Dear all,
Back from holidays.
Threatened species: urgent action is needed.
Meeting since the beginning of the week in Paris, scientists and experts from all over the world are working to finalize their report on the global state of biodiversity. Led by IPBES (the intergovernmental platform for biodiversity), this assessment is similar to the IPCC's regular background documents on climate change. The aim is for the scientific community to speak with one voice and produce a robust inventory, allowing concerted and comprehensive action to protect terrestrial species. The decline in living organisms has reached a particularly alarming level and rate in recent years.

According to a review by Australian researchers compiling more than 73 studies, insects will soon be extinct if we do not change our agricultural production methods.



Nearly half of the insect species, essential to ecosystems and economies alike, are in rapid decline worldwide.
Unless we change the way we produce our food, insects will have gone extinct in a few decades.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/feb/10/why-are-insects-in-decline-and-can-we-do-anything-about-it

Article, The Guardian wrote:

At this critical time…
… we can’t turn away from climate change.... As the world's leaders turn their backs on the environment, we are at a crisis point. Individual consumer choices are important, but we need collective action to achieve the systemic change that will really make a difference.

Do you think such a disaster can be avoided?
If so, how?

Kind regards,
Abelard

Insects are certainly the canary in the coal mine with regard to climate change. And it's been that way for a while.

I remember putting my hand on the red-painted concrete of a low wall on the seafront at Hunstanton in Norfolk in July 1976 and thinking “Oh - the paint’s still wet!”. It soon became clear, however, that it wasn’t wet, red paint on the wall but it was a grey wall upon which thousands of ladybirds (coccinellidae) had swarmed. It’s now believed that the heatwave that summer and ensuing drought had killed off aphids (which are the ladybirds’ favoured food) and so en masse the ladybirds had forsaken the countryside for the towns in search of alternative food sources. At the time, however, people referred to them as ‘Norwegian ladybirds’ which had supposedly flown across the sea from Norway although no-one seemed to question how or why they had made such an epic journey. It was simply marked down as just another bizarre phenomenon of that unprecedented spell of hot, dry weather. Ladybirds can fly up to 120 kilometres without landing, which is surprisingly far when one considers how small they are, but that’s no way near enough to cross the sea from Scandinavia to the British Isles. No, those tiny, red and black (sometimes yellow and black or even black and white) marauders were not viking but homegrown.



 
(A ladybird, sometimes called a ladybug, can be very pretty. A swarm of them, however, can be disconcerting.)


The 1976 heatwave was not only record-breaking in terms of duration (it lasted 8 weeks) but also in severity. The mercury hit 96.62 degrees Fahrenheit (35.9 degrees Celsius) on 3 July in Cheltenham. It was the hottest day in Britain for 44 years – the previous hottest day having been recorded in 1932. In the 46 years since 1976, however, that temperature record has been broken on a further 3 occasions - in 1990, 2003 and 2019. Three years on from 2019 meteorologists are now predicting another imminent heatwave. Here’s a list of countries in temperate North-Western Europe with the years of their highest recorded temperatures:

France	46.0 °C	(2019)
Belgium	41.8 °C	(2019)
Switzerland	41.5 °C	(2003)
Germany	41.2 °C	(2019)
Luxembourg	40.8 °C	(2019)
Netherlands	40.7 °C	(2019)
Czechlands	40.4 °C	(2012)
Britain	38.7 °C	(2019)
Sweden	38.0 °C	(1947)
Liechtenstein	37.4 °C	(2003)
Denmark	36.4 °C	(1975)
Norway	35.6 °C	(1970)
Guernsey	34.3 °C	(2003)
Ireland	33.3 °C	(1887)
Jersey	33.1 °C	(2022)
Iceland	30.5 °C	(1939)
Isle of Man	29.0 °C	(1983)
Faroe Islands	26.0 °C	(2003)

 
Worth noting is that Belgium has recorded a higher temperature than either Germany or Switzerland which are much more inland and further south. Similarly, the Netherlands have recorded a higher temperature than either Liechtenstein or the Czechlands. Also note how Ireland has recorded a higher temperature than Jersey with Jersey’s record temperature coming only last month in June 2022 while Ireland’s record stands from the 19th Century.

I remember the hot summer of 1976 and the number of ladybirds around.  I've heard on the news from time to time about bees being endangered.  I'm uncertain whether it is just the honey bee that is in peril or bees in general.  I've read a short article on The Soil Association site about the threat to bees where the threat is said to be threefold:- "There isn’t one single cause to blame but there are three significant threats that stand out:

• pesticides,
  
  
• the varroa mite and
  
  
• habitat loss."
  
  

If anyone is interested in reading the full article I'll link it:-https://www.soilassociation.org/take-action/growing-at-home/bee-organic/why-are-bees-in-danger/

Loss of habitat can result from climate change. It’s a complex issue because some insects and invertebrates actually depend upon icy conditions occurring to facilitate their lifecycle. There are even species of midges, earwigs and butterflies etc which are to be found only in the Arctic for instance.
 
