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Young people can't remember how much more wildlife there used to be (organicallyhuman.com)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Walking in England’s New Forest in 1892, butterfly collector S. G. Castle Russell encountered such numbers of the insects that they “were so thick that I could hardly see ahead”. On another occasion, he “captured a hundred purple hairstreaks” with two sweeps of his net.

Patrick Barkham, who recounts these riots of nature in his 2010 book on butterflies, laments never seeing such a sight. However, new research suggests Barkham is a rarity, because a lot of people are forgetting, or just don’t appreciate, how much wildlife there was.

To gauge this effect, Lizzie Jones at Royal Holloway, University of London, compared population records dating back to 1966 of 10 UK bird species against public perceptions of those birds. More than 900 people told her how abundant they thought the species – including declining ones such as house sparrows – were today and when they were aged 18.

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[–] [email protected] 47 points 1 month ago (8 children)

Yeah the front grille of my car remembers.

Traveling from Montreal to Chicoutimi or to Sherbrooke, the car used to be covered in bugs.

Nowadays I don't even have to take it for a wash. I get the odd bug on my windshield and that's it

Probably due to overuse of pesticides.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago (4 children)

I've always wondered about this anecdote, partly because I still see a lot of bugs when going out into the country. Is it that there are actually fewer bugs, or do the more aerodynamic cars of today cause fewer dead bugs to stick to bumpers/grills/windshields?

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 month ago

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320474864_More_than_75_percent_decline_over_27_years_in_total_flying_insect_biomass_in_protected_areas (Please note: some scales are logarithmic and this is only for 27 years)

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