A Christmas without insects means they are disappearing

Insects are disappearing, and with them the ecosystems that sustain life. Dr Simon Pockley reports.

Except for a short period of record-breaking drought following the bush fire that burned my hedges in 2014. to obstruct and its surroundings Warrumbungle National ParkThe seasons were kind. After more than fifty years of observing the arrangements of plants, animals, and insects, I have developed an eye and ear that can detect small changes.

To get to Warrumbungles I drive 1000km from Melbourne on the Newell Highway west of the Great Dividing Range. You may feel like you’re driving through Australia Felix, once a grazing country, now mostly wheat and canola.

This spring – from August to December my block was covered in yellow copper wire daisies Podolepsis jaceodes with thousands of (introduced) oranges wandering butterflies – but something was missing. When I examined the flower heads, there were no bees. There were no beetles, grasshoppers, hoverflies, cicadas, mozzies, dragonflies, stick insects or orb spiders. It is often not possible to read at night because of moths. But this spring, even though all the doors and windows were open, there were no moths.

So what’s the problem? Isn’t it nice to be away from bugs?

The problem is that without insects there will or will be a gradual collapse of our barely understood ecosystems; Plants that do not pollinate cannot reproduce, soils become barren, birds, reptiles and other animals die because insects are a critical food source. The more I looked, the less I saw, and the more alarming this absence became.

Remember the abundance of summer christmas bugs And bogong moths? What about splatometry there are insects on the windshield; Is it just a stain now?

I wrote to one of Australia’s dwindling number of entomologists. I wanted to confirm that my observation of this broader absence was not just reduced vision or some local aberration. If insects were disappearing, it was clearly a national emergency.

He wrote in response:

‘Unfortunately, this happens all over the world and the general assumption is that the almost unrestricted use of pesticides is the main culprit. But as with climate change, the world seems to ignore it. It will be too late when there are no more bees left to pollinate our crops… So it’s not a national emergency, it’s a global emergency!’

In July 2025, the Australian and New Zealand Environment Institute (EIANZ) edited Insects in Crisis Symposium In Canberra in August Notification He cited research by Professor John Woinarski, which found that catastrophic insect declines in Australia were so dramatic that almost 150 species were predicted to be extinct by 2024.

This is as follows pledge in 2022 by Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek to prevent all new extinctions. For insects, it is terra nullius as they are often not included in environmental impact assessments.

Another critical dimension of the insect extinction crisis is the decline in entomological expertise to collect accurate data. An award-winning entomologist, Sylwester Chybwas among a group of about 60 scientists who claimed they were harassed and frozen or pushed out CSIRO around 2013.

Insects in Crisis Communiquéstates:

Insect population losses are difficult to measure because less than half of the estimated 200,000 species have been formally described in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. Many of the collected species remain to be described, and modeling suggests that many have not yet been discovered. Species cannot be listed as endangered without an official declaration; This creates a vicious cycle in which a lack of funding for research leads to a shortage of funding for conservation and subsequent species extinction.

While the statement acknowledged the importance of public participation, there appeared to be little or no media attention to the word crisis. Only Independent Senator in November 2025 David Pocock He spoke out against the secrecy and scale surrounding the huge cast discounts at CSIRO and the Australian Research Council (ARC). The Federal Government’s repeated attacks on scientific research can only exacerbate the declining knowledge of the role of insects and the complexity of the ecosystems they support.

Rachel Carson ‘Silent Spring‘ (1962) Written before the USA took up arms herbicides During and before the Vietnam war monsanto (now Bayer) developed chemical and genetically modified (GM) agriculture in the 1990s. His book is not only an account of the blindly arrogant misuse of biocides, but also a condemnation of the systemic failure of regulatory authorities in the United States.

A similar system exists in Australia. fault The number of regulatory authorities should be excluded from the alarming State of the Environment 2021. reportIt revealed the poor and deteriorating state of Australia’s environment and that the country is the world leader in mammal extinction.

New research on the destructive power of artificial light at night (area) And anthropogenic noise Observations on insect populations (e.g., flight paths) provide evidence that human-made light and sound disrupt communication vital for mating, predator avoidance, and foraging. More widely recognized as the main causes of the high insect extinction rate in 2024 were: ongoing land clearing for agriculture and urban development, rising temperatures, the 2019-20 wildfires estimated to have wiped out around 60 billion insects, and the widespread application of agricultural pesticides.

