ... _LOUISIANA If you want to successfully collect goodly numbers of e.g. Callosamia securifera, you have four annual broods (= 4 opportunities) in the Gulf states. One would have to collect (light trap) around mid April, mid-June, beginning of August, and mid September. There are many other factors to consider in being successful collecting certain species, e.g., if the new moon phase coincides with the brood peaks, you will clean up with so many moths you will be amazed. If the full moon coincides with the brood peaks, then you will attract very few moths and be disappointed. The other things to consider, the initial brood of securifera in our study over 49 years accounts for 47% of the entire annual population (all four broods). I made no special effort to collect certain species as my light traps have never been turned off since I turned them on in 1969. I collect everything that enters my collection chambers attached to each trap. This is how I discovered over 400 species of moths new to science in the past 53 years. And the majority of these new species were discovered right here at my home property. How many people do you know that have discovered two new species of hawkmoths in their yard. Or more than 12 species of new Catocala, or a new saturnid, etc., etc. It is not always possible to coordinate collecting so various conditions coincide to be more productive. Collect in a forested area where there are no existing highway lights and you can capture huge numbers of just about anything using UV light or other methods as well. I have on occasion captured over 500 regal moths on a single night with a single trap, same over 500 imperial moths one night with one trap or more that 1000 luna moths one night with one trap. I can confirm just picking up 500 luna moths coming to one light trap takes about 4 hours to inject and place piled up in containers.

Now regarding saturnid population decline, this has been a common claim for over a half century in the eastern US. It is nothing new. But we have been spraying millions of tons of chemicals and insecticides, miticides, herbicides, cides.........on the flora and fauna. Are you expecting a different result. Then we have place millions of high-wattage Mv lamps along roads and highways everywhere, and each one of these millions of lights is a 24 hour feeding station for bats, bird, lizards, fish, turtles, snakes, dogs, cats, swine, on and on and on.....

I don't pay any attention to these various know-it alls that profess having answers about these things. You should ask them, where exactly is your data (proof). The answer is they have none. I have discovered and experienced things that no one has ever published about in scientific literature, in fact major understandings about population dynamics. I was able to discover these thing by collecting long term at a few static sites, the longest location collecting 24 hours daily every day of every year for 41 years here at our current home. Our hundreds of various traps operate continuously regardless of rain, storms, hurricanes, tornadoes, freezing and high heat temps, ..... When one does this research under natural conditions, we experience things not reported by other researchers that collect for what can be described as a fly spec on a time calendar. E.g. all this foolishness' about climate change, the climate has been changing on this planet for 5 billion years. Yet the ignorant children make claims based upon temperature records that have existed for little more than a century and those records going back that far are just for a few long existing largest cities. That 100 years is an imperceivable minuscule microscopic fly spec upon a 5 billion year time calendar.

I tend to veer off topic, so I hope I've addressed your concerns. But regarding light trappings effects upon insect populations, let me throw out this FACT. What I discovered collecting for decades with my traps operating in the same locations is that populations of some species actually increase over time at my trap locations. Why? Because attracting large numbers of insects to the same trap areas for decades, those specimens that come to the vegetation but are not quickly captured actually oviposit abundantly in the surrounding vegetation in these areas. The result is very robust populations always occurring surrounding my 7 light trap locations and similarly with fruit bait traps, semiochemical lure traps, dung beetle traps. No one knows that this situation actually exists nor has anyone even postulated such events can occur. Characterize what I just said with the fact that the one year I counted statistically the volume and numbers of all insects we captured in a single 24-hour period here at our home, where nearly all of our specimens are dispatched using NaCn. We truly have captured numerous hundreds of billions of insects over the past half century just at the AESS. The greatest volume of insect captured in a single 24 hour period at the AESS amounted to approximately 124 million specimens in the 1990s, confirmed by statistical sampling methods in accordance with the U.S. Department of Defense Military Standard 105D.

