There have been alarming declines this year in some insect species including bees, butterflies, moths and wasps, while many seabirds have also been “hammered” by unstable weather patterns caused by the climate emergency, a conservation charity has said.
National Trust records ‘alarming’ drop in insects and seabirds at its sites Charity says unstable weather patterns caused by the climate crisis had a ‘devastating impact’ in 2024.
The trust’s head of nature conservation and restoration ecology, Ben McCarthy, said the lurch from drier conditions since the summer of 2022 and through much of 2023 to a very wet and mild 2024 – bookended by fierce storms – had had a “devastating impact”.
The trust said insects had had “a very poor year” with numbers widely observed below normal, particularly during the first half of the summer as a result of the cool and wet weather.
It describes the apparent decline of birds such as the globally threatened Arctic tern as “very shocking” and mentions diseases that are striking the white-clawed crayfish and sycamores.
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