The shrinking of the polar ice-caps and other glaciers has been well publicised. One of the less well-known glaciers, however, is the Carstensz Pyramid in Irian Papua (Western New Guinea). The first European to view it was the Dutch navigator Jan Carstenszoon in 1623. On a voyage from the spice-trading hub of Amboyna in the Moluccas, the snow-capped mountain range was spotted on an exceptionally clear day in what are generally overcast tropical seas. The mountain sits about 100 kms inland, yet Carstenszoon could clearly see it from out at sea which would be feasible with its summit rising to over 4,800 metres. A look at the world’s top 10 peaks (by landmass) shows just how significant Mount Carstensz is:

1. Eurasia – Chomolangma/Sagarmatha/Everest – 8,849 m
2. South America – Aconcagua – 6,961 m
3. North America – Denali/McKinley - 6,190 m
4. Africa – Kilimanjaro – 5,895 m 
5. Antarctica – Vinson – 4,892 m
6. New Guinea – Nemangkawi Ninggok/Puncak Jaya/Carstensz - 4,884 m 
7. Hawaii – Mauna Kea – 4,207 m
8. Borneo – Kinabalu – 4,095 m 
9. Taiwan – Yu Shan - 3,952 m
10. Sumatra – Kerinci – 3,805 m

The Carstensz Pyramid comes in at number 6 whereas much more famous candidates such as Japan’s Fujiyama (3,776 m) and New Zealand’s Mount Cook/Aoraki (3,724 m) don’t even make the top 10. 

Little is known of Jan Carstenszoon’s life but his Journael op de ghedaene reyse van Nove Guinea was published in Amsterdam in 1624 and received a mixed response. His basic message was that there were no spices or minerals (the main interests of his Dutch East India Company employers) of any note in New Guinea. This was generally accepted although his suggestion of snow-capped mountains in Equatorial waters was roundly dismissed. Carstenszoon was also one of the first Europeans to reach the Australian mainland. His ships landed on the west coast of the Cape York peninsula although he thought that he was still on the coast of New Guinea. He thus missed mapping the crucial Torres Strait thru to the Pacific Ocean by a whisker.

By saying that there were no spices or minerals worth noting in New Guinea, he meant that the local people did not use spices in their cooking or practice metallurgy. This would have been sufficient information, however, because the reasoning would have been that had there been any spices or minerals, then the Javanese and the Arabs etc would already have been exploiting them. The Dutch and other Europeans thenceforth generally avoided the south-west Pacific in terms of mercantile trade. It wouldn’t be for another 150 years before the British and James Cook began to take a more active interest in that part of the world.  
    


(The icy peak of the Carstensz Pyramid in New Guinea.) 
  
In the intervening 400 years the Carstensz Pyramid glacier has contracted markedly meaning that the melted ice has lowered the hight of summit by several metres. More significantly, however, and quite ironically bearing in mind Carstensz’ report on the lack of minerals in New Guinea, is the fact that at the foot of the mountain today sits an opencast mine (one of the largest in the world and visible from space) extracting huge quantities of copper and gold.

Insects (and other fauna and flora) that live on isolated mountains are indeed very vulnerable: if the climate changes they often cannot easily, if at all, move to a more amenable environment even should one exist. But that's not to say that those living in large unrestricted habitats, or that exist in massive, seemingly successful populations, are immune to risk.

For example the Rocky Mountain locust (Melanoplus spretus) was a species of grasshopper that ranged across the huge prairies of the western half of the United States and southern Canada. They existed in huge numbers with swarms apparently far larger than any other locust species in say Africa or Asia. One famous and well-documented swarm in 1875 was estimated to cover 200,000 square miles in size (that's greater than the area of California) and consisted of some 12.5 trillion insects, together estimated as weighing 30 million tons. It has been speculated that this was likely the greatest concentration of animals ever recorded, well surpassing in the number of individuals within even the famously huge contemporary flocks of Passenger pigeons.  

Despite swarms sometimes occurring well outside of the grasslands of the mid-west - with occasional outbreaks even as far as New England - the locusts only became a major issue in the mid-19th century when farming expanded westward into the grasshoppers' favored habitat. Although most Great Plains states introduced bounties to encourage the large-scale killing of locusts, it is likely that simple plowing and irrigation by settlers, as well as trampling by cattle and other farm animals near water-courses that destroyed their eggs in the areas they permanently lived, was the ultimate cause their demise. The last major swarms of Rocky Mountain locusts were between 1873 and 1877 ... just 30 years later the species was apparently extinct with the last recorded sighting of a live specimen being in 1902.

But of course no creature exists in isolation. Rocky Mountain locusts were a key part of the diet of the Eskimo curlew (Numenius borealis) which at one time may have been one of the most numerous shorebirds in North America with a population numbering in the millions. On their annual migration between the Arctic tundra of Canada and Alaska and the Pampas of Argentina they relied on Rocky Mountain locusts as they traversed the Great Plains. But with the demise of the locust the numbers of curlews also dramatically declined. The Eskimo curlew is currently classed as critically endangered but as there have been no reliable sightings for the past 40 years it too is very likely extinct.