How your website can avert the insect apocalypse

Want to know how your website can help to boost biodiversity and halt the trend of declining insect numbers? Read on…

The Background

Insect numbers have declined by 75% in the past 50 years. Many of these are pollinators which pollinate the crops that end up on our plates and 87% of all plant species require animal pollination, so this is kind of a big deal.

The main culprits for this decline are the usual suspects, pesticides, herbicides, fertilisers, habitat loss and, increasingly, climate change.

Rachel Carson warned of this over 60 years ago in her book Silent Spring, yet the trends still continue.

What Can I Do?

It sometimes feels a bit daunting to hear such dramatic numbers when talking about this topic. So as part of my annual donations to environmental non-profits I donated money to Bennett’s Patch nature reserve in my home town of Bristol, UK.

Bennett’s Patch and White’s Paddock Nature Reserve sits in the Avon Gorge and was created as part of celebrations to mark Bristol’s year as European Green Capital in 2015. The 12-acre former sports ground has now been turned into a nature reserve wildflower meadows, native woodland and wildlife ponds that house bats, badgers, hedgehogs, and abundant plant, bird and butterfly species.

In the last year alone, we have spotted: 42 different species of birds  22 species of butterflies  118 species of flowering plants & 29 trees and shrubs.

As a bonus, it is also a great place to go for a walk which was no doubt a benefit to many people during lockdown.

The Future

I continue to donate, volunteer and offset with many projects around the UK and abroad, so with every project that I complete as a web developer, there will be a portion of the proceeds going to making the world a better place.

In this way your website will actively invest in the future of our planet