Helping to save the world might start with inviting bugs back; they've got a lot to offer

Praying mantes are farmers' little helper.
(Photo by Rosie Kerr, Unsplash)

Entomologists appreciate all sorts of insects, and in his opinion for The Washington Post, Dana Milbank encourages all humans to give bugs some love because they are vital to the food chain and human survival. He notes that when insects are allowed to be in their natural habitats, bugs that bite, bite less:

"Here, in the mountains, I walk the fields and putter about in the woods without wearing my usual Eau de DEET, and yet the mosquitoes do not feast. I sit on the porch at dusk, baring my arms to all comers — and not so much as a nibble. . . . It isn’t my imagination. Entomologists tell me this is part of a worldwide phenomenon. We’ve worked so hard to banish bugs from our lives—destroying their habitats with pavement and lawns, killing them with insecticides and stressing them with climate change—that our cities and suburbs are now insect wastelands but for a few hardy pest species, such as the disease-carrying mosquitoes that feed on the blood of people and pets.

"In the country, by contrast, the ecosystem is in better balance. There are actually more mosquitoes here, but a smaller proportion of them dine on human blood and carry disease. Competition with other insects keeps their numbers in check, and the other abundant species in the ecosystem — spiders, frogs, fish and bird—gobble up the mosquitoes. In other words, the problem isn’t that we have too many bugs in cities and suburbs; the problem is that we don’t have nearly enough."

The world, not just humans, needs insects to survive.
(Photo by Europeana, Unsplash)

Millbank writes, "Multiple studies show that the overall insect population is declining by one percent to two percent per year, which means losing perhaps a third of all insects on the planet within 20 years—moving us toward what’s often called an ‘insect apocalypse.’ . . . If this mass extinction of insects isn’t reversed, it will decimate the entire food chain, threaten crop pollination and generally cause havoc.

"Agricultural pesticides are a big problem, but there’s some evidence that we use even more insecticide per acre in cities and suburbs. In the sterile environment we’ve created, a few nasty species flourish, such as the tree-devouring spongy (formerly gypsy) moth, the crop-destroying spotted lanternfly, the domestic cockroach, the bloodsucking mosquito. . . . Luckily, the insect apocalypse is relatively easy to reverse compared with other anthropomorphic disasters. And unlike climate change, you can quickly make a noticeable improvement in your backyard, or even on your apartment balcony. You simply need to invite bugs back into your life. They’ll quickly accept. As a bonus, you’ll also wind up with more songbirds — and you just might save the planet."