Fighting Insectageddon: Why Bugs Matter
Al Jazeera (2017)
Film Review
This is a brief documentary about three programs in New Zealand, the UK and the US seeking to address an alarming drop in insect populations. A 2017 German study reveals some areas of the world have experienced a 75% drop in insect populations in 27 years. Entomologists blame excessive pesticide use and loss of natural habitat. The survival of the human species is totally dependent on insects, both for food crop pollination and waste decomposition.
The New Zealand program is a industrial-scale wetapunga breeding program at the Auckland zoo. The wetapunga is an enormous prehistoric locust-shaped insect dating from the dinosaur era. Once the nearly extinct wetapunga reach adolescence, they are released to special predator-free islands where there are no introduced mammals (eg rats, ferrets, stoats, etc) to eat them.
The UK program seeks out abandoned industrial sites (brown fields) to transform into insect reserves. One abandoned, these sites are rapidly reclaimed by wild vegetation. This makes them perfect for insects because the soil is totally pesticide-free.
In the US, an entomologist has invented a special microphone that can be hidden in beehives to monitor for signs of colony collapse.
Reblogged this on AGR Daily 60 Second News Bites.
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People noted no flys for months after three mile island meltown in that area in Pennsylvania. Same for chernobyl. Whole species of insects extinct there. Blue butterflies extinct by fukushima.
Considering that radiation and radionuclides cause, exponentially increasing-destructive-heritable-mutations in a species, this makes sense. Insects, in a space with concentrated cesium 137 or some other, longacting radionuclide can breed themselves into extinction in a couble of years or less in places like chernobyl, fukushima, mayak because insects can produce several generations in 1 or 2 years.
It is amazing there are any insects left in the world now. After all the bombs detonated. The numerous undocumented meltdowns. The radioactive medical waste. Fracking making nuclear waste. 170 million americans drink the most radioactive water in the world! Thorium welding rods used all over the us that are full blown radionuclide death. Americium in smoke detectors throughout the world. Americium being a very close cousin to plutonium in deadliness, radiation, and effects. The millions upon millions of tons of nuclear waste from uranium, reactors, processing, in landfills, from medical waste bomb making , depleted uranium in the world now. A thousand or more nuclear reactors w 400 being huge nuclear power murder stations and many others in nuke ships. So many hi level nuke fuel pools. Huge nuclear reactors belching out huge abounts of radioactive
https://m.phys.org/news/2014-08-biological-effects-fukushima-insects-animals.html
https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/hermann-joseph-mullers-study-x-rays-mutagen-1926-1927
http://blog.al.com/pr-community-news/2012/07/geneticist_charts_effects_of_n.html
Fruit flys mutated into extinction after 10 generations from radiation exposure from hermann muller https://www.gutenberg.org/files/55738/55738-h/55738-h.htm#c17
http://ifyoulovethisplanet.org/?p=6431
Interview with genetecist wertelecki about the heritability rule of genetic mutation heritability from nuclear radiation mutations that increases with each generation. Will cause extinction a species in 10 generations
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/09/fukushima-radiation-still-poisoning-insects
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Great information, Doug, thanks. It’s a pity the documentary didn’t mention the role of nuclear radiation in destroying insect populations.
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Our arrogance as a species at the top of the food chain will be our downfall.
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I tend to agree with Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Rosaliene. Last night I heard a great interview she did on Alternative Radio. She blames the problem on capitalism – not human nature. And I find her arguments quite compelling.
Here’s a link if you want to have a listen: https://www.kboo.fm/program/alternative-radio
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