Weighed, Not Counted

r@raphaelbauer.com (Raphael Bauer) — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 18:30:00 +0200

In October 2017 the Entomological Society Krefeld, on the Lower Rhine, and a group of ecologists from Nijmegen published what the society’s insect traps had caught over 27 years. The answer was less and less: by 2016 the weight of flying insects in German protected areas was 76 per cent lower than in 1989¹. The German language gained a word for it: Insektensterben, the dying of the insects. It was almost absent from the newspapers before 2017 and at its most frequent in 2019². In that year 1.74 million Bavarians, 18.3 per cent of the electorate and more than had ever signed a petition for a referendum there, put their names to one called Rettet die Bienen (save the bees)³. The federal cabinet adopted an action programme with an extra €100m a year⁴, and in 2021 parliament passed a law⁵.

Insects on The Prosperitist

Weighed, Not Counted