Also in terrible trouble are these…
and these…
Insects – the animal kingdom’s long-running, greatest success story – are declining, perhaps catastrophically.
Humans are the authors of that decline.
Unarrested, the insects’ decline could prove catastrophic to humankind.
So concludes Michael McCarthy in a very disturbing article, published by The Guardian.
Two extracts:
…the biomass of flying insects in Germany has dropped by three quarters since 1989, threatening an “ecological Armageddon”…
…most of our fruit crops are insect-pollinated, as are the vast majority of our wild plants…
Click here to read the full article.
Footnote: Mt Usu – where I photographed bee and butterfly – is something of a case study in the art of averting catastrophes.
The G8 met just below it, in 2008.
In 2000 Usu’s most recent eruption destroyed and damaged hundreds of homes and the damage bill came to billions of Yen…but not one person was killed or physically injured.