If we turn onto Newell Highway at night from April through July, we can see the lights of spray booms dispersing pre-plant sprays. There is room here only for a broad definition of chemicals commonly applied to wheat and canola (often grown in rotation) as defined by the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority (APVMA). These can be broadly categorized as herbicides (to control weeds) and insecticides (to control pests). Both can harm nontarget insects through direct toxicity, sublethal effects on behavior and reproduction, or contamination of soil, water, and pollen.

The impact of commonly used herbicides on insects highlights the gap between standard tests and real-world ecological effects on specific insect species. For example, Glyphosate is commonly used for pre-planting weed control and as a pre-harvest desiccant for both wheat and canola, and it disrupts the gut microbiome in some insects.

Commonly used insecticides use broad-spectrum active ingredients such as neonicotinoids and pyrethroids; these feature repeatedly in studies of pollinator and beneficial insect declines globally and in Australia. The common practice of mixing them together can increase their toxicity by 10-fold.

Healthy freshwater ecosystems are also an important component of the life cycle of many insects. according to NSW State of the Environment Report 2024 Many areas of the Murray-Darling Basin have poor to very poor river condition in terms of water quality (nutrients and salinity), vegetation, catchment disturbance and hydrological stress (changes in natural flow regimes).

It is not possible to add pesticides to water everywhere without threatening the purity of the water.

~Rachel Carson, ‘Silent Spring’

A massive runoff of chemical residues from cotton fields further north in March and April 2025 began when torrential rains created vast inland seas, sending the runoff into rivers such as the Diamantina and Cooper Creek, eventually reaching Kati Thanda (Lake Eyre) in May 2025.

Since the introduction of genetically modified (GM) Bt cotton, which produces a protein toxic to the boll weevil (Helicoverpa spp.), a major pest, the Australian cotton industry has reduced overall synthetic pesticide use by over 95%. However, some chemicals are still used and can harm beneficial insects if not carefully managed as part of an Integrated Pest Management (IPM) strategy. Historically, both neonicotinoids and synthetic pyrethroids (described above) have been widely used, but little data exists to show any lasting effects of these chemicals when discharged into waterways during flood events.

The effects of fire retardants and various surfactants also cannot be integrated into a holistic view of the health and balance of insect populations.

One of the most striking features of 2025 Insects in Crisis Communication What a weak and ineffective document it is. Statements about motherhood’s participation and the need to reform legal frameworks float in the air.

To begin to solve the problem of insect decline, we will need to reverse interconnected trends rapidly and simultaneously.

Well:

reversing global warming;
Transforming agriculture from intensive, pesticide-heavy monocultures to diverse, insect-friendly systems;
revegetate and restore habitat on a large scale with native plants and ecological corridors between meadows, wetlands and forest edges; And
Phase out or completely limit neonicotinoids and synthetic pyrethroids and stop the flow of nutrients and chemicals into soils and waterways.

The enormity (impossibility) of such goals tends to inhibit any idea of action. Do we shrug in despair? Are we going to start yelling? How can one effectively respond to such large and complex problems?

However, when I think about my own answer, I see that such helplessness is understandable. I have an email signature that includes a quote that I use as a guiding principle for almost everything. He guided me throughout my time working at Landcare.

The activist is not the guy who says the river is dirty. The activist is the man who cleans the river.

~Ross Perot

Even cleaning a river can be complicated in practice. My meager activism on my walks in Melbourne these days is to fish plastic out of Merri Creek with a stick until a bag is full. The litter usually returns within a few days. But it makes me feel like I’m doing something.

Rachel Carson chose to end Silent Spring invoking a poem, The Road Not Taken Written by Robert Frost.

He believed that humanity had a choice:

We are now at the intersection of two roads. But like the roads in Robert Frost’s familiar poem, they are not equally fair. The path we have been on for so long is deceptively easy, a smooth super highway on which we move at great speed, but at the end there is disaster. The other fork in the road, the road less traveled, offers our last, only chance to achieve a goal that guarantees the preservation of the world.

~Rachel Carson, ‘Silent Spring’

We are stuck on the path to disaster, and our scientists are calling for a crisis. Do we still have a choice? Of course we do. And no matter how ineffective it may seem, we can still act locally. If we bring an ecological approach to any action and ask what key indicator reflects our capacity to restore and protect biodiversity, we can also identify the fundamental dimension of a healthy environment.

The strongest indicator is commitment as opposed to isolation. We can move forward together. What we always have when faced with disasters is poem and music. When we are mute, poetry and music connect us to a common voice. It may sound unnecessary and even contrived, but I would like to hear more from poets and musicians.