Heat, drought and the general state of nature

Mike Stentiford reflects on our simmering summer of ’22

‘B rilliant; more please; a dream come true; just what the doctor didn’t order - and roll on the winter.’

Just a handful of mixed comments bandied about to describe the superhot summer of 2022.

While many will have relished the gift of sea, sand and excess sunshine, others will have regarded any halfhearted attempt to function in a 30˚C plus temperature as a painful penance.

On the plus side, the drought driven traumas at least focussed collective attention on the global issues of climate change.

All well and good, although some still stubbornly stick to the principal that severe weather tantrums have been a fact of life for centuries.

Others wisely recognise that the sheer scale of global calamities prove, beyond any reasonable doubt, that the scientific jargon on climatic upheavals delivers a powerfully truthful punch.

Whichever camp we choose to support, the summer of ‘22 has confirmed that, while communities fret and farmers struggle, the extreme heat has likewise shown scant goodwill towards the natural environment.

In such conditions, high-risk local habitats have been woodland, wetland and maritime heathland, where drought and wildfires combine to make life for wildlife less than pleasurable.

While once healthy trees droop and wilt and garden lawns take on the colour and texture of Weetabix, blackened furze headlands have revealed the pitiful results of human thoughtlessness. If that’s not a bitter pill for nature to swallow, then the ups and downs of certain insect species have added further confusion to the summer’s list of upsets. While ‘aggressions’ of wasps have upped their annoyance levels, declining numbers of butterfly species are again causing concern.

As for the general hoi polloi on an entomologist’s checklist, comparisons to previous years are worthy of a ponder.

Let’s, for instance, turn the clocks back to summers past and reflect on those hot sleepless nights spent alongside a half-open bedroom window.

While the chance of a welcome breath of incoming cool air proved something of a blessing, the constant arrival of flying insects certainly did not. Big ones, tiny ones, itchy ones, chunky ones: all of them entering the bedroom without our permission.

Fast forward to the hot and sticky summer nights of 2022, and very few ‘indoor party-time tickets’ appear to have been snapped up by the usual assortment of illegally entering flying insects.

On the face of it, this nocturnal abandonment of the boudoir is something that many householders might well wish to celebrate.

After all, what’s the point of adding the absence of an army of annoying ‘fly-by-nights’ to the long and everincreasing list of life’s other major anxieties? And yet, it’s concerning to learn that this serious decline in several species of insects has now been officially entered into the environmental crisis register.

Whether or not this arouses immediate feelings of public concern is really neither here nor there.

So often, the public impression is that the majority of insects are little more than an irritating pain in the lower thorax. But, as some 1,500 species of insects are pollinators, it’s worth reflecting on the 86% of European crops that are entirely dependent on them.

Similarly, diminish the number of insects in the takeaway food chain of other wildlife species and they, too, will quickly decrease in numbers.

A decade ago, moth traps were occasionally set up in my garden where a respectable selection of night flying insects were recorded. Today, the results would, I’m afraid, be undeniably paltry.

It all just goes to show the complexities of summer 2022, doesn’t it?