Coridon

A new study shows an alarming decline of insects across nature reserves in Germany. This has led to warnings of 'ecological Armageddon’. We need to act now, rather than delaying to gather more information or to argue over the causes. Flying insects caught in a malaise trap, used by entomologists to collect samples. Photograph: Entomologisher Verein Krefeld Amateur entomologists from the Krefeld Entomological Society have been trapping insects on nature reserves in for 27 years (refs 1, 2, 3). They used Malaise traps which are large, tent-like structures: insects fly into the tent wall and are funnelled into a collecting vessel attached to highest point. Malaise Trap The original uploader was Ceuthophilus at English Wikipedia - Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons by Richard001 using CommonsHelper., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6317383 They sampled 88 sites on a total of 15,249 trapping days between 1989 and 2014, c...

The Mayor has just published the draft London Environment Strategy ( LES ), which is open for consultation until 17 Nov. This is an integrated strategy that covers air quality, waste, noise, climate change mitigation and energy, adapting to climate change, and “green infrastructure” to address the many challenges that London faces. The aim is to make London greener, cleaner and ready for the future, with an anticipated population of 11 million by 2050. The part of most interest to beekeepers will be the section on green infrastructure, a term used to mean the whole network of green and blue spaces including parks, green spaces, trees, woodlands, hedges, rivers, wetlands and green roofs. The vision is to make London the greenest global city, with more than half its area “green” by 2050 (up from 47% today). To do that, the Mayor has supported the campaign to make London a National Park City and has committed to increasing the amount of tree cover by 10%. New trees could be g...