[HN Gopher] The American Bumblebee Has Vanished from Eight States
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The American Bumblebee Has Vanished from Eight States
Author : elorant
Score : 252 points
Date : 2021-10-09 19:40 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.smithsonianmag.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.smithsonianmag.com)
| eezurr wrote:
| I am in Vermont and see bumblebees everywhere... am I mixing up a
| common species with this one?
| oingodoingo wrote:
| you might be seeing feral bees or carpenter bees, those are the
| two I commonly hear misidentified as bumblebees
| 0des wrote:
| Hello, it appears all of your comments have been
| shadowbanned. I have vouched for this comment (and all
| others) so that it can be seen. I'm still somewhat new at the
| mechanics of HN's voting system, but more info can be seen
| here: https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-
| undocumented#shadow...
| moron4hire wrote:
| Carpenter bees look very similar to bumblebees, but are
| actually larger, not as hairy, and don't form hives. They
| binary maters!
| tclancy wrote:
| And, contrary to their name, are not good with wood. Plus
| they attract woodpeckers. Carpenter bees at least make
| attractive, perfectly round holes. The woodpeckers who follow
| are not quite as neat.
| spqr0a1 wrote:
| There are dozens of bumblebee species in Vermont, but _Bombus
| impatiens_ is particularly common. That 's much more likely
| than _B. pensylvanicus_ mentioned in the article.
| liquidise wrote:
| Very helpful. I looked up the 2 species and the American
| Bumblebee[2] is noted as having an increasingly southern
| habitat, with borders denoting their former range/habitat.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombus_impatiens
|
| [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombus_pensylvanicus
| protomyth wrote:
| "The species has completely vanished from eight states, including
| Maine, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Vermont, Idaho, North Dakota,
| Wyoming, and Oregon, Ben Turner reports for Live Science."
|
| How exactly is North Dakota the highest honey producing state in
| the Union?
|
| Also, a bit of a dispute of this study
| https://www.beeculture.com/bumblebee-decline-claim-in-disput...
| bagacrap wrote:
| bumble bees are not honey bees
| rasengan wrote:
| We think with our weak technologies and chemistries that we can
| play God.
|
| However, it is so far from the truth - in an attempt to create
| more vegetation we have decreased a critical component needed to
| help said vegetation grow.
|
| Technology should be used carefully when in the environment of
| the unknown. Trials and observations should be conducted in
| limited capacity with a long window of study. Only then can we
| know of the consequences for our actions of disrupting naturally
| evolved and perfected equilibriums - be it that of the Earth or
| man's immune system.
| randomopining wrote:
| And the complex supply chains to supply these cutting edge
| industries are so fragile, they would crumble easily when the
| climate turns chaotic.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| > _Technology should be used carefully when in the environment
| of the unknown. Trials and observations should be conducted in
| limited capacity with a long window of study_
|
| A laudable goal.
|
| And yet, without the agricultural revolution of the 1960s, we
| wouldn't have grocery stores today with well-stocked shelves.
|
| Cautiousness has its own price.
| quotemstr wrote:
| > And yet, without the agricultural revolution of the 1960s,
| we wouldn't have grocery stores today with well-stocked
| shelves.
|
| It's not that we wouldn't have well-stocked shelves: it's
| that we wouldn't _be alive_. We can feed as many people as we
| do because of the incredible advances we 've made in
| agricultural sciences. Without those, there just wouldn't be
| enough calories to go around. Does the sum of all the joys of
| billions of people mean nothing to everyone who denounces
| modern agriculture? All this invective against technology is
| sophomoric, short-sighted, and fundamentally unserious, and
| if we followed the recommendations of people to whom science
| is a bad thing, just "playing god", then a huge number of us
| would simply cease to exist.
| carapace wrote:
| Ecology is a science.
|
| > Does the sum of all the joys of billions of people mean
| nothing to everyone who denounces modern agriculture?
|
| The thing about that is that the story isn't over yet. Yes,
| billions of people owe their lives to the Haber-Bosch
| process (et. al., I'm obviously simplifying here) but if
| billions of people die due to ecological and economic
| collapse, is it really all worth it?
|
| As a concrete counter-example to modern mass agriculture
| there are ecological systems of food production that result
| in high yields while increasing fertility, biodiversity,
| and biomass (such as Permaculture, Syntropic and
| Regenerative agriculture, etc.) So we can have our both
| well-stocked grocery shelves _and_ healthy ecosystems.