There is a great amount of undiscovered phenomena yet to be discovered about the insect fauna of N.A. E.g The numbers of annual broods for most hawkmoth species in North America were historically (~150 years) reported as having only one, or at most two annual broods by earlier workers. Of the species we addressed in Louisiana in our 30-years study of the sphingidae of Louisiana, we proved only one species was univoltine, a few have two annual broods, but the rest of the species we reported upon actually have 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 or more annual broods. Everything we did over the past half century was eye-opening.
Vernon Antoine Brou Jr. and Charlotte Dozar Brou
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Re: The Collapse of Insects

Post by Chuck »

vabrou wrote: Wed Dec 21, 2022 9:02 am Chuck, the number 1 reason for declines in populations of anything is habitat destruction. Regarding loss of forest in the easter US, the actual situation is that the majority of all eastern US forest disappearance had occurred by the early 1800s. The forest you see today is what has been grown and cut and grown and cut over and over. None of these trees are mature trees.
I'd have to agree concerning habitat destruction...until recently (20 years?).

I've MV and BL at the same location for 23 years. The surrounding forest hasn't changed, with the exception of the loss of half the ash trees (so far.) Further to that, almost all local Saturnids have been demonstrated to do just fine in suburban (even urban) environments.

The Saturnids repopulated this area no longer than the last ice age, 18,000 years ago. Probably much shorter.

They either came with, or survived, the warming period 1200 years ago.

They survived the clear cutting 120 years ago.

They survived the loss of the American Chestnuts.

They survived the loss of the Elms.

They survived DDT in the 1960s.

They are surviving the loss of the Ashes.

And in five years the numbers have gone to almost zero.

If one species disappeared for a few years, I'd think it to be population ebb and flow. But it's all the Saturnids- six species.

It would be hard to blame the warming- which is quite apparent here- because all of these species occur very far south as well.

Many butterfly species continue with healthy populations, some even apparently increasing. If it were pesticides, I'd expect a crash in the butterfly populations- after all, some eat the same tree species as do the Saturnids.

To my mind, process of elimination, if accurate, leaves parasitism. But I have no proof.
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Re: The Collapse of Insects

Post by wollastoni »

The mass of butterflies has also collapsed in French Guiana, one of the most preserved parts of Amazonia.
Not the pesticide there, doubtful about a new parasite in FG too...

My local friends in FG have a theory : with global warming and/or massive deforestation in Brazil, the season rhytm in FG has changed, with dryer seasons, this may perturbate insect population a lot.
If Amazonia keeps on being cleared-cut, the whole climate of South and North America will change... not in a good way...
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Re: The Collapse of Insects

Post by AZ-MOTH-er »

An excerpt from the Smithsonian article in the link posted by "livingplanet3"

"The most extreme predictions surrounding insects’ decline tend to be highly exaggerated: A study published earlier this year, for example, posited that 41 percent of insect species are declining and global numbers are dropping by 2.5 percent annually. But as Michelle Trautwein of the California Academy of Sciences tells the Atlantic’s Ed Yong, the researchers behind the findings are 'trying to quantify things that we really can’t quantify at this point.' "

* * *
Yes, highly exaggerated. I was trained as a scientist at a major research university. I hear claims nearly every week that we are in the midst of "The Sixth Great Mass Extinction." Why just today listening to the the National Public Radio program "The Daily," I learned that current extinction rates are "10 to 100 times that of the extinction rate of the the last 10 million years." Gadzooks! Holy Schitt! If that is true, then dozens, maybe even hundreds of organisms are becoming extinct EVERY DAY. A recent article claimed that at current rates, 70% of organisms would become extinct in the next 75 years. Even at the very LOWEST estimate for the number of described organisms on planet Earth of 1.5 million (actually now closer to 1.9 million) that comes to over 38 organisms PER DAY that must disappear forever. At the highest figures of 8 or 10 million species on planet Earth...well, you probably get the picture.

I've asked proponents of the Sixth Great Mass Extinction to tell me which species have gone extinct recently and the only result is that I have not been invited back to dinner parties because it is currently considered illegal--if not rude-- to question current fad popular beliefs that play into some sort of worldwide doomsday scenario.

