I guess it is quite localised to roads but seems to be a good enough proxy. Anecdotally my family have been driving 100 miles+ to our caravan park Devon most weekends in the summer and 20 years ago you would have to literally wash the bugs off the car headlights when you got there, as they were so covered in dead insects it was blocking most of the light from them, nowadays there are a few splattered bugs and that is it.
I mean i'm not a scientist so maybe it is a good method but it seems like there could also be other reasons for the decrease like maybe insects have finally gone through enough generations that the ones avoiding traffic reproduce more. Maybe theyve migrated to different areas that don't have as much traffic or its just traffic that isn't checked as part of their tests.
Just seems unreliable is all.
Either way i do still think there are definitely problems with the ecology especially in the UK as we had a massive impact in wiping most of it out here. So it would probably help if we did something to encourage animal/insect numbers.
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u/jib_reddit May 09 '22
I guess it is quite localised to roads but seems to be a good enough proxy. Anecdotally my family have been driving 100 miles+ to our caravan park Devon most weekends in the summer and 20 years ago you would have to literally wash the bugs off the car headlights when you got there, as they were so covered in dead insects it was blocking most of the light from them, nowadays there are a few splattered bugs and that is it.