Dear John
Did you see many bees this year? How about butterflies? In fact, did you see many insects at all?
A walk in the countryside used to be buzzing with life. Beetles scurrying across woodland floors and centipedes hiding under rocks. Gardens alive with ladybirds and grasshoppers. Ponds and river banks glittering with dragonflies. Summer evenings spent watching moths bumping their heads against the back-door light. Or even the annoying tasks of trying to keep wasps and flies off the food at a picnic or cleaning insects off your windscreen after a long drive.
The UK is now one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world. The countryside is almost devoid of life and our gardens are quieter than ever.
The alarming over-use of pesticides in our countryside, our gardens and in our urban spaces is one of the key drivers of these losses.
A project run by Buglife has found a 78% drop in abundance of flying insects since 2004. Butterfly Conservation has declared a butterfly emergency as numbers hit the lowest on record this year. The Bumblebee Conservation Trust has reported that bumblebees are in crisis with populations having crashed.
You may not be a fan of wasps, mosquitos and flies, but these species underpin an ecosystem of interconnected relationships full of glorious colour, intrigue and curiosity. Insects, in their various life stages, are food for nearly all of our other much-loved wildlife further up the food chain, from birds and bats to hedgehogs, frogs and toads, all of which are now also struggling to survive. There are 73 million fewer birds in the UK today compared to 50 years ago according to the British Trust for Ornithology.
Hundreds of different pesticides (herbicides, insecticides, fungicides etc.) are approved for use in the UK and insecticides in particular have become far more toxic over the years. There is little to no understanding of how this invisible cocktail of chemicals interact with one another to affect our soil, water, our biodiversity and us.
We work tirelessly to change this toxic tide. But, with your help we can do even more!
The use of pesticides underpins many of the challenges we face today. They are largely made from fossil fuels, they underpin industrial farming, deforestation and habitat loss, they degrade our soils and poison our rivers. Yet, they don’t receive the attention they deserve from the public or decisionmakers.
But we know the truth, and we know you do too.
Please support us with a donation this year. Or even better, sign up to support us with a direct debit each month to enable us to plan ahead. Join us in our fight against an incredibly powerful pesticide industry. Our wonderfully diverse and vibrant world of insects is counting on us.