For a more balanced and less hysterical view of the state of nature on our planet, please see this article:

https://aeon.co/essays/we-are-not-edgin ... extinction

But this thread is not strictly about extinction, it is about mass reduction of insect populations. Of course, animal populations are reduced when there is less room and resources for them. And I've heard all the current theories about why insect populations are in decline. But it is important to remember that not all insect populations are in decline and that many of the studies (meta studies) that purport to show otherwise have very serious flaws. I'll respond shortly with more about this. Right now i.need to head off extinction of my housecats by a trip to the market for cat chow.

Regards
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Re: The Collapse of Insects

Post by wollastoni »

Interesting post.

I guess we all agree that very few species have disappeared and will disappear.
This said, the biodiversity is collapsing in most part of the world.

Take Borneo : very few Bornean species have disappeared, but their distribution went from 90% of the island to 10% in less than 50 years.
The whole world biodiversity is collapsing under concrete, pesticide and monocultures. This doesn't mean that species will disappear, they will survive in tiny nature reserves...
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Re: The Collapse of Insects

Post by Chuck »

wollastoni wrote: Sat Jan 07, 2023 10:19 am Interesting post.

...few species have disappeared and will disappear.
...
Take Borneo : ...
There is a point to that; "extinct" species are constantly being re-discovered. But not all. Most likely, they are extirpated from areas, sometimes 99% of the range, and some few survive, for a variety of reasons.

Still, it's sad to not see species that were once common in my area. Blue Pike have been deemed extinct. Extensive recovery efforts ($$) have been invested to "re-introduce" sturgeon (this is a misnomer; they'd catch one accidentally every few years. That said, I have circa 1905 photos of fisherman with massive sturgeons caught in a single day but I've never seen one. Ditto the Muskellunge.)

As a diver, a diver VERY spoiled by diving Solomon Islands and Palau, I am jaded- the reefs of Hawai'i, Fiji, and many parts of GBR suck. Not even worth the effort. People rave about diving Hawai'i and Fiji and Belize, and I'm sure outer areas have some reef worth diving, but they're not worth my time, there's nothing there. It's not until I dove unfished, unpolluted and unspoiled reefs that I realized OMG this is what it is supposed to be like; rather like those who think Central Park in NYC is "outdoors" until they go to the Adirondacks.

Personally, I see the destruction of Borneo from a loftier point- forgetting about the little rhinos and butterflies, it's home to a sentient species.

Still, the loss of O. alexandrae, the planet's largest butterfly, would to me be horrific- though 99% of the world doesn't care, and if it did disappear it would have, AFAIK, no impact on, well, anything except sentiment.

It's my belief that some time, whenever that is, the human population will crash. Whatever damage we have done in the past 300 years, and even in the next 100, is insignificant to the planet in the big context. 300,000 years from now the human damage will be erased and/or repaired.

One can cite many reasons for mitigating the loss of insects; ultimately though I want the quality of life they bring. I am in a minority.
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Re: The Collapse of Insects

Post by kevinkk »

Chuck, your last 2 paragraphs express my sentiments as well, we make a lot of effort in pointless endeavors when the issues are here on this
planet. As a whole, our species is self-destructive and you only need to look at past and present history to figure that out. A few philanthropists
are not going to save the world, it'll take a lot more wide scale cooperation, and it's not going to happen anytime soon.
I suppose things have a way of reaching a balance, and it's going to happen to the hominids one way or another.
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Re: The Collapse of Insects

Post by AZ-MOTH-er »

Without any doubt whatsoever, islands have been disproportionally affected by human activities and therefore are the sites of many of the most notable extinctions of history. I must note that many of the current models for developing (planet -wide) extinction rates use island biogeographic theory and modeling to derive their current statistics. And this may be why the predictions are so dire. Islands (in the following information Australia is included as an island) are a special case. Because of their limited size and isolation, their typical lack of certain sorts of predators and diseases, their biodynamics are especially vulnerable when human interlopers arrive.

Every story of the destruction of an island and its inhabitants is a tragic story. But putting it all in perspective may be useful:

"The island conservationist Josh Donlan estimates that islands, which are just 3 per cent of the Earth’s surface, have been the site of 95 per cent of all bird extinctions since 1600, 90 per cent of reptile extinctions, and 60 per cent of mammal extinctions. Those are horrifying numbers, but the losses are extremely local. They have no effect on the biodiversity and ecological health of the continents and oceans that make up 97 per cent of the Earth.

