Butterflies aren't expendable. Our brittle reality depends on them, too.
Source: Washington Post
Butterflies aren’t expendable. Our brittle reality depends on them, too.
By Michael S. Engel March 1
Michael S. Engel is a paleontologist and entomologist at the University of Kansas.
The National Butterfly Center in Mission, Tex., encompasses 100 acres of subtropical bushlands along the banks of the Rio Grande. It’s a refuge for more than 200 species of pollinating butterflies, as well as thousands of other species — flowers, birds, mammals and countless other insects.
The administration’s plan to build a border wall through the sanctuary will effectively destroy it. But such a loss will strike many as insignificant. Butterflies — so graceful and frail — seem almost a luxury rather than a necessity. Surely, the disappearance of a few more won’t make any difference in the long run?
We now know that this is not true. Similar losses have played out time and again to the point at which our insects are in decline. Ecosystems are much like the game of Jenga: You pull too many blocks from the tower, and it collapses. We remove one biological reserve here, we extirpate a series of species there, we pollute, we fragment, we introduce invasive species, all to the point of eventual catastrophe.
“How brittle in reality are all the things whose permanence is never questioned.” These words from the great 20th-century explorer Freya Stark are supremely fitting for our blatantly blasé attitude toward biological diversity and its conservation. Most of us take it for granted that those species we rely upon daily will always be around.
Recent studies, however, have revealed precipitous declines in insect abundance that foretell the possibility of considerable extinction, the so-called insect apocalypse. It is peculiar, given our interdependence, that there has been no great swell of concern regarding the impending possibility of a world in which insects are a shadow of their former selves, or gone entirely. Many, presumably, think “good riddance.” Who needs roaches, mosquitoes or filthy flies? And, what if we lose some butterflies, bees and beetles along the way? Surely, we gain more by ridding ourselves of these pests? Do they really matter?
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Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/butterflies-arent-expendable-our-brittle-reality-depends-on-them-too/2019/03/01/b70862a2-3b65-11e9-a06c-3ec8ed509d15_story.html
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