Second paragraph of third chapter:

Of late, I have tried to turn the question around. Why should the existence of slugs or midges need to be justified, either for what they do for us, or for what they do for the ecosystem? Does there have to be ‘a point’ to slugs?

A passionate book, making the case that the population of insects in our world has declined catastrophically in recent years, and that this is a potential cause of ecological catastrophe for all of us. It’s also a loving exploration of the different varieties of insect and how they contribute to making our lives possible. Each chapter is preceded by a profile of a particularly interesting insect; and there are a lot of those.

One of his data points was particularly telling for me – I am old enough to remember that when we went on long summer drives when I was a child, the car windscreen would be liberally covered with the smashed remains of insects before the morning was out. That just doesn’t happen any more, not because the insects have got better at avoiding cars (or vice versa), but because there are far fewer of them.

So yeah, we have a problem here, and although the international community is paying attention to biodiversity as a whole, Goulson makes a strong case that insects are particularly important and also particularly endangered. Recommended. You can get Silent Earth here.

This was my top unread book acquired in 2023. Next on that pile is Garden Jungle, by the same author.