God's Choir & the Insect Crisis

 All God's creatures got a place in the choir

Some sing low and some sing higher,
Some sing out loud on a telephone wire,
Some just clap their hands, or paws, or anything they've got now

There is a television crime series called Cardinal which is well acted and had a suspenseful plot in the first season which kept us watching. We started the second season but it was just too gruesome so we quit. We're a bit disappointed because it is set in a Northern Ontario city which feels a lot like North Bay or Sudbury and was filmed in the north. There is a scene in the season we gave up on where the two detectives are investigating near a remote cabin and they're swatting at bugs as they do so -- that was authentic. 

We lived in Sudbury for eleven years and loved access to the outdoors even though our home was close to the downtown. There were times, though, when the blackflies and mosquitoes were so fierce we thought we were going to be carried away. When we headed out for a paddle we would strategize how quickly we could get our canoe and gear into the water and away from shore to get relief from the voracious bloodsuckers. 

I never miss either of those insects when they are absent in any setting but maybe I should. Insects are disappearing around the planet and we're in trouble if the Insect Apocalypse or Insectaggedon deepens. Recently the climate writer Oliver Milman has been interviewed often because of his new book The Insect Crisis: The Fall of the Tiny Empires That Run the World. In a New York Times review by Thor Hanson we find out what's to blame, and, yup, it's humans: 

Blame for the crisis falls on broad biodiversity threats like habitat loss and climate change, as well as insect-specific challenges from light pollution and the rampant use of pesticides. But Milman draws particular attention to the way industrial agriculture has transformed once-varied rural landscapes into vast monocultures. Devoid of hedgerows or even many weeds, modern single-crop farms simply lack the diverse plant life necessary to support an insect community. As the agricultural ecologist Barbara Smith puts it: “It’s like if the only food available was chips. Chips for everybody even if you don’t eat chips.” 

Milman has an ear for a good quote and a knack for explaining scientific research. He interviews dozens of experts, from beekeepers battling murder hornets in the Pacific Northwest to a biologist tracking declines in beetles through chemical traces in the feathers of the birds that eat them. There are times one longs to linger on a story, but with so much urgent ground to cover it’s hard to begrudge the book its pace. This omnibus approach also reveals something telling: the startling number of scientists who describe their findings as “alarming” or “frightening.” In other words, the people who know most about the crisis aren’t just worried; they’re scared. Unchecked insect declines threaten massive crop failures, collapsing food webs, bird extinctions and more.

In a CBC The Current interview Millman offered the chilling thought that without certain insects the availability of chocolate and ice cream could be limited. Now that's serious!

Sigh. I don't really want to love what it's tempting to perceive as the enemy, and I'll still lay on the Deet, but when we sing "all God's creatures got a place in the choir" we really do have to include the crickets and maybe even the mosquito in the tent.