The grasshoppers specifically are not great, but perhaps it’s a positive sign hidden in there that insects in general are making a comeback? I remember in my youth taking road trips with my family across the prairies and the front of our car would get completely encrusted with splattered grasshoppers, forcing us to stop every now and then to clear them away. Whereas in recent years I haven’t even had to bother cleaning the car after finishing a similar trip.
As a farmer this plague of grasshoppers is bad news for non-grasshopper insects. High grasshopper numbers means lots of insecticide spraying.
Also pests tend to increase as others decrease, because they are stronger under adverse conditions. We have few butterflies, wild bees, dung beetles and other desirables. But vast quantities of grasshoppers, mosquitoes and ticks, plenty of horseflies too.
Same for birds, we have less songbirds, purple martins, ducks etc. every year. More sparrows, starlings, magpies, all invasive pest birds.
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: !canada@lemmy.ca
The grasshoppers specifically are not great, but perhaps it’s a positive sign hidden in there that insects in general are making a comeback? I remember in my youth taking road trips with my family across the prairies and the front of our car would get completely encrusted with splattered grasshoppers, forcing us to stop every now and then to clear them away. Whereas in recent years I haven’t even had to bother cleaning the car after finishing a similar trip.
We’ve had them for several years running in BC.
As a farmer this plague of grasshoppers is bad news for non-grasshopper insects. High grasshopper numbers means lots of insecticide spraying.
Also pests tend to increase as others decrease, because they are stronger under adverse conditions. We have few butterflies, wild bees, dung beetles and other desirables. But vast quantities of grasshoppers, mosquitoes and ticks, plenty of horseflies too.
Same for birds, we have less songbirds, purple martins, ducks etc. every year. More sparrows, starlings, magpies, all invasive pest birds.
Ah well. I try to find silver linings where I can.
Sparrows eat grasshoppers, so maybe there’s one? :)
I like your way of thinking, but unfortunately that’s not the case :-/
Clearly we need to introduce some kind of horrifying carnivorous beetle that eats grasshoppers, to get things going better.
They come and go in cycles, 2004 was a horrendous hopper year, much worse than this year. They had fields stripped to dirt.