| bmitc wrote:
| Additionally, it seems the production of industrial
| ammonia is a major CO2 emitter.
|
| https://cen.acs.org/environment/green-
| chemistry/Industrial-a...
| bmitc wrote:
| Do you have any references for these statements? I have
| never even heard that things were apparently so dire in the
| 60s.
|
| Does your sentiment that we apparently couldn't feed
| ourselves take into account population growth? What if the
| population had simply not grown as it did?
|
| My current understanding is that the U.S. overproduces what
| it needs, exports the excess at dirt cheap prices, killing
| off developing countries' farmer livelihoods. So in the
| U.S., there's multiple birds killed with one stone.
| markdown wrote:
| Have you seen the grocery stores today? I mean really stopped
| and taken a good hard look at what's on them?
|
| Mostly garbage. Garbage. And then you have this: https://www.
| reddit.com/r/mildlyinfuriating/comments/q4aeuc/e...
| californical wrote:
| It's totally true. I've always liked the advice that you
| should mostly walk around the perimeter of the store, and
| only go into the middle part (aisles) when you have some
| specific need (canned veggies, beans, pasta).
|
| It obviously depends a bit on your store's layout, but I've
| found the advice to be almost universal. The aisles contain
| all of the junk (an _unbelievable_ amount of junk), and the
| good fresh ingredients -- fruit, veggies, dairy, breads,
| meats -- are around the outside.
| Retric wrote:
| That was ~60 years ago, it's perfectly reasonable to use a 20
| year time horizon for testing changes to the food supply etc.
|
| Progress isn't just about whatever the new thing is it's
| about finding something actually _better_.
| melony wrote:
| says Lysenko.
| tootie wrote:
| Honestly, we are really pretty good at playing god. Killing off
| a species of bee is sad and may have some unintended
| consequences but it hasn't put a dent in our ability to
| engineer the earth to suit our needs. The problem is motives
| and objectives. We have created the incentives to extract
| resources and not to protect organisms. So that's what we do.
| 09bjb wrote:
| > but it hasn't put a dent in our ability to engineer the
| earth to suit our needs
|
| We'll see about that when most soil is barren and most bees
| are gone. That is, very shortly.
| quotemstr wrote:
| > We think with our weak technologies and chemistries that we
| can play God.
|
| We can play God, do play God, and will continue play God.
| People used to think of electricity as the rage of an angry
| God. Now you're raging against progress on a device that
| harnesses lightning at a quantum scale in ways unthinkable even
| 50 years ago. Do you have no appreciation whatsoever for how
| much good it does to expand humanity's capabilities? Can you
| see only the downsides? The people complaining about technology
| and progress should propose actual fixes for the problems that
| appear instead of braying from the sidelines about how nobody
| should ever do anything.
| 0942v8653 wrote:
| Not even limited trials with a long window of study (how long?)
| will prevent this. Science itself is a non-holistic way of
| looking at the world, blind to what is not measured. Concerning
| this example, it seems like a predictable effect of pesticides
| and global trade -- not unexpected, though perhaps not hoped
| for. Instead, the principle of caution must be applied when
| using technology. Pesticides that increase yield or decrease
| risk by only 10% may not be necessary at all.
|
| Any industrial action will disrupt Earth's equilibriums given
| the high level of consumption those in the developed world
| currently enjoy.
| speedybird wrote:
| > _Science itself is a non-holistic way of looking at the
| world, blind to what is not measured._
|
| This is unfortunately a broad class of error; qualitative
| metrics which are difficult to measure and quantify get
| brushed aside by people who want to make rational data-driven
| decisions. Robert McNamara became infamous for this; the
| 'data driven' way he tried to manage the Vietnam War focused
| on hard quantitative metrics, like bodycounts, and de-
| emphasized or ignored qualitative metrics like popular
| opinion in Vietnam and America:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McNamara_fallacy
|
| In the software industry, those that would rely on
| instrumentation and telemetry to guide product development
| often repeat the same mistakes. Many times I've seen user
| feedback ignored, derided, and demeaned. _" Users are dumb,
| they don't know what they want. Ask users what they want and
| they'll ask for a faster horse."_ These ostensibly rational
| data-driven designers are ironically irrational because they
| ignore the well established limitations of their data-driven
| approach.
| randomeat wrote:
| It's ok everyone diversity is our strength. Only a bumble bee
| supremacist care about bumble bees remaining around. They can
| make way for other species
| 0des wrote:
| Can you point out what's being implied here? I want to
| understand the nuance in this comment, and I get that it is
| some type of critique, but at the moment what that could be
| escapes me.
