As a boy in the 1960s, David Wagner would run around his family’s Missouri farm with a glass jar clutched in his hand, scooping flickering fireflies out of the sky.
“We could fill it up and put it by our bedside at night,” says Wagner, now an entomologist.
That’s all gone, the family farm now paved over with new homes and manicured lawns. And Wagner’s beloved fireflies – like so many insects worldwide – have largely vanished in what scientists are calling the global Insect Apocalypse.
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As human activities rapidly transform the planet, the global insect population is declining at an unprecedented rate of up to 2% per year. Amid deforestation, pesticide use, artificial light pollution and climate change, these critters are struggling — along with the crops, flowers and other animals that rely on them to survive.
“Insects are the food that make all the birds and make all the fish,” said Wagner, who works at the University of Connecticut. “They’re the fabric tethering together every freshwater and terrestrial ecosystem across the planet.”
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I have always been afraid of the fact that we are destroying species of all kinds; species that we need to pollinate are food crops. .Einstein said that when we destroy the bees, are lives will be extinct within a short period.