A plethora of insects are currently in dire straits all over the world. Over 70 scientists from 21 countries and regions assert that threats to insects can be lifted. A roadmap for insect conservation and recovery is published online in the January 6 issue of Nature Ecology & Evolution.
Prof. ZHU Zengrong from the Zhejiang University College of Agriculture and Biotechnology is the only participant from China. He gives priority to the “education for awareness, citizen science and capacity building”, the “reinforcement of landscape heterogeneity in agriculture” and “deep research”. He maintains that while formulating the roadmap, researchers have taken into consideration the adverse effects of pests on human production and life, but in terms of pest control, they should promote ecological tactics and technologies and live in harmony with “pests” instead of driving them to extinction.
Prof. Jeff Harvey from the Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW) and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam is the initiator of the roadmap. He stresses that the roadmap aims at insect recovery as soon as possible. A growing number of studies are providing evidence that a suite of anthropogenic stressors—habitat loss and fragmentation, pollution, invasive species, climate change and overharvesting—are severely reducing insect and other invertebrate abundance, diversity and biomass across the biosphere. “As scientists, we expect to assemble every bit of accessible knowledge and make concerted efforts with land managers, decision makers and other professionals,” says Prof. Jeff Harvey.
Insects are vitally important in a wide range of ecosystem services of which some are indispensable for food production and security (for example, pollination and pest control). They will take action at short-, immediate- and long-term timescales. First, the global ‘roadmap’ for insect conservation and recovery entails the immediate implementation of several ‘no-regret’ measures that will act to slow or stop insect declines, including reducing light, water and noise pollution, phasing out pesticide use, adopting ecological measures, etc. Second, it calls for assessing the conservation status of insect groups to define priority species, areas and issues. Third, in the middle term, new research should be conducted to disentangle the contributions of different anthropogenic stressors driving insect declines. Meanwhile, existing data on insect diversity such as in private, museum and academic insect collects will be analyzed. This is especially significant in areas where scientific data currently do not exist. Finally, the long-term action involves launching public-private partnerships and sustainable financing initiatives with the aim of restoring and creating new vital insect habitats and promoting standardized monitoring protocols at a global level under the auspices of an existing international governing body.
Scientists warn that we should not wait to act until we have addressed every key knowledge gap inasmuch as the declining insect number poses a daunting menace. “Most importantly, we hope that users and land managers apply this roadmap to agriculture, eco-environment management and urban development as a paradigm for truly restoring insects,” says Prof. Jeff Harvey.