Unsplattered windscreens a sign of low insect numbers

The number of winged insects in Germany has fallen by 75% over the last 27 years, writes Damien Enright. 

This decline puts the survival of our entire European ecosystem at risk, boding mass extinctions, as multiple species of bird, mammals, and amphibians starve. Human food shortages would follow, as crops fail to be pollinated.

I have no statistics for loss of winged insects in Ireland, but their decline has, for some years now, been clear to me, whenever I sit at an outside light at night or look at our yard light. The insects aren’t there — and the bats have gone, evidence of a widening circle of consequences.