Scientific research, of course, resides at the heart of this book, but Milman is particularly adept at evoking the humanity of the ecologists, biologists, and entomologists whose work he depicts. As the author warns, “Start yanking enormous numbers of insects out from the environment and the whole web of life, including humanity, is thrown off-kilter.” Half the world’s bird species, for example, would perish without them. And they provide critical nourishment for innumerable animals. They are decomposers, transforming dead flesh and fecal matter into healthy soil. As pollinators, they sustain 90 percent of the world’s wild, flowering plants, and one-third of those grown for human consumption. Insects largely find themselves in the latter category.”īut these creatures are, quite simply, indispensable-they are “the struts holding aloft most life on Earth,” he writes.

“We are drawn, moist eyed, to some species and withdraw with a shrug from others. When people consider the world’s disappearing biodiversity, Milman explains, they tend to fixate on polar bears, rhinos, tigers, and the like. The United States is home to some 15,000 moth species, of which “just two… will ever pose a threat to a woolen sweater or cashmere scarf.”

Moths, he writes, which are “often maligned as powdery vandals that enjoy chomping their way through the clothes in our wardrobes,” are in fact critically important pollinators that attend to the plant species ignored by bees. Milman portrays moths, midges, beetles, bumblebees, and butterflies in glorious, vivid detail, frequently unraveling our preconceptions in the process. Insects may overwhelm us with their diversity, their adaptability, even their fecundity however, in tale after troubling tale, the author shows us that “what was once infinite now seems jarringly vulnerable.” Tn an authoritative and compelling new book, The Insect Crisis: The Fall of the Tiny Empires that Run the World, Oliver Milman, an environmental journalist with The Guardian, brings us into the center of a frightening ecological situation.

The insect crisis by oliver milman