| yongjik wrote:
| GP is being grossly off-topic and comparing bumblebees to
| white people, repeating the trope that "diversity" is a
| liberal agenda toward extinction of white people.
| whatshisface wrote:
| Associating the demographic trend discussion with white
| people only is a little reductive, because Hispanic
| fertility rates are below replacement, black fertility
| rates are about the same, native American fertility rates
| are almost exactly the same, and Asian American fertility
| rates are even lower.
|
| Apparently this chart thinks that we will all be Native
| Pacific Islanders in the fullness of time. :O
|
| (Obviously, don't let the sarcasm be lost on you, these
| trends will change as circumstances change.)
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/226292/us-fertility-
| rate...
|
| I have also read about small tribes and languages that are
| slowly going extinct.
| 0des wrote:
| If I may bring some light to the situation, culinarily
| it's hard to be mad at that!
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Also, they seem to not understand what the word diversity
| means?
| whatshisface wrote:
| An enormous number of ethnic groups have below-replacement
| fertility rates. Drawing the lines straight forward on the
| graphs predicts that diversity will fall over time. This
| being the truth of the matter, I also can't explain this in
| any honesty without reference to a certain group of people
| who are very upset about that fact, oftentimes because their
| own ethnic group in on the list. If someone is bringing up
| human ethnic diversity on an article about bumble bees that
| might be involved.
|
| In the US almost every ethnic group has below-replacement
| fertility, so _in the abstract_ this isn 't a racism issue;
| but it can be interlinked with racist propaganda in practice
| so you kind of need to be aware of that.
| prirun wrote:
| When I was a kid in the 60's, every yard was full of white clover
| and bees. Now most everyone around me has beautiful, perfect
| grass with no weeds and no clover. And no bees.
| justicezyx wrote:
| I also know another species: American Indian, has vanished from
| almost all states...
| speedybird wrote:
| Is it feasible for organic farming techniques to feed 8 billion
| people? In conversations about the environment like this one,
| pesticides and fertilizer (runoff particularly) get raked over
| the coals for causing huge environmental disasters. But in other
| conversations more focused on social issues, Malthusians get
| mocked for not anticipating those very same technological
| developments that have allowed us to feed billions of people.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Not easily, because the nitrogen has to come from somewhere.
| Getting it from nitrogen fixing plants would cause a huge hit
| to productivity.
| carapace wrote:
| Short answer, yes. We can feed billions without destroying
| ecosystems.
|
| From the POV of the science of ecology agriculture (from
| ancient to modern times) is about the dumbest way to interact
| with Nature. It turns out that, once we understood more about
| how living systems actually work, we can design ecosystems that
| improve soil fertility and increase biodiversity and biomass
| over time while providing dense harvests (comparable to or even
| greater than modern destructive farming.)
|
| Look at Permaculture, "Food forests", Syntropic agriculture,
| regenerative farming...
|
| A good start might be "Treating the Farm as an Ecosystem with
| Gabe Brown Part 1, The 5 Tenets of Soil Health"
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUmIdq0D6-A
| Centigonal wrote:
| Not sure whether organic farming techniques can feed everyone
| (may be possible), but there's a vast gulf between "completely
| organic" and "broadly toxic to the surrounding environment."
|
| Australia, Spain, the Netherands, and (increasingly) China have
| had a lot of success using physical exclusion with nets,
| greenhouses, and high-tunnels. They have their own unique
| problems (plastic waste, rainwater runoff), but these systems
| get incredible crop yields without significant synthetic
| pesticide or herbicide use.
|
| I really think highly automated, hydroponic, mostly non-
| vertical indoor farming is the future of vegetable agriculture,
| and represents huge potential added value (economic and
| otherwise) in the coming 100 years.
|
| If you're interested in seeing some of these facilities, check
| out these videos:
|
| 1: Australia https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Fq6PQl7fr8
|
| 2: Netherlands https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nM8Qz-fzJ6M
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Interesting. It hasn't been _that_ long since I 've seen a
| bumblebee. Are there different kinds? I'm in Oregon.
| Cryptonic wrote:
| Glyphosat
| cratermoon wrote:
| neonicotinoids
| redprince wrote:
| It has been implied in the death of honey bees but it appears
| that the surfactants in common formulations are to be blamed
| and not the glyphosate itself.
|
| https://www.beeculture.com/catch-the-buzz-its-not-the-glypho...
