Terrifying.
My own anecdote aligns with the article. I spend a fair bit of time in the countryside (in Eastern Canada) and most of the familiar life forms are still present but they are much rarer than they used to be just 20-30 years ago. Everything from the main nuisance insects (mosquitoes and black flies, aka bird and bat food) to other insects, birds, bats, amphibians and even some rodents are all much less visible than they used to be.
When I was a kid, we would see thousands of frogs and/or toads on the road during a summer rain… not anymore. There are still some around, but the number I’ll see even during a wet summer (as 2017 was) is in the single digits. Likewise for bats; I think I saw two all summer despite being there for at least 80 days in all, where we used to see at least a few any given evening around dusk. And so on.
I hope I’m wrong but I think we’ve set ourselves up for a repeat of the Late Bronze Age Collapse, only on a vastly bigger scale. If so, it’s going to be sudden and very, very ugly. Some of us may not be surprised, but it will be cold comfort.