The frightening extinction statistics that we hear are largely an island story, and largely a story of the past, because most island species that were especially vulnerable to extinction are already gone."

But to say that there is a total collapse of island ecosystems caused by modern extinctions is not correct. And this is one of the principal arguments AGAINST the assertions of many modern biologists and conservationists--that ecosystems will simply tumble like a house of cards if a few species go extinct. They don't. They change. And life goes on.

Now I would be as sorry as anyone if such a species as Queen Alexandra's birdwing would disappear forever. But it's not gone yet. And consider that agencies and organizations vested with conservation have now wasted about 60 years protecting birdwings from international trade (e.g. collectors, the dreaded bugaboo of poaching, examine how much it cost to investigate, arrest and prosecute Hisayoshi Kojima, "King of the Birdwings," what if we took all that money and used it to purchase a birdwing reserve? ) when trade never was a cause of birdwing population derailment in the first place. But the clearing of forests continues unabated in Indonesia for the planting of what? Oil palm plantations. Why? For the express purpose of taking a few cents off that bag of cookies (biscuits) that you will have with your coffee today.

Afbeelding1.png
Afbeelding1.png (23.68 KiB) Viewed 917 times
graph shows area used for growing oil palms over the period 1961-2017 in each of the regions listed

So, instead of impotently wringing our hands over the plight of the birdwings, there is actually something we can do. The banning of oil palm oil into western countries would be a start. And it would have far reaching effects on many more things than birdwings, and I'm not just talking about conservation. This is an achievable goal and no one has to throw up their hands in despair over the uselessness of their efforts in the face of an onrushing crisis such as climate change.

[By the way, if you do research on oil palm oil you will see lots of propaganda by the industry claiming balderdash like this: "But banning palm oil would mean that the demand for vegetable oil would have to be met through a higher production of other oil crops, such as soybean, sunflower, or rapeseed. This would require much more land, as oil palm produces 3-4 times more vegetable oil per hectare than any of these other crops. Hence, replacing palm oil with other vegetable oils would lead to even higher losses of forest and other natural habitats." You should be able to see the holes in that argument against the banning of palm oil.]
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Re: The Collapse of Insects

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kevinkk wrote: Sat Jan 07, 2023 5:46 pm A few philanthropists are not going to save the world, it'll take a lot more wide scale cooperation,
Truth. I don't have to like it, but truth.

BUT there is not an excuse to do nothing. I will lean again on a man I admire John Shuey. He is arguably not a philanthropist, since he's paid for his work. BUT he and his cohorts have made some places just a bit more enjoyable (and preserved small ecosystems).

Meanwhile, in NY there is Finger Lakes Land Trust, a local juggernaut in preservation. They have been gifted, or have purchased with donated money, a stupifying 30,000 acres, much of it recently as their growth and influence exploded. And we're not talking about junk farmland, or scraggly forest, they're buying 1000' of lake frontage, old growth, etc- serious property, both ecologically and financially. I always believed if the WA and OR treehuggers wanted to save the redwoods, they should buy them if the government won't. Well FLLT does (not redwoods, obviously.)


As far as palm oil, it IS the second most catastrophic terrestrial problem in most places (logging for wood is #1...after which it gets turned into palm oil plantations.) I am all too familiar with the palm oil industry, and the ecological impact.

AZMoth wrote "propaganda by the industry claiming balderdash like this" however, it's absolutely true. Pull the high-yield palm oil, and it WILL be replaced by lower-yield substitutes. This is not dissimilar to our area which is now rubbish bean and corn to make ethanol fuel. But that isn't the real driver- palm oil is generally #1 or #2 revenue producer for small island-based nations, and employs the unskilled. Eliminating palm oil would be devastating, and I assure you, the gap would be made up somewhere else whether low-yield junk agriculture, more logging, over-fishing, or Chinese military bases.

Clearly, we cannot rely on any government to be serious about saving ecology or insects. But there is a trend, a slowly increasing trend, for individuals to contribute. And, with a good business model like FLLT has it can make a huge difference.
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