| neolefty wrote:
| That's an herbicide, best not to conflate, if only because
| people will use it as evidence of ignorance. The article
| mentions pesticides:
|
| > States with the most significant dip in bee numbers have the
| largest increase in the use of pesticides like neonicotinoids,
| insecticides, and fungicides, per Live Science.
| [deleted]
| gigatexal wrote:
| damnit -- humanity continues to depress me.
| update wrote:
| > Maine, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Vermont, Idaho, North
| Dakota, Wyoming, and Oregon
|
| Are the eight states from the title. Though it seems New York
| should be included since it says "The bumblebee species have
| declined by 99 percent in New York."
|
| Also noteworthy
|
| > In the Midwest and Southeast, population numbers have dropped
| by more than 50 percent.
|
| To nobodies surprise, the culprit is pesticides. Interestingly
| the west's bumblee population isn't listed as being in trouble.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Iowa, haven't seen one in years.
| cratermoon wrote:
| > the west's bumblee population isn't listed as being in
| trouble
|
| What do you call Idaho, North Dakota, Wyoming, and Oregon?
| bombcar wrote:
| "The West" means "California" to many.
| whartung wrote:
| Well, at one point, "West" meant Ohio.
| ISL wrote:
| Well, that's incorrect :).
| speedybird wrote:
| North Dakota is generally considered the mid-west, no? I
| suppose mid-west is a sort of west, but I tend to think "the
| west" starts when the Rocky Mountains start; about half-way
| through Montana.
| bagacrap wrote:
| by this definition still 3 of the 4 states listed are in
| the West
| cratermoon wrote:
| One common definition is west of the 100th meridian, or
| about halfway through North Dakota. Montana is firmly in
| the west, as are the other 3 states mentioned, plus
| Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, and
| Washington.
| cratermoon wrote:
| So New Mexico is not part of the West?
|
| There's a definition based on climate that's used widely
| https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2018/04/11/the-100th-
| merid...
| olah_1 wrote:
| I read somewhere that we used to use nicotine-based pesticides
| in the past and the bee issue happened when we switched away
| from that.
|
| I guess China still uses nicotine-based pesticides?
| ambientenv wrote:
| Neonicotinoids - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neonicotinoid
| StanislavPetrov wrote:
| Anecdotally I live in New York and have seen plenty of
| bumblebees this year.
| pc86 wrote:
| Is this type of comment helpfully, generally? Ancedotes are
| typically ignores because they don't show the full picture.
| If we have verifiable evidence of a staggering decline in
| population of a given species, "yeah well I've seen plenty of
| 'em!" doesn't seem particularly useful - to the larger
| discussion, toward any sort of objective "truth," or
| really... anything.
| t-3 wrote:
| Anecdotes can be useful in aggregate, where they can
| validate or give reason to question a claim. There is a
| _lot_ of sloppy science and reporting on environmental
| subjects like these - look at the stuff about feral cats
| being a danger to songbirds estimating annual predation
| levels higher than the regional songbird population.
| msrenee wrote:
| Can I get a link to the feral cat info you're talking
| about? My Google skills are weak.
| C19is20 wrote:
| As much for the full picture, i come to hn for the
| anecdotes. So yes, 'useful', to me.
|
| And, just to be super-clear, i come for the comments, and
| rarely the articles.
| msrenee wrote:
| So even though you have no way of knowing if the species
| of bee this person is seeing is the same one in the
| article, you find the information valuable?
| msrenee wrote:
| There are a lot of species people call bumblebees. This one
| particular species, Bombus pensylvanicus, has disappeared
| from much of its range. You may be seeing insects that are
| called bumblebees, but not likely the species being talked
| about in the article. If you do have the knowledge and
| experience to be certain that you are seeing lots of Bombus
| pensylvanicus in particular, get in contact with your nearest
| Fish and Wildlife Service office. That's a big deal.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Probably Bombus impatiens. I see them all over my property in
| the Finger Lakes.
| 5faulker wrote:
| This is another example of "progress trap" that we didn't see
| coming until it's too late to act.
| metagame wrote:
| We've known what we're doing to all types of bees for a long
| time. Here's a paper from 01999 talking about pesticides and
| their toxicity to bees:
|
| https://ucanr.edu/sites/uccemerced/files/40411.pdf
|
| There are many articles that have found viral audiences
| throughout the 02000s about how other bee species are on
| extinction spirals because of the American agriculture
| industry's lack of regulation. This happening to the
| bumblebee is not a real surprise and we've definitely seen it
| coming within the window to act.
