from Hacker News

Ecologists horrified as nature reserves emptied of insects

by anigbrowl on 6/3/25, 7:40 PM with 4 comments

• by jessetemp on 6/3/25, 8:43 PM

  Meanwhile the local “eco friendly” pesticide company is knocking on everyone’s door, showing them pictures of scary looking bugs, offering to treat their entire yard from the foundation to the pavement. I don’t get it

• by internet_points on 6/4/25, 7:10 AM

  > Puerto Rico, where insect biomass dropped up to 60-fold since the 1970s. These declines are occurring in ecosystems that are otherwise protected from direct human influence.

  These numbers are absolutely horrifying. And it's happening in "protected ecosystems", not just those places we've paved over or sprayed poison on.

  And it's not just the insects; according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction :

  > Current extinction rates are estimated at 100 to 1,000 times higher than natural background extinction rates[13][14][15][16][17] and are accelerating.

  while humans and their livestock account for 96% of global mammal biomass.