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Comment by MrBuddyCasino | Hacker News Reader

This is making the headlines in Germany right now:

http://www.zeit.de/wissen/umwelt/2017-10/insektensterben-flu...

http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/natur/insekten-in-deutsch...

http://www.sueddeutsche.de/wissen/insektensterben-dramatisch...

Der Spiegel discusses issues in the methodology of the data collection. The intervals over the years weren't uniform, data was collected by volunteers/hobbyists and they did not measure the dry mass weight. There are differing opinions whether or not those issues have relevance.

SZ gives some details on suspected causes. Neither climate change (warmer weather should yield more insects, not less) nor changes in plant diversity can explain the observed effects alone. Main suspects:

- agricultural fertilizers, especially nitrogen

- pesticides, especially neonicotinoides

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It's worth noting that data was collected by amateurs in the sense that they're doing this on their spare time but some of them are highly regarded in their field. Quote from http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/05/where-have-all-insect...

    Members of the Krefeld society have been observing, 
    recording, and collecting insects from the region—and
    around the world—since 1905. Some of the roughly 50 
    members—including teachers, telecommunication 
    technicians, and a book publisher—have become world 
    experts on their favorite insects. Siegfried Cymorek, 
    for instance, who was active in the society from the 
    1950s through the 1980s, never completed high school. 
    He was drafted into the army as a teenager, and after 
    the war he worked in the wood-protection division at a 
    local chemical plant. But because of his extensive 
    knowledge of wood-boring beetles, the Swiss Federal 
    Institute of Technology in Zurich awarded him an 
    honorary doctorate in 1979. Over the years, members 
    have written more than 2000 publications on insect 
    taxonomy, ecology, and behavior.

Just speculating wildly and looking at Sweden, for example meadows have more or less disappeared since 30-40 years. I mean flowering meadows, not pastures for grazing.

The meadows have been turned into forests and to a lesser extent pastures.

It's not a few percent, it's 30% of the land, probably more in Germany where there are much lest forests than in Sweden.

The bio-diversity in a meadow strikes me as much higher than heavily grazed pastures or a mono-culture wheat fields or pine forest.

My understanding is that there is a give and take between meadows and forests that occurs on multi-year cycle. Meadows grow when there is too much water, and trees grow when the water recedes. You can see this in the Yosemite Valley really clearly. Perhaps this is a sign that the freshwater in the ground is going away.

> Perhaps this is a sign that the freshwater in the ground is going away.

Now look what Nestle/other food giants, but also slaughterhouses and animal farms, do: they use groundwater with private wells, and they extract more water than can be replenished... boom.

I wonder if sabotaging such private wells, by conrecte blocking parts of the aquifying layer would constitute as self-defense.

Most likely not, and you risk disruption of underground water flows by injecting huge amounts of concrete into the ground...

Large areas had been meliorated (in 70-ties in my country Poland) so the meadows are gone for good outside of some protected areas.

All these wild weeping willow which had been a signature of Masovian landscape and which I still remember from childhood visits to family farm died soon thereafter. So did the frogs. It is like coming to different country now.

Same in Lithuania. Although it's not as permanent as you might think. In 90s many state farms went under and huge portions of land was left to it's own devices. By 00s, many of them turned into grass with wild flowers, tiny trees, and everything Wherever melioration failed, it was slowly nearing meadow-like conditions. Now big portions of it are used again either for agriculture or housing...

Not sure if this is case in Sweden, but here in the US the reforestation is actually a return to the natural state. Much of the country was logged repeatedly in the last few centuries. Modern sustainable logging and the transition to other energy sources is resulting in the land returning to the endless forest it was before settlers arrived.

This is mostly clearly seen on the east coast because most of the Midwest is still used for farming.

Edit: in Europe this is visible in coppiced forests. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coppicing . Haven't seen one here in the US but I assume they're somewhat common in Europe where they were an early and effective method of sustainable forestry.

I think the point was made at the end of the previous post that pine (or other non-deciduous) forests are being planted there. I think it's a similar story across Europe, but I'm most familiar with Ireland where modern forestry has used Sitka Spruce which is non-native and impacts biodiversity.

It seems like a lot of American logging has pushed to the Pacific Northwest, where it's very wet, doesn't get very hot/cold and new growth is very fast. I was talking to someone in Portland out in the middle of nowhere who said, "Almost everything you see is new growth; less than 60 years old. It grows that fast." The Singapore City gallery had a display where they talked about growing plants sustainability for paper.

Yup, Fat growing pulpwood is what they use. 20-40 year cycle. http://forums2.gardenweb.com/discussions/1634930/is-the-larg...

Weyerhaeuser, etc. grow those fast growing pulpwood trees and harvest.

It may grow fast, bug the pacific north west once was covered with HUGE trees. Those trees may seem normal, but they are small in comparison to how things "normally" looked before Europeans. https://www.google.cz/search?q=spruce+giants+olympic&source=...