| data_ders wrote:
| Very interested in your year notation. This is the first
| I've seen of it before. Is this to inspire readers to take
| a more long-term view?
| mbil wrote:
| Yes, The Long Now Foundation[0] uses the same notation.
| [0] https://longnow.org/
| adolph wrote:
| So long now uses strings instead of integers for year?
| That seems shortsighted.
| bombcar wrote:
| I will start the Long Long Now Foundation and support
| years with fifteen leading zeros. Much better.
| shagie wrote:
| That's already part of a proposed "standard" -
| https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc2550
| carapace wrote:
| I'm not the person you're asking, but FWIW I first heard
| of it in connection with the Long Now Foundation
|
| > The Long Now Foundation uses five-digit dates, the
| extra zero is to solve the deca-millennium bug which will
| come into effect in about 8,000 years.
|
| https://longnow.org/about/
| bqmjjx0kac wrote:
| An unintended consequence is that it confuses C
| programmers, who expect an octal literal to follow the
| leading 0.
| metagame wrote:
| I just saw an e-fluencer use it, so I decided I might as
| well also. No hidden agenda here.
|
| But yes, that's the intention behind the action here:
| https://blog.longnow.org/02013/12/31/long-now-years-five-
| dig...
| torstenvl wrote:
| 1169 A.D. ???
| bamboozled wrote:
| Why do you pad years with an added 0? Looks weird.
| metagame wrote:
| Y10K compliance, of course.
| tptacek wrote:
| Fun fact: one of the pressures put on Bombus bees are honey bees,
| which are themselves an invasive species.
| abeppu wrote:
| > If the bee is placed under federal protection, farmers or
| developers who harm the insects could face up to $13,000 in fines
| each time one is killed, Live Science reports.
|
| Note that the article identifies systemic causes (use of
| neonicotinoids, habitat loss) as causes, and correlational
| evidence ("States with the most significant dip in bee numbers
| have the largest increase in the use of pesticides like
| neonicotinoids, insecticides, and fungicides"), but the
| enforcement mechanism they mention is centered around individual
| actors after specific killed insects where it's presumed that
| attribution is clear. Does this make any kind of sense?
|
| 1. Would we know when bees are killed? The evidence that we know
| how to gather, so far as I can tell, is mostly counting live
| bees, not finding dead ones. Are there examples of small, highly
| mobile insects with ESA protection where we're actively seeking
| out and finding dead individuals?
|
| 2. Is it typically possible to attribute bee deaths to single
| actors? If a bumblebee is found at location X, we might guess
| that it would have ranged over an area with radius r around that
| (but we're not sure what its actual territory would have been)
| which includes N properties, N_d of which have been developed and
| N_p of which use pesticides, who is responsible?
|
| 3. And if the best scientific understanding is about broad
| practices (habitat destruction, pesticide use, ...) am I correct
| in my belief that we don't have any real mechanism of holding a
| class of individuals (e.g. Maine farmers who used neonicotinoids
| during a given time period) responsible for an impact to a bee
| population (e.g. it's estimated by experts to decline 5% in a
| given year) in the absence of a specific pile of dead bees?
|
| With this, as with a number of other large issues, I think we
| need new concepts around group responsibility. We have a concept
| of class action lawsuits, where a large group identified by a
| criteria (e.g. people whose data was exposed by Equifax) can be
| plaintiffs, because individuals meeting that criteria can elect
| (or not) to be represented in that group. We do _not_ have a
| concept of a large group of people identified by a criteria
| (farms using particular pesticides, developers of properties in
| the urban-wildland interface) being held responsible for harms
| that proceed from that criteria.
| Woberto wrote:
| I don't understand why they're not fining the
| developers/manufacturers/sellers of products that harm the
| insects. Isn't it easiest to stop this at the source? How
| likely is it that individual farmers will make their own? I
| guess there's such thing as moonshine but I don't know how
| similar this case is...
|
| Regardless, this seems like another instance of putting the
| responsibility on consumers/individuals, and not on companies
| that introduce these products with no regard to the potential
| downstream side effects. Guess it maybe ties into to
| "regulation" and "individual rights", like how instead of
| regulating fast food companies, it's been decided that it's the
| consumer's choice whether to eat fast food. I'm getting off on
| tangents that maybe aren't related, and I'd be interested to
| hear other perspectives.
| tinco wrote:
| In The Netherlands there is an area that is a key part of the
| lifecycle of a specific bird called the "Grutto". It is not
| really endangered, but it is at risk, and if The Netherlands
| did nothing to protect it, then we would be the cause of its
| extinction.
