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You'd need to compare it prior to agriculture.  Farmers farm the most biologically productive land--not the barrens.
A few species (out of a previously wide diversity) adapt to take advantage of human habitat conversion to cropland.  We then typically call them "pests."

That’s both a non starter,  and fairly inaccurate.  
First of,  when you do the research, most of the ground we farm now,  has been farmed for 100 years (lots of small exceptions) that’s not going to change,  and wishing for the theoretical biodiversity of the times of the Indians is just a wasted thought process.

Those Iowa prairies are exactly what is in the Kansas barrens. Yea the grass is taller in IA and MN,  but the life diversity is the same,  huge seas of grass.  Grass that drowns out weeds.  Grass that only feeds insect and animals living on grass.

Now we raise corn and beans.  Acres that created very low nutritional outputs are now generating tons of high proteins feed for all types of life.  Form rougly 10 times more whitetails than in 1850 ( no buffalo though)  pheasants, quail, ducks, geese, squirrels, turkeys fox and coyotes abound. While the middle of the fields seem barren,  the margins are alive.

You would also miss that that open field provided a lot more food for migrating birds than the prairies ever did. Study a bit what good grain foraging has done to the snow good populations.  Look close at the roughly 300k blackbirds in every county without snow, foraging on those fields in huge flocks.   Eating bugs and grains (mostly bugs and weed seeds)   

Ponder closely that ND the most farmed state in the US has also been the top honey producer for as long as I am aware of.  That hasn’t changed yet.

Its real easy to pick Monarchs and say there declining from some level in the past,  but its disingenuous.  There are plenty here if you look,  seems maybe they don’t all make it to Mexico like they used to,  but we also don’t know it those numbers in the past were a "false high"  

This picture is huge and complex.  And these glancing cheap shots are heard and echoed by others with a very mixed and confused agenda.  As beekeepers we need to be smarter  and as a wise friend points out, be able to say  "I don't know"


Charles

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