Where are the Insects?

by Gary Peterson

In late July I, I took a trip up to the old home farmland. It was a 200 mile round trip through lots of farmland. During the entire trip, on my windshield, were two bug splatters

A trip, the week before, took me on a 60 mile round trip through another section of farmland in Missouri, there were no bug splatters on my windshield. I can remember when we would pull into a service station and an attendant would come out to fill our gas tank, part of the service was checking the oil and washing the splattered bugs off our windshield. I can remember one time the splattering was so bad I could hardly see to pull off the road.

Along with the extinction of many land mammals, the food links associated with them have disappeared. Many frog varieties have vanished. We have a large number of birds that have dwindled in number. Concern over the disappearance and pollination by bees is a constant. We know that bees pollinate apples, cranberries, melons, broccoli and many other crops, but other insects pollinate chiles, herbs, spices and chocolate. In China, it is such a problem they already have crews that go into the orchards with brushes on the end of sticks so they can insert into one flower and then into another flower to transfer pollen.

For every insect that harms plants or animals, there are 1000 other kinds that are necessary for the good of nature, With millions of different kinds, we don’t know the entire connection between animals of all kinds as well as plants. At what point do we upset the ecosystem of our planet and it will not be able to recover? The balance is fragile.

I think of the Serengeti in Africa. Millions of wildlife make this area their home. If it were not for dung beetles removing the dung generated by these mammals, the grass would be smothered out and the animals would starve. This is just one of many simple insects, which not only eliminates waste, but spread fertilizer and scatter seeds for new growth. I remember when I saw a dung beetle as a teenager on the farm. I wonder if they still exist in the U.S. I know at one time farmers pulled a harrow over the pasture to spread the dried cow pies because there were not enough beetles to do the job.

From Civil Eats (https://tinyurl.com/2h2p2upe):

“Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, Germany has lost three-quarters of the flying insects in its nature reserves and protected areas. In the rainforests of Puerto Rico, there has been a 98 percent decline in the biomass of insects since the 1970s, and in Denmark, a 97 percent decline since the 1990s. In North America, one in four bumblebee species is in decline or threatened with extinction. There’s a patch of protected forest in New Hampshire where beetle abundance has fallen 80-odd percent since the 1970s.”

We can do our part by not using toxic sprays (poisons), planting flowers and leaving roadsides unmowed. Read more at