Protect endangered insects

Toledo Blade: In the 1998 Pixar film “A Bug’s Life,” Flik, the ant protagonist, asserts the importance of his species, telling the bullying grasshopper villain, “It’s you who need us!” While Flik and Co. predictably triumph in the movie, us humans could likely all do with a reminder of the importance of our planet’s insects, which are dying off at an alarming rate and threatening an ecological disaster.

A global scientific review recently published by Biological Conservation found that more than 40 percent of insect species are declining and a third are endangered. The total mass of insects is falling by 2.5 percent a year, meaning that they could be totally extinct within 100 years.

The importance of insects to our planet cannot be overstated. Each insect species – there are at least 91,000 in the United States alone – carries out a unique function that helps the world go round. By recycling nutrients, pollinating flowers or becoming a tasty snack for another critter, insects have made themselves indispensable to life on Earth.

So what is to blame for this looming crisis? Industrialized farming and the use of pesticides. As opposed to the farming of yore, fields are often now laid bare to maximize production, removing all the surrounding trees and shrubs that provided housing to insects. Add in pesticides developed in the latter half of the 20th century, and insects have not stood much of a chance.

Human beings must do more to preserve the species with which we share this planet, if for no reason other than our survival depends on it.