Yep - PNW forestry is a fairly reasonable solution, at least in the sense that it's sustainable as-is. But it's far from a natural condition for that area.

The comparison between relatively preserved parks and National Forests (e.g. Willamette) and the rest of the states forests is truly jarring.

For that matter, the same pattern can be seen across the country. Much of Pennsylvania is densely forested, but the entire state has only a few thousand scattered acres of old-growth woods.

Sounds like they may have been referring to the Tillamook Burn. Also, I doubt it was you, but this reminds me of a conversion on Saddle Mtn that happened to be right while the Eagle Creek fire was starting.

> before settlers arrived

I think you mean "before Native Americans arrived". One of the side effects of the European arrival to North America was reforestation due to a disease-driven decline in the population of Native Americans.

Seems appropriate to mention controlled burns preceding European settlers:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_use_of_fire

Test

Sustainable logging isn't enough in itself to really maintain insect diversity because logging forests aren't very diverse forests so they only help a small number of insects thrive. But if done right (e.g. leaving some dead tree trunks behind when harvesting, as homes for insects) it is much better than nothing.

The industrial forests of Sweden is nothing like a 'natural' state, and I don't think we even know what a natural state would look like since people have been around since the ice age.

But the case in point was that the countryside has changed considerably because of changes in agriculture.

Not everywhere. Much of the Midwest used to have a fire ecology, leading to prairie and Oak Savannah. Now forests of non-fire-resistant trees crop up on any bit of unused and unmaintained land.

US forest management is definitely more wild than I've seen in Germany, but it's not always necessarily a return to natural state. For example, in many parts of the country, reforestation meant planting pine monocultures where there were previously diverse old-growth forests or savannas. People look at these monoculture forests and think they are "the way things used to be", when in reality they are nothing but a shadow of the kinds of biodiversity that was destroyed.

Something that bothers me is the gristly, meager attitude of a certain type of conservation ecology. I think we are really going to start having to cultivate healthy ecosystems from the ground up, regardless of who's originally "from here" or not. I'm very optimistic about permaculture and wild cultivation techniques. I think they deserve more of a shot than people often give them.

And that "ag-tech" oligopoly has gotta go, along with its foolish, ignorant, exploitative approaches to ecology and economics alike.

Even in the adgricultural midwest reforestation is notable. One factoid I recall is this: At the beginning of the 19th century, Indiana was about 85% forest and 15% barrens (prairies). By the 20th century it had become 20% forest and 80% open land and farmland. Now it is ore like 25% forest and 75% open land and farmland.

European deforestation was most extreme during the late middle ages and early modern period. When people were using wood for fuel in a growing economy, before switching to coal, major European nations were running out of trees. Coppicing was adopted out of a desperate need for basic resources.

Yeah, lots of wet land have been drained for farming.

The massive use of neonicotinoides would not surprise me given the research of its impact on bee colony collapse.

Maybe a side effect of less bees pollination?

I was listening to an entomologist podcast on colony collapse and they were suggesting that as members of the colony became more and more impaired the interdependency of the various bee groups (workers, foragers, queen) was compromised and then "all of a sudden" the hive was unable to reliably function. And large social group (ants, termites, bees, etc) might be similarly affected.

Not unlike if one drives up the cost of rent in a city so high that the people who make it function, can't afford to live there and leave. Dogs don't get walked, burritos unmade and drinks unstiffened. Jane Jacobs outlined all of this decades ago.

What city has this problem? I haven't heard of a burrito extinction event, maybe I missed the news though.

If the burritos are extinct, you are definitely out of foie gras. First they came for PB&J, but I didn't complain, I ate lobster bisque.

And criminals don't get caught and fires don't get put out. SF is not quite there yet, but already most emergency responders live outside the city. (Article is from 2011. I'm sure the situation is worse today.) http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Most-S-F-firefighters-...

You reap what you sow.

If you DGAF about planning and resource management and just do the same thing year after year your fields will soon be useless for growing that one thing you've specialized in and it will suck to be you but none of your neighbors will feel sorry for you because they all saw it coming from years off.

All of which is only exacerbated by the über-rich buying property as investments, leading to almost completely empty neighborhoods, which obviously can't support convenience stores, laundromats, bars, cafes, bookstores and all of the other local business that support and are supported by locals.

Could you please share the link to the podcast?

I think it was on 99pi

Like breaking a food chain, thanks!

That unsuredness may be true about the collective data here but we definitely know that one particular species is in precipitous decline - the Monarch butterfly with it's 3400 mile annual journey to go north/south with the seasons. Since they only eat one plant, we could eliminate some causes directly (although they could be secondary causes - like making other plants/insects thrive).

https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2016/0301/Mexico-s-monarch...

Don't forget glyphosate. Have you watched "mosanto in trial" ? The facts are frightening.

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