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THE INSECT CRISIS: The Collapse of the Tiny Empires Ruling the World, by Oliver Milman
Anyone with a car has collected data on the decline of insects. Entomologists call this the “windshield effect,” a relatable metric that is neatly summed up by the question: When was the last time you had to clean insect splatter from your windshield? This ritual was once an inevitable coda on any long journey. Now we are much more likely to watch the same landscapes pass through flawless glass, miles and miles away.
The trend is more than anecdotal. When ecologist Anders Pape Møller began systematically plowing two roads in Denmark in 1996 and counting the windshield warnings, many hailed his project as bullshit. Twenty years later, the results showed something deadly serious: Collisions with insects were reduced by 80 percent along the first path and by a staggering 97 percent along the second path. Other scientists using more traditional methods have reported similar collapses everywhere from Puerto Rican forests to nature reserves in Germany. News stories referred to the situation as “insect apocalypse” or even “insectageddon”. Beyond the headlines, entomologists are frantically trying to figure out what’s going on and how to stop it in the world.
These concerns lie at the heart of environmental journalist Oliver Milman’s gripping, sober, and important new book. He, too, goes beyond the headlines in a refreshingly willingness to embrace the complexity of the subject. “It’s helpful to think of the insect crisis as many different lines on a graph, rather than as a single downward sloping line,” he writes. While many species are truly on the decline, some stand still, zigzag, or – for pests like bedbugs that thrive with humans – rise. Even more, they don’t show up at all on the chart because no one has reviewed them. Of the estimated 5.5 million to 30 million different insect species in the world, one million are poorly described. Some will likely disappear before we name them.
The blame for the crisis falls on insect-specific challenges from light pollution and widespread pesticide use, as well as broad biodiversity threats such as habitat loss and climate change. But Milman draws particular attention to the way industrial agriculture transforms once-diverse rural areas into vast monocultures. Lacking shrubs and even many weeds, modern single crop farms lack the diverse plant life necessary to support an insect community. As agricultural ecologist Barbara Smith puts it: “As if chips were the only food available. Chips for everyone, even if you don’t eat chips.”
Milman has an ear for good citation and a knack for explaining scientific research. He interviews dozens of experts, from beekeepers battling wasp killings in the Pacific Northwest to a biologist who monitors the declines of insects through chemical traces in the feathers of insect-eating birds. Sometimes it’s desirable to linger on a story, but it’s hard to overlook the pace of the book when there’s so much urgent ground to deal with. This versatile approach also reveals one thing: a surprising number of scientists describe their findings as “worrying” or “scary”. In other words, those who know the most about the crisis are not just worried; they are afraid.
Uncontrolled insect declines threaten massive crop failures, collapsed food webs, bird extinctions and more. But as ecologist Roel van Klink observes, “Insect populations are like logs of wood being pushed underwater.” Take the pressure off and they’re back on their feet, Milman sees something at the Knepp estate in Sussex, where restored, pesticide-free pastures and woodlands are buzzing with so much life, it’s becoming a tourist attraction. “If you squint a little,” Milman writes, “handling the insect crisis may seem surprisingly simple.” It may not be necessary to do something to help the insects if we stop doing the things that harm them.
Thor Hanson is an author and biologist whose recent books include “Buzz” and “Hurricane Lizards and Plastic Squid.”
THE INSECT CRISIS: The Collapse of the Tiny Empires Ruling the World, by Oliver Milman | Norton | 220 pages | $27.95
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