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Finally, I screened in my back porch, where I can now sit under a ceiling fan enjoying the great semi-outdoors, armed with a mosquito-zapping tennis racket in case one of the invaders sneaks past my defenses.
We’ve worked so hard to banish bugs from our lives — destroying their habitats with pavement and lawns, killing them with insecticides and stressing them with climate change — that our cities and suburbs are now insect wastelands but for a few hardy pest species, such as the disease-carrying mosquitoes that feed on the blood of people and pets.
Last year, a group of entomologists met to rank the top three causes of the massive declines across insect species, and they came up with what the University of Binghamton’s Eliza Grames calls the “big three” — all human-created: development and other land-use changes, pesticides and pollution, and rising temperatures.
Now, years later, it’s a mature pollinator meadow, bursting with color and a crazy patchwork of goldenrod, milkweed, sumac, aster, coneflower, false indigo, black-eyed Susan, pokeweed, sunflower, wild bergamot, bee balm, coreopsis, ironweed and mountain mint.
To go further, get behind efforts in Congress (Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) is the invertebrates’ inveterate champion in Washington) to create a nationwide pollinator-friendly labeling program, to put incentives for pollinator conservation in the farm bill, and to promote more sensible pesticide regulation.
Far better, it seems, to think of all the good work the bugs do for me: feeding the birds, the frogs and the fish, pollinating the flowers and the crops, nurturing the soil, breaking down the fallen trees, and otherwise keeping the earth habitable for humans.
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