20 August 2024

Insectageddon!

20 August 2024

That sounds a bit dramatic, but insect populations really have crashed over the last few years – many of us have noticed that there are fewer bees and other flying insects around, and we don’t have to clean insects off the car windscreen any more.

A recent paper reports a 75% decline over just 27 years.

And of course, without insects, we have far fewer birds. It’s been particularly noticeable here in the Memorial Gardens, where we have the just odd bluetit or robin, and hardly any blackbirds; we used to have far more of them around us when we were working.

There are a number of reasons for this decline – loss of habitat, use of pesticides, erratic weather – but this year the long cold wet spring has made it much worse, as many species haven’t been able to breed as much or as often as they usually do.

How can we help them recover? – Well, in the long term, we need to support measures like the Town Council’s Biodiversity Plan (on their Climate Emergency page, and Central Bedfordshire Council’s local Nature Recovery Strategy.

It really helps when people email councillors to show your support for these plans, and encourage them to see that they get acted on.

But more locally, we can always do more here in the Memorial Gardens. We’ve noticed more different types of beetles, bees and moths since we started managing these flower beds about ten years ago, but there’s still more we can do. We’ve started changing what we do in the autumn – tidying the beds without being too tidy! We tuck leaves between plants to provide shelter and hibernation sites, and we’ve tucked a few small log piles around, too. We’re also adding a greater variety of plants, as some insects are specialists, and need particular flowers, at a particular time, which takes more thinking about than just putting in open-flowered plants that bees visit. Night-flying insects are important pollinators too, so we’ll add some of the flowers they like – we have some evening primroses and phlox growing on, which we’re hoping to put out this side of the cold weather. And of course, the fuller the beds are, the better the shelter for insects, small mammals like voles, and reptiles – we’re always getting surprised by frogs jumping out from their hiding places as we work!