I think the American suburban yard may be equally responsible with agriculture for a lot of this in the US. The use of herbicides and pesticides is completely unregulated. Additionally lawns are an unnecessary waste of time for most people and have a large carbon footprint. I had a small native plant yard that attracted hundreds of pollinators and arachnids. I was treated like and criminal forced to cut most of it down. I still get a fair amount of terrestrial arthropods but not as much.

It sickens me when I see workers with those sprayer packs or trucks that look like small chemical plants.

Before I decided to comment I submitted my write up, if you are interested you can read that you can read here:

http://www.elegantcoding.com/2018/03/reimagining-suburban-ya...

Edit: I did want to mention that I definitely seen a massive decline in butterflies and moths over the last 15 years.

Update: I quoted 40 million acres below, which is for turf grass which probably includes athletic fields. I am not against everyone having a lawn or athletic fields. I do think people should be able to cultivate their native environment on their suburban property and this should be encouraged and even incentivized. My neighbor’s kids play in their backyard, so they have a need for it. Of course a non herbicide non monoculture lawn should work ok too. That’s what I grew up with.

Also I think that gas powered devices need to be replaced with electric devices. I think something like 17 million gallons of fuel are spilled alone in relation to lawn maintenance.

The thing that scares me is the normality of spraying for mosquitoes. In my area it’s the invasive Aedes mosquito species, the native species are a lot less aggressive. Also with some of these other very scary invasive species like the marmorated stink bug, ash borer, lantern fly, that new Asian tick, etc. Are we going to end up using more and more insecticides and subsequently kill more and more of our native fauna?