May 2025 Eco report
As you kindly voted me in as Church Eco friend at our recent AGM, I’m now going to get involved in this role, starting with items for Outlook.
Taking inspiration from the hymn “All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small”, I was recently thinking about insects. I’m sure many of you remember the days in our youth when we would go for a drive in the countryside and find all sizes and types of bug splattered on the car windscreen. I have just returned from a trip to the Brecon Beacons, and I was sadly shocked at the very low number of insects in such a wild place. According to the charity Buglife, the number of splatted insects on car number plates has decreased across the UK by 78% over the last 20 years.
A number of bird species no longer make the effort to migrate to the UK, as there is no food for them here. Helen MacDonald wrote in “H is for Hawk” that 70 years ago we had red backed shrikes, wrynecks and snipe and 30 years ago, corn buntings. I had to look up all these birds, as have never seen them!
Why are there less insects? Worldwide, it is estimated that pesticide use has increased by 91% since 1990, to around 3441 metric kilotons. Our Government realises that insect abundance and biodiversity are crucial for our economic prosperity and pollinators provide benefits of £630 million to UK crop production.
The Government National Action Plan published in March 2025 is working for a more sustainable future and wants to set clear targets and measures to monitor the use of pesticides and strengthen compliance to ensure safety and better environmental outcomes. However, it is considering cuts to the Nature Friendly Farming budget ahead of the Spending Review in June.
Please go to the RSPB website and sign the petition. Other insect killers are climate change, pollution, change of land use and our habits of concreting over and/or putting plastic grass in our gardens. It’s now May, so there is plenty of time to plant a few wild flower seeds in your garden or in a pot on your balcony and watch the insects arrive!
Maria Boys