Bill, your letter deals with the legitimate concern of reduced insect
populations in many areas.  It so happens that I've been in discussion with
the authors of the recent study "Increasing neonicotinoid use and the
declining butterfly fauna of lowland California."

Their data (and personal observations) indicate that butterflies have been
in decline for many years--at least back to their earliest data in the mid
'70s--long before the invention of the neonics.

Butterflies and moths have also been in serious decline in my county,
despite almost zero agricultural insecticide use (nearly all our farms are
organic), and very little land use change, other than an increase in
forestation.

One cause of the decline in my area appears to me to be the invasion of the
European Paper Wasp, but the decline in the Valley started to occur before
it arrived.

None of us can explain why we are seeing such an obvious decrease in insect
numbers.  Pesticides are clearly a strong suspect, but one needs to see
whether actual exposure correlates with specific declines in the landscape
as a whole (it didn't when I analyzed pesticide use reports for one of the
counties cited in the paper above).

I strongly suspect that we humans are to blame, but we must be careful
about assigning the cause.

-- 
Randy Oliver
Grass Valley, CA
www.ScientificBeekeeping.com

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