Butterflies

There is mounting evidence of pollinator decline all over the world and consequences in many agricultural areas could be significant. We assessed these consequences by measuring 1) the contribution of insect pollination to the world agricultural output economic value, and 2) the vulnerability of world agriculture in the face of pollinator decline. We used a bioeconomic approach, which integrated the production dependence ratio on pollinators, for the 100 crops used directly for human food worldwide as listed by FAO. The total economic value of pollination worldwide amounted to €153 billion, which represented 9.5% of the value of the world agricultural production used for human food in 2005. In terms of welfare, the consumer surplus loss was estimated between €190 and €310 billion based upon average price elasticities of − 1.5 to − 0.8, respectively. Vegetables and fruits were the leading crop categories in value of insect pollination with about €50 billion each, followed by edible oil crops, stimulants, nuts and spices.

A new review of insect pollinators of crops and wild plants has concluded they are under threat globally from a cocktail of multiple pressures, and their decline or loss could have profound environmental, human health and economic consequences. Globally, insects provide pollination services to about 75% of crop species and enable reproduction in up to 94% of wild flowering plants. Pollination services provided by insects each year worldwide are valued at over US$200 billion. The review, published on 22nd April 2013 in the scientific journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, was carried out by an international team of 40 scientists from 27 institutions involved in the UK's Insect Pollinators Initiative (IPI), a £10m research programme investigating the causes and consequences of pollinator decline. Dr Adam Vanbergen, from the UK's Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (CEH) and science coordinator of the IPI, led the review. He said, "There is no single smoking gun behind pollinator declines; instead there is a cocktail of multiple pressures that can combine to threaten these insects. For example, the loss of food resources in intensively farmed landscapes, pesticides and diseases are individually important threats, but are also likely to combine and exacerbate the negative impacts on pollinators."

The legislation suspends certain uses of neonicotinoids, a particular type of pesticide that is suspected to play a role in the bee die-offs happening in Oregon and in bee declines around the world, until the Environmental Protection Agency reviews these chemicals and makes a new determination about their proper application and safe use. Dinotefuran, the neonicotinoid ingredient in Safari insecticide, is blamed for last month’s mass die-off in Wilsonville, OR of an estimated 50,000 bumble bees – the largest such die-off ever recorded. The Oregon Department of Agriculture is investigating the die-off and is temporarily restricting the use of 18 pesticide products containing dinotefuran.

Many groups of organisms found in agricultural areas are experiencing catastrophic declines, including: birds (e.g., Nebel, S. et al. 2010. Declines of aerial insectivores in North America follow a geographic gradient. Avian Conserv. Ecol. 5(2): 1. [online]); bats (e.g., Wickramasinghe, L.P. et al. 2004. Abundance and species richness of nocturnal insects on organic and conventional farms: effects of agricultural intensification on bat foraging. Conserv. Biol. 18: 1283–1292); amphibians (e.g., Blaustein, A.R. 2011. The complexity of amphibian population declines: understanding the role of cofactors in driving amphibian losses. Ann. N. Y. Acad. Sci. 1223: 108-119); bumblebees (e.g., Cameron, S.A. et al. 2011. Patterns of widespread decline in North American bumble bees. Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. 108(2): 662-667); butterflies (e.g., Van Dyck, H. et al. 2009. Declines in common, widespread butterflies in a landscape under intense human use. Conserv. Biol. 23(4): 957-965); moths (e.g., Conrad, K.F. et al. 2006. Rapid declines of common, widespread British moths provide evidence of an insect biodiversity crisis. Biol. Conserv. 132(3): 271-291); and carabid beetles (Brooks, D. R. et al. 2012. Large carabid beetle declines in a United Kingdom monitoring network increases evidence for a widespread loss in insect biodiversity. J. Appl. Ecol. 49(5): 1009-1019). There is an urgent need for greater understanding of the degree to which exposure to neonicotinoid insecticides may be contributing to these declines, and how exposure to these chemicals may be interacting with other negative pressures on biodiversity in agricultural areas.

Während das Verbot des Clothianidins ab Dezember 2013 von einer Referentin des BUND als Schritt in die richtige Richtung hingenommen wird, ist es dafür eigentlich schon jetzt viel zu spät. Nach unseren Beobachtungen haben die Einsätze dieses Neonikotinoids seit 2008 durchschlagende verheerende Auswirkungen auf alle Blüten besuchenden Insektenarten (Wildbienen, Hummeln, Wespen, Wanzen, Schmetterlinge, Fliegen, Käfer, ...) gehabt, und das in weiten Teilen der Ebene beiderseits des Oberrheins. Es dürften im Gebiet seither insgesamt an die 1000 Arten schwerstens dezimiert, wenn nicht gar ausgerottet worden sein. Die allermeisten Arten oben genannter Insektenfamilien und -ordnungen, von denen es jetzt (endlich!) in den Blüten auf Wiesen und an Waldrändern nur so wimmeln müsste, sind aus der gesamten Landschaft verschwunden, nahezu alle Blüten – verwaist und leer! Sehr wenige Arten, die bisher die allerhäufigsten waren, sind jetzt höchstens einzeln und zudem sehr selten anzutreffen, alle anderen häufigen und selteneren überhaupt nicht mehr. Die Katastrophe ist also weitaus größer als bisher angenommen und könnte nächstens ungeahnte Auswirkungen in den unterschiedlichsten Biotopen, Pflanzengemeinschaften, Nahrungsketten und im gesamten Ökosystem zeitigen. Die Worte, mit denen unsereins diesen vom Menschen angestifteten Supergau in der Insektenwelt zu beschreiben sucht, können gar nicht drastisch genug sein, um die Bevölkerung über die tatsächlichen Ausmaße und Konsequenzen ins Bild zu setzen: "Landschaftsweise dramatischer Rückgang der Artenvielfalt", genauer: "Beinahe-Totalausfall aller Blüten besuchenden Insektenarten" – das ist die aktuelle hiesige Situation, auch in den Naturschutzgebieten auf der badischen und elsässischen Rheinseite, mit der wir fortan alle irgendwie weiterleben müssen, ob wir Insekten mögen oder nicht.

Butterflies are the essence of cool in the insect world, a favorite muse for poets and songwriters, who hold them up as symbols of love, beauty, transformation and good fortune. But providing good fortune apparently goes only one way. As humans rip apart woods and meadows for housing developments and insecticide-soaked lawns, butterflies across the country are disappearing. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recently announced that two brown, mothlike butterfly subspecies are probably extinct in South Florida, which some entomologists say is ground zero for the number of butterfly species on the verge of annihilation.

Conservationists are highlighting the plight of another rare bird in Surrey to raise awareness of the scale of decline in the county's woodland wildlife species. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) says that the willow tit Parus montanus, which was once widespread across the UK, has plummeted in number over the last 30 years. The charity said now recorded sightings have all but ceased in Surrey. And it pointed to the plight of the country's smallest woodpecker, the lesser spotted woodpecker Dendrocopos minor, too, saying it is also an increasingly rare sound in the South-east and the rest of the UK. Previously, the RSPB has drawn attention to arguably Surrey's rarest bird, the Dartford Warbler, which was once regularly spotted in the region's heathland areas, including Reigate Heath, but is now a very rare sight since a crash in its numbers in recent years.
The RSPB was presenting the findings in the wake of last month's State of Nature report.