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Comment by trainsplanes | Hacker News Reader

Talk to a person who spent a lot of time in nature 60 years ago and they'll tell you about water was overflowing with fish. Insects basically clouded the skies in summer. Forests and fields were full of animals and they'd regularly wake up to wild animals at their front door every morning.

It sounds like tall tales to a large number of people today, but even in my short life of only 30 years, the change is huge. I remember being a kid and windshields being covered in insects after a 30 minute drive. I remember turning a light on outside at night and the sides of the house being swarmed luna moths, hordes of bats swooping by and grabbing everything they could, and possums scattering away from the porch. I'd walk around the lake and see snapping turtles lazing about in the sun. Fish splashing in the water. Walking in streams, there'd be so many crayfish that they'd slip inside my sandals and I'd accidentally crush them.

Now I see nothing.

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I don't know where you live but in the northeast usa this is bullshit. In rural new england wildlife is much more prominent than it was 60 years ago. Deer used to be relatively rare. Beaver were extremely rare as were Turkeys. Forests were less dense and had smaller trees. Black bear were rare. Coyotes were extremely rare. Mt. Lions were unheard of. While we are no where near 1500 AD at most only a few promient species have been lost from the area: chesnut trees, wolves, passenger pigeons, etc. Most of the original northern atlantic forest biome is still intact. Rural new england is teeming with wildlife compared to how it was 100 or even 200 years ago when almost all forests in southern new england were cleared for fuel or agriculture. They came back. You got to get outside your bubble. The world is still full of nature. In many locations the population in rural southern new england towns was half what it was in 1820 in 1920. Nature came back when people moved west or to cities for better land and jobs. Humans are part of nature too. We are a natural phenomenon. I care about biodiversity but I get sick of seeing these uninformed opinions that some how the sky is falling everywhere. Maybe it is some places but not everywhere even in the USA even within a few hundred miles of the largest cities.

I also remember the windshields covered in insects during long drives as a kid. I haven't experienced that again as an adult.

Because of aerodynamics. The other day I saw an F-350 that was covered in smashed bugs.

I don't think that accounts for the whole difference, but it may be part of it.

Can confirm - recently was in a 1970 GM car and the windshield was covered in dead bug guts at the end of the drive. On the way home, my 2008 GM had nothing.

Insects fly at different height depending on time of day and weather. Did those conditions(time of day and weather) change much between your two trips?

It is not because of aerodynamics. Old and new cars smash insects equally efficient and the decline of smashed insects on windscreens correlates strongly with a decline in insect population.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ece3.5236

Same here. I think a lot of this is due to the massive increase in plastic pollution, endocrine disruptors, and insecticides wrecking the bottom part of the food chain. Even the swarms of lovebugs are noticeably thinner these days.

Correlation isn't causation, but it wasn't that long ago plastic was much, much rarer - talk to people over 60!

People were rarer too. 3B in 1960 to 7.7B today. Not to mention resource consumed per capita exploded.

Or else tadpoles and tiny shrimp in a cup dipped into a pond. Grasshoppers thick in an autumn meadow. And now it feels as if the plants are okay but the animals are all gone.

The world population doubled in those 60 years. People like to eat fish. They also occupy space - many people live in big cities, where wild animals are not commonly expected at the front door.

Insects also need space to breed, which is taken away by farming, roads, buildings and pesticides.

I've noticed the same over the course of my life but recently I drove through the interior of Florida to go on a camping trip and the front of my car was plastered with dead bugs.

I don’t know, I still see bats every night in a ~250k city. And don’t get me started on all the bugs that get into the apartment. I hate when I have to kill that helicopter-sized moth.

I also have bugs in my backyard, in a 5 million people city. Also saw more foxes while living here than in I ever saw in the countryside.

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