|
| The way we protect it is that all farmers can report a Grutto
| nest on their land. Then the government sends volunteers to
| find the nest. If the volunteer finds the nest, the farmer gets
| 1200 euro.
|
| It's a simple scheme but I think it's very effective. It's a
| significant amount of money, the farmer will be looking out for
| the nests, and will make sure they don't get caught in their
| machinery.
|
| I'm not entirely sure what the economics would be for bee
| hives. 1200 euro to put some stakes in the ground and make a
| small detour with your tractor, sacrificing maybe 10m2 of
| harvest makes sense. Not treating an entire field with
| insecticides might not.
| admax88qqq wrote:
| If the insecticides are what's killing with the bees though,
| staking out a 10 m2 section of your field will do nothing to
| preserve them.
| tinco wrote:
| Exactly, the incentive would have to be much larger to get
| farmers take the risk and save the bees.
| pempem wrote:
| My observation is that issues requiring a true shake-up of
| those currently in power or strong financial holding (usually
| correlated) leads to actions being individualized. This
| includes:
|
| climate - shake up of industrial winners if new policy is
| introduced so its on us to 'buy smart' rather than collectively
| 'produce smart'
|
| schools and their performance - shake up of privilege funnels,
| tax bases, positions etc. if an equal division of funds is
| introduced so its on each family to find school and support
| rather than a system wide effort to make sure every kid has an
| educational experience that sets them up for success and
| participation in our democracy
|
| immigration - shaking this up would have economic impacts we
| don't understand as the entire US economy is at least partially
| dependent on affordable/cheap labor or some form of second
| class worker to support supremely variable industries like
| farming. so its on you to immigrate correctly and complain
| about off-shored jobs instead of on the people who are
| offshoring them or hiring people without the 'correct' papers.
| coliveira wrote:
| The oldest ruse in capitalism is to individualize
| responsibilities for systemic issues. So, it is aways
| responsibility of the individual to avoid problems that were
| caused by capitalism as a system, for profit. It always tries
| to protect the environment that created the problem and
| criminalize the victims.
| jmclnx wrote:
| I am sure many people are saying "great", one bug gone. But
| bumblebees are rather harmless. As a kid they were everywhere,
| and a few would land on me. I never got stung by them and I
| thought they were fun to watch them fly between flowers. Sadly I
| have not seen one in a very long time.
|
| Just another notch on mankind's pole I guess.
| R0b0t1 wrote:
| They are docile and fun to investigate. I'm not sure you should
| _play_ with them, but they won 't go out of their way to harm
| you.
| jes wrote:
| I can't imagine any thoughtful people thinking this is great.
| newsclues wrote:
| How many people are thoughtful? Beyond themselves...
| hetspookjee wrote:
| I'm amazed at the fact that nearly everyone around me really
| despises the Eurasian Magpie, the only bird so smart that it
| is able to recognise itself in the mirror. Yet the myth that
| they exclusively prey on young birds and rob their nests
| presses onwards and everyone dislikes them. If they'd
| dissappear from the land and you'd tell them, most people
| would be happy, of which quite some I consider thoughtful.
| Trying to say that even thoughtful people can be extremely
| shortsighted. Look around you, how many people still visit
| zoo's with primates? Or marinas with cretaceans? All these
| extremely clever animals trapped in a desperately small
| enclosure yet so many still think it's fine to visit them and
| enable this. All in all I think quite some people would,
| sadly, be happy with the news that a stinging bug is gone.
| hammock wrote:
| >the myth that they exclusively prey on young birds and rob
| their nests
|
| Sparrows do this. They are an invasive species and overtake
| native songbird population. Never seen anyone hate
| sparrows.
|
| Magpies, people do hate them, not sure why but they are a
| type of "trash bird" near population centers.
| worik wrote:
| I do not like sparrows
|
| Mice with wings
| arrosenberg wrote:
| > Never seen anyone hate sparrows.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_campaign
| decebalus1 wrote:
| Unless there's a way to make a case for it to add shareholder
| value, I'd wager that the American Bumblebee is fucked.
| animal_spirits wrote:
| The cited article is here:
| https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2021/09/29/2021-20...
| Pxtl wrote:
| They also used to be a regular sight here in Ontario... I _think_
| I saw one last year.
|
| Now the only bees we see around regularly are big ol' carpenter
| bees. Honey bees and bumble bees that used to be common are now
| rarely seen around my city.
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