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Comment by vermontdevil | Hacker News Reader

I know it’s anecdotal but driving long trips in the summer usually ends with a splattered windshield of bugs. Nowadays not so much.

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People keep saying this, and I have to wonder where they're driving. In cities and along highways I agree, but when I get into the weeds and drive by farms / orchards / prairies, my windshield gets to the point where I can barely see out of it. I might not have to clean my windshield once in several months of city/hiking drives, but when I explore it's a different story.

This article also says that the declines they observed were primarily driven by intensive agriculture. I wonder if it would behoove us to zone more wild spaces. Why not set up some new national forests, parks, and wildlife reserves? It's not like people don't also enjoy those things.

Precisely that.

Also slowing down intensive agriculture practices that also deplete the topsoil and doing actual crop rotation instead.

> it's alarming to see that such a decline happens not only in intensively-managed areas but also in protected areas

My anecdata says otherwise. I used to live in one of the most rural areas of the entire US. Farms galore. Can't recall, during the entire ~8 years ever having significant (or any for that matter) windshield issues.

8 years? Try 20 years. I started driving in the 90s. It’s very much different in that time span. And I drove through rural areas all the time (have family in those areas).

Why not set up some new national forests, parks, and wildlife reserves?

https://thehill.com/regulation/lobbying/461860-trump-has-nam...

Specifically look at

EPA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_R._Wheeler#Lobbying,_20...

and Interior: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Bernhardt#Legal_work_and...

We can do that, but pesticides are in the air, in the rain.

Yes, but aren't a lot of those pollutants localized? I was just at a national park which called out how air pollution was affecting lichens and other sensitive life in the area, but...the part of the park with informational hikes bordered a highway where huge trucks passed by every few minutes.

We forbid offroad vehicles from driving through wetlands for this sort of reason; those environments are very sensitive to the pollution, noise, erosion, etc. But we put freeways damned near everywhere.

I dunno. I agree, it doesn't seem like enough, but what can we do? Tear up all our roads and rebuild them on a carefully-planned "pollution grid"? And even then, the BLM allows grazing and hunting on most of their lands which is another deeply-ingrained tragedy of the commons. Good luck getting rid of those methane-rich cow farts in the area when everyone feeds their herds off of the 'free' land. And good luck keeping 4x4s away when hunting is allowed.

Splashing whatever quantity of insects with vehicles should already raise questions. Even if it's not the main factor for their decline, it's a contributor, one of the many environmental impact of cars

Reminds me of https://www.treehugger.com/green-architecture/glass-building...

I feel bad when an insect collide with me on my bike, the impact isn't deadly most often, I even stop to pick bees, wasps, butterflies dying or dead on the road and put them back in the nature

I believe this is also used scientifically, by counting the splattered insects on a numberplate after driving a specific route.

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