THIS summer has followed an incredibly wet and late spring, so it’s not surprising to see fewer insects, many would have died during the long, damp winter.

But, this year the lack of insects in general is striking.

Hopefully, now warmer days are here, we should see more as this year’s larvae hatch.

What we should be really worried about is not the short-term dips but the long-term trends and hard data from large-scale studies.

These show a decline of between one and two per cent per year in insect population.

That might sounds small, but this trend, over the past 100 years, means we’ve lost about 90 per cent of UK insects.

There’s a phenomenon called ‘shifting baselines’ which is where every generation will only compare what’s normal to what they’ve experienced.

So, whereas we hear of legendary clouds of butterflies in the past, or you may remember during the 1960s driving through a fog of moths in the lanes at night, or in the 1980s having to clean your car windscreen after every journey, or 15 years ago needing to close the curtains when turning on a light to prevent moths flying in an open window - if you’ve never experienced any of these things, you may hear a few bees humming or see one or two butterflies and think that everything is fine.

As insects are the basis of the food chain, this decline should be seen as the ‘canary in the coal mine’, something is very wrong.

Now, it is really urgent that everybody does all they can to help out insects.

So what can we do?

1. If you want to ‘tidy up’ your garden, do any weeding, trim the edges of your lawn, etc, do this in the summer and not in the autumn, or you’ll be throwing away with the plants insects that are hibernating in plant stems, seed heads, and leaf litter. If you tidy up, leave bags open for a day to allow any insects to crawl out before taking them to the tip, or even better, make a compost pile. Once the autumn is here, leave your garden until the weather warms up again, usually April. The exception is to prune hedges and trees which you should not prune between March-August because of nesting birds. If you’re able to leave some areas untidy and have them on a two-year clear-up cycle, even better.

2. Grow wildflowers and native plants in your garden. Many species of insect need native plants for their young to feed on. If you spot holes in leaves, instead of thinking ‘what’s eating my plants?’, flip that around and think ‘what creatures are my plants feeding?’.

3. Avoid pesticides at home and in the garden. If you have a balance of prey and predator insects, biodiversity such as birds, frogs, and hedgehogs visiting your garden, and healthy plants growing in a healthy soil, you shouldn’t have a problem with aphids or any other ‘pest’ insect.

4. Minimise outdoor lighting. Two-thirds of invertebrates are partially or wholly nocturnal. Out of those insects attracted to light, up to a third suffer from exhaustion, increased predation, and a disrupted ability to navigate. Artificial lights outside can affect insects mating, feeding, developing, and even their ability to hatch at the right time, too. The situation is so serious that light pollution is reducing the nocturnal pollinator visits to flowers by 62 per cent in some areas, and surveys in Oxfordshire, Berkshire, and Buckinghamshire showed a reduction of moth caterpillars by about half in lit areas. So, have outdoor lights on a timer or a motion sensor so they’re not on all night, choose amber lighting rather than bright white lights, shield them or angle them down, and reduce the wattage.

5. Buy organic food where possible - it is usually more expensive, but not always, so do check. If you cannot afford organic food all the time, you can support the Pesticide Action Network or other charities which work toward making all our food more organic, or, sign petitions for change and vote for politicians who’ve biodiversity as an important manifesto.

6. If you’re a farmer or have land, there’s more you can do than anybody else, and it doesn’t necessarily take more time or money, such as restoring hedges with more considerate management can mean you actually cut them less often, the People’s Trust for Endangered Species has a wealth of advice and a healthy hedgerows app to help assess your hedges at https://hedgerowsurvey.ptes.org/healthy-hedgerows-survey.

This year, more than ever, we must do all we can to make sure the insects we have left can breed, feed, and overwinter, which will make sure our crops are pollinated, so we, along with the birds, bats, and other creatures, can have enough to eat.

Helen Gillingham

Transition Town Wellington