Last Wednesday, 22 May, was the International Day for Biodiversity. There are ‘days’ for just about anything you can think of (22 May is also World Goth Day, for example) but biodiversity is a topic we should all care about. The situation is dire, and fixing climate change – a cause to which many trillions of dollars are already dedicated – is only part of the solution.
There is something of the ‘frog in boiling water’ thing going on here where, despite the obvious perils, most of us are paying little attention to the issue. Those of us of a certain age remember there being a lot more insects about when we were younger. With the aid of volunteers, the Kent Wildlife Trust looks at the number of flying insects hitting car numberplates each year. That number fell by a staggering 78% in the UK between 2004 and 2023.
The World Wide Fund for Nature publishes a Living Planet Report every two years. Its 2022 report revealed an average 69% decline in monitored wildlife populations around the world between 1970 and 2018.