[Ski]

[Bedivere]

What's truly concerning is the apparent reduction in abundance of insects in areas that are basically undisturbed. What was one of the examples in the article - Phillipines, or Fiji or something like that? A rainforest area that has not been disturbed and there are fewer insects there now. When I drove to Wyoming this last summer I drove through a lot of areas that are still undeveloped or minimally developed. Southern Idaho, Southwestern Montana, Northwestern Wyoming - all still mostly forest with a fair amount of ranch land and some fields growing things like hay, alfalfa, etc. These areas should be supporting healthy insect populations and my car did get a decent coating by the end of the trip, but not what I would have expected and almost certainly gotten decades ago. As for wetlands and swamps - prime example is in West Seattle where I grew up. My dad also grew up in West Seattle. He was born there in 1924 and spent most of his time in the Delridge area. At that time the Westwood Village shopping center and the park across from it were a swamp that drained to the North forming Longfellow Creek which ran into Elliot Bay right at the Nucor Steel plant. Even back then there was a steel plant there but there were only a couple houses down in the Delridge valley and no shopping center or park and Longfellow Creek was a wild and basically undisturbed creek that my dad and his brother fished and caught trout out of. Then the swamp was filled in and the creek put into culverts so the shopping center and park could be built and houses and apartments were built all along Delridge way, all around the creek and now that creek is basically just a ditch in a lot of spots. There are a few stretches of it that aren't surrounded by pavement and there's a walking trail along it, but for the most part it's not a functional wildlife habitat any more. An even bigger example is the Kent valley, which up until the '70s was mostly farmland. Now it's warehouses, industrial parks and apartments.

[Ski]

When you really start thinking about it, the elimination of wetland areas in the name of "progress" is mind boggling. I forgot all about the huge marshy area where my cousin Dennis and I used to romp around just west of Portland Avenue East behind what is now the Portland Avenue Nursery (47.203907,-122.4111117) - it's all residential now. And then there's the Black River, a long gone tributary of the Duwamish, that came down off of the Renton Highlands - completely eliminated by development. And these half-dozen places mentioned here in the last couple posts are just what two of us can think of off the top of our heads. Doesn't take a rocket scientist (or entomologist) to understand why there would be fewer insects.

[Bernardo]

One critikue I read of the study is that it looked at wait. The absence of a few large species may have scewed the results. Also, the areas of the German study were small and degraded. I doubt we've lost 80% of insects on a global basis, though I would definitely like to learn more about this and see more studies. What percentage of the biomass of planet earth is from microbes? How are they doing? With regard to insexts, how low could we go before we'd notice the results in the supermarket?

[Anne Elk]

[Anne Elk]

Ski- I appreciated your reminiscences about local water habitats crushed by development in your childhood haunts. It just scratches the surface re the massive changes around here. Each successive generation has a re-set for what "normal" is, dumbing down collective memory re what our local ecosystems used to be. I had a conversation recently with a relative of a local who grew up here and recently died at age 94. Talk about someone who saw massive change in his lifetime. I was astounded to find out that 8th Ave NW in Seattle used to be a creek. Same thing with the area around NW 64th St as it descends toward Shilshole. Who else remembers that kind of stuff? Of course, there was the grand-daddy of all estuarian destruction projects: the Denny Regrade. One of the most beautifully written accounts of what we've lost on the west coast is The Living Shore - Rediscovering a Lost World It's a meditation on habitat loss reflected through one species. Author Rowan Jacobsen recounts how the native oyster, once ubiquitous in the entire PNW, was wiped out by overharvesting, pollution and development. It was thought to be extinct until a small patch was discovered on the west coast of Vancouver Island.

[Schenk]

The Portland area is rife with converted wetlands too. I lived there for a few years in the late 70s-early 80s. When I go back to visit I am astounded at some of the places they built on. I am surprised they don't sink into the mud... Lake Oswego and surrounds has hundreds of acres of wetland that were still there in the early 80s but are now nothing more than apartment complexes, cookie cutter condominiums, and asphalt. We really need a space alien human sterilization ray gun blast to hit Earth...don't want to hurt anyone, just slow down the Human Propagation Party we've been having...there are simply too many people.

[Ski]

[IanB]

Probably on par with the regrade are the effects of the Montlake Cut, significantly lowering Lake Washington and eliminating the Black River's flow into the Duwamish. I appreciate the concept of a generational "reset." I became a birder about 25 years ago, and the diminishing numbers of birds even within that short time frame are clear. It seems most obvious in the reduction of overwintering waterfowl and seabirds on the Sound, which is confirmed in Audubon CBC numbers. But when (or if) we study the past, we then learn that what had seemed abundant to our younger selves was already just a pale shadow of what nature was like before our arrival. Nevertheless, it is clear that a few adaptable species are doing well. Everyone thinks of crows and gulls at landfills, but Juncos (for example) seem to be proliferating. Obviously, as a naturalist, I find the current ecological trajectory appalling and inexcusable. But I can take a small measure of consolation imagining those Juncos as finches in the Galapagos - morphing and diversifying into new species replacing the ones that we will exterminate along with ourselves.

[Anne Elk]

One more point re all the infilling of estuaries and other wetlands that everyone has noted - just wait until "the big one" hits. The liquifaction is going to be stupendous. Then all the municipal DCLU's will shrug their shoulders and say "who knew?"

[Bernardo]

The population is not projected to increase that much from current levels. population forecast

[DIYSteve]

[DIYSteve]

[IanB]

Kind of a "fun" website. Plenty of other counters ticking away...

[Jake Neiffer]

Agriculture is not inherently a destructive activity. And a lack of land space should not be the issue. A good start would be doing away with the Farm Bill and discontinuing the use of ethanol. Here's an article on the topic: Grass-fed Beef — The Most Vegan Item In The Supermarket An analysis I saw he other day on land use in Illinois: In Illinois there is enough land for 1,835,280 farms like ours. And most of that land would sustain more production than our farm. (We produced enough meat for 80 people this year.) There are 12.8 million people in Illinois eating, on average 200lbs of meat a year. So if a 20 acre farm could support 100 people (people eat a lot more chickens 🐔 than beef), then we would need 128,000 farms or a whopping 6.9% of the land. Plenty of room for suburbs and farmers markets! Right now, 75% of Illinois's land is in corn and soy! Even if you doubled the estimate for meat and then doubled it again for vegetable production then you would be at less than 1/3 of what they are farming. You say ....yes, but we have a lot of inputs here. 20 tons of 🌾. It would take 3.8 acres to grow that much feed a year and 14.6 acres to grow the hay. I estimate we could grow 60 times the amount of grain and vegetables we would need on those 128,000 farms or the equivalent of 24,000 pounds for each of the 12.8 million people in Illinois. So realistically it would take less than 15% of the land in Illinois to feed the people of Illinois. And those farms would employ millions of people in growing, processing and distribution with little equipment, debt, and inputs.