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In Jefferson County, the bat population has declined more than 50 percent during the past couple of years. White-nose syndrome, a white fungus that collects on the noses and wings of hibernating bats, has killed more than 1 million cave-hibernating bats in the state since it was first discovered near Albany in 2006. Since then, the fungal disease has spread to other states and several provinces in Canada.

Naturalists like Sue Muller, a Natural Resources Technician for the Howard County Department of Recreation and Parks, have been working to save Maryland’s official state insect, the endangered Baltimore checkerspot Euphydryas phaeton. Since the early 1990s, there has been a rapid decline of the butterflies in the area. “Over a decade has been spent trying to save these butterflies,” said Muller. “It’s not that simple.”

The monarch butterfly Danaus plexippus is one of the most beloved of insects — “the Bambi of the insect world,” as an entomologist once put it. Monarchs lay their eggs on milkweed Asclepiadaceae, and their larvae eat it. Dr. Chip Taylor, an insect ecologist at the University of Kansas and director of the research and conservation program Monarch Watch, says the growing use of genetically modified crops is threatening the orange-and-black butterfly by depriving it of habitat. “This milkweed has disappeared from at least 100 million acres of these row crops”.

As president of the Dorset-based Butterfly Conservation charity, Sir David is a keen lepidopterist. “Butterflies are one of the stars of the British countryside,” he says. “But they continue to be in long-term decline.”

Biologists at Wageningen University in the Netherlands enlisted the help of 250 drivers for a "splash teller" study. Each motorist had to wipe his or her car license plate clean then tot up the bug body count at the end of their drive. The scientific study was inspired by a similar project in the United Kingdom, carried out in 2004, and the results of the Dutch study were similar to those of the British study. In the UK-wide Big Bug Count held throughout June 2004, nearly 40,000 conservation-minded drivers counted the bugs splattered on their vehicle number plates. Using a cardboard counting-grid dubbed the "splatometer", they recorded an average of only one squashed insect every five miles, whereas in the summers of 30-odd years ago, car bonnets and windscreens would quickly become encrusted with tiny bodies. The Dutch study recorded an average of only one squashed insect every five kilometers.

Developmental neurotoxicity (DNT) studies are designed to investigate whether pre- or post-natal exposure to a toxicant affects neural development. Imidacloprid was administered in the diet to mated Sprague Dawley rats. The females were treated from gestation day 0 to 20 and then continued through the lactation day 21 at doses of 0, 100, 250 and 750 ppm, corresponding to an average daily intake of 0, 8, 19 and 54.7 mg/kg/day during gestation. The pups were indirectly exposed to imidacloprid for a total of 41 days (20 days in utero and 21 days via lactation). After weaning on postnatal day 21 pups were given untreated feed.

Brain tissue from 10 pups/sex/group were analyzed on postnatal days 11 and 75. On post-natal day 11, female pups from the 750 ppm group had a decreased caudate putamen width and a substantial reduction in the thickness of the corpus callosum. Morphometric brain measurements were not performed in the intermediate and low dose groups.

Almost all Australian Commercial Beekeepers can recall cleaning moths from truck windscreens when shifting bees and chasing honey flows. On some warm nights the moths would get so bad, that you needed to pull over and clean the screen so that you could see out of it. According to Tom Theobald a Colorado Beekeeper, a couple of weeks ago approaching USA summer, you could drive for hundreds of miles in some corn and grain belts in the USA, barely making contact with an insect. There is a consistent line of thought among some Beekeepers in the USA, Canada, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Slovenia, the Netherlands and more, that massive losses of bees and insects in their respective countries may be contributed to by the use of microscopic doses of Systemic Insecticides, coming under the very hard name to pronounce Neonicotinoid (NEONICS). Fungicides sometimes act together with the Neonics to increase this effect. In Australia, there are presently 37 registered NEONIC insecticides using IMIDACLOPRID and CLOTHIANIDIN. IMIDACLOPRID has been registered and in use since the mid 90's. In the USA there are over 600 registered NEONIC products now. USA and Europe are two of the biggest markets for pesticides. According to regulations supplied by the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority [APVMA], IMIDACLOPRID and CLOTHIANIDIN are registered for use within bounds of product label, to control insects on a wide variety of plant life in Australia including: cotton, maize, sorghum, sunflower, sweet corn, sugarcane, canola, seed pastures and grasses such as rye grass, fescus and pharalaris, clovers such as subterranean, white, and strawberry, lucernes, stone fruit, potatoes, turnips, swedes, kales, capsicums, eggplants, tomatoes, apples, pears, cabbages, cucumbers, roses, bananas, eucalypt seedlings, turf, lawns and gardens. Read more: http://www.theabk.com.au/article/neonicotinoids-australia

Bert van Ingen is an avid bird-watcher with a special interest in songbirds and other conspicuous birds. He fears several types of these birds are on the decline: "I am a child of the 1960s and graduated from wildlife biology at Carleton University in the 1970s. I have always been fascinated by birds. Travelling in eastern Ontario throughout the 1970s, I couldn't help but notice the almost mathematical precision with which I could expect to see colourful birds en route. In farm country you could count on seeing a meadowlark atop every 20th fence post and equally expect to find a bobolink (a pretty blackbird) perched on a strand of fence wire. This is my third summer of extensive rural driving during which I specifically have been devoted to seeking out meadowlarks and bobolinks. I have so far not seen even a single one of these birds."