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‘Half the tree of life’: ecologists’ horror as nature reserves are emptied of insects
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 03 Jun 2025
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Do you guys remember driving down the highway in the 90's and having your car absolutely covered in the mangled corpses of insects? To the point where wiper fluid is called bug wash?
I don't know if this is the same everywhere, but my car stays pretty clean these days.
Yeah, I'm in California's central valley, which is a lot like the Serengeti in that it's a grassy desert-ish thing that's seasonally wetted by snowpack melt. It's actually pretty swampy in its natural state. Used to be that you couldn't drive forty minutes here without your car being a hopeless mess, especially in the late winter/spring. Now, I almost never hit a bug at all. It's been that way for years. I pointed it out to my nature-loving MAGA mom and it freaked her the fuck out.
There are scientific studies on windshield bug death. If you want to solidify how big this insect collapse is, it's scary. Those studies have seen up to 90% decline in certain areas. These studies also took aerodynamics into account.
I live in what should be a prairie, but it's just hundreds of miles of farmland now. I drove five hours yesterday, and my car is still clean. It's absolutely horrific.
I am a biology major with a focus on ecology, and sometimes I regret choosing this academic path. I have taken some ag classes, the ag majors here are multi-generational ranchers and farmers. The disregard for the damage they are doing to the environment and the way they mock advances in ag that preserve life beyond their fences is so discouraging.
I lived in Louisiana in the 90's. If you didn't add a mesh (think window screen) to your car grill before driving on the highway, your radiator grill would clog with bugs and you'd overheat.
I remember Louisiana being like that even in the early 2000's... Anyone know how it is now? I haven't been back in 19 years.
I drive the I-10/12 stretch between Austin and Orlando at least four times per year and I used to drive between Austin and the French Quarter in the early 2010's all the time because I had a place in the quarter. I have not seen bugs like I did in the 90's since around 2010.
I was actually thinking about this very thing last week driving across Costa Rica. Aside from ants and the occasional gnat/mosquito, we really saw very few insects across the country as a whole. So it's a global phenomenon, and things are probably a lot worse then we realize and care to admit.
Yes, cars had to wear bras
Oh.my god. I never realized but you are absolutely right.