In my role as a judge for the Investigative Writing category of the Guild of Food Writers annual awards, I have just read Vicki Hird’s Rebugging the Planet. This is an indepth look at the crucial role insects and bugs play in underpinning our whole eco system, their catastrophic decline in recent years and how we, in our own gardens, our local parks and indeed globally, can try to reverse this decline.
We may not be able to do much individually but on the well worn Tesco principle that ‘every little helps’, if you want to find out how to make your garden a mini mecca for invertebrates, this is a good place to start.
Rebugging the Planet: The Remarkable Things that Insects (and Other Invertebrates) Do – And Why We Need to Love Them More – from Amazon and good book shops.
What is happening on Samos?
But while reading Vicki’s book leaves you feeling, if not exactly optimistic, at least hopeful that all is not quite lost – a paper by Diana Kordas published in Safe Technologies.org addresses the issue that Vicki does flag up but that most of those involved in the invertebrate decline/rewilding debate don’t even consider. The effect that stratospheric increase in the man made electromagnetic radiation needed to keep us ‘connected’ is having on the natural world – especially its smaller inhabitants.
Diana Kordas live on the small Greek island of Samos and has done so since 2012.
Samos is a good place to observe insects. It has a large variety of flora and there is not much development, so that many natural habitats have been preserved. Bee-keeping is an
important industry there, and Samos is reputed to have the greatest diversity of wild bee species in the world.
The area where Diana and her husband live had little wireless radiation until 2016, when 4G/LTE networks were installed on Samos and many new cell towers were built. From this time insects and birds began to decline noticeably. Since July 2021, when a new 5G cell tower was installed and the 5G network on Samos went live, the decline has accelerated rapidly.
No pesticides are used on this land and nothing, except the installation of cell phone towers, has changed in the area over that 10 year period.
In the paper Diana gives detailed tables logging the decline of individual insects from 2012 to 2021 – including beetles, bees, wasps, hornets, crickets, cicadas, leaf hoppers, flies, stick insects, mosquitoes, dragonflies, ants, butterflies, moths, spiders, snails, slugs, earwigs, soil insects and fleas. In each case there has been an 80-90% reduction depending on species but all orders of insects are affected.
She then goes on to note the decline in the bird and animal populations on the island and the acidification of the soil over the same period. (German scientist Wolfgang Volkodt details how Rf radiation can cause soil acidification through a process of electrolysis: the leaves of plants absorb the radiation and the charge eventually migrates into the ground, changing the balance of ions and retarding soil microorganisms. Hydrogen ions displace ions of calcium and magnesium, which leach out of the soil.)
But this situation is not unique to Samos
The disappearance of squashed flies from our windscreens has been widely observed and evidence of bug and invertebrate decline is becoming ever more available. In 2017, a major German study found that flying insects had decreased over 75% in protected areas over the previous 27 years while ruling out climate change and pesticides.
In 2021, the bumblebee was declared extinct in nine U.S. states. Insects, including
pollinators, are diminishing rapidly worldwide, yet governments, NGOs, the mainstream
media and even many scientists are refusing to consider the effects of Radiofrequency (RF)
radiation despite an enormous body of independent scientific studies showing harm.
Diana Kordas’ paper references a number of these studies but just briefly with respect to greater danger which seems to be posed by 5G:
‘5G employs a different technology with short pulses of RF radiation using moving, focused
beams; the MIMO (Massive Input, Massive Output) technique. In Greece, the frequency
bands of 0.7 GHZ, 3.5 GHZ, and 22.5 GHZ are currently in use. The latter, 22.5 GHZ, is not
technically millimeter-wave but is often included in this category because the size of the
wave is so small. This may be especially dangerous to insects since the wavelength may
cause the insect to behave like a secondary antenna due to its size. Studies have shown that 5G will be especially harmful to insects precisely because the size of the millimeter waves fit into their tiny bodies, where they can do the most harm.’
To read the full paper, see here on the Safer Technologies site.
As David Attenborough has often been quoted as saying:
‘With the loss of even the smallest organisms, we destabilise and ultimately risk collapsing the world’s ecosystems – the networks that support the whole of life on Earth.’
Surely we need to add electromagnetic radiation as used in, especially, 5G connections to the list of dangers threatening those smallest organisms and focus on some safer way to remain connected.
My Family and Food Allergies – the guidebook that will get you through the trauma
Terrifying – thank you for drawing attention to this article. I did not know for instance about the soil acidification. The more publicity this article can get the better. But young people live their lives on mobiles and life without the mobile is unthinkable – at least for the moment.
I am sorry to have added yet another deeply depressing and scary layer to what is already a horribly scary and depressing week.
So basically we’re buggered and it’s just a matter of time. I’m currently fighting with my electricity supplier who want to get a smart meter, they are not going to force me soon I think, saying my old meter is no longer viable. It is old i grant you but it still works so I’m fighting. It makes me want to just move somewhere with no wifi and go off grid.
I am back in Thailand after year in U K where was uneasy about the lack of birds and insects.. Within 10 days I made a visit to Penang to check if I could live there. No.
But it did wake me up to the astonishing damage that Wi-Fi is doing to Wildlife. At night the hotel in Penang played piped insect sound, it was coming from just one place, when I went to check it out I was horrified and absolutely disgusted that it was coming from a speaker. During the day they played piped bird song; they had to do this as it were because there are so few insects and birds. The last time I was there it was teeming with them as it should be given that it’s in the tropics.
Then it dawned on me that I hadn’t seen any cockroaches or ants. More waking up and realization that I hadn’t seen these in Bangkok either nor in the town I live in about 1 hour from Bangkok. The bat colony near my room now down to only 2 bats.
I did a lot of reading about the damage wifi can cause but unfortunately No One Believes Me. Cockroaches are supposed to be the only living life form that would survive a nuclear war; if it can kill them what then is it doing to humans? Realizing there is an unprecedented tragic monumental ecological disaster happening saddened me beyond belief, literally heartbroken.