Even the ticks are vanishing

More reports of insect decline around the world

This work and these newsletters are supported entirely by donations from individuals.

We have no other source of funding. The Cellular Phone Task Force is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization and donations by U.S. residents are tax-deductible. Our Tax ID Number is 11-3394550.

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The reports continue to come in from around the world. The billions of mobile devices and the 9,000 satellites are rapidly replacing the bugs, birds and beasts of the Earth.

Patricia writes from Missouri: “I have been living in rural southwest Missouri for the last 25 years without a mobile phone. When I bought my home in 2005, the soil on the lot was extremely poor and very compacted from having been driven over with riding mowers for many years. I wanted to bring it back and turn my whole yard into a ‘food forest’. I started by sowing clover and cultivating the dandelions instead of trying to get rid of them as so many people do. After the clover started to blossom, I noticed it was being visited by thousands of bumblebees. I had so many hummingbirds that three feeders were needed to keep them from fighting for access. Mosquitoes were almost non-existent around my area.

“At night I could see hundreds of bats flying around, and in spring the yard and whole area was filled with the peeping of little green tree frogs. They would perch along the rim of my swimming pool and lay their eggs in the water. (Note, the town does not chlorinate the water supply and I do not chlorinate the pool.) Every morning I would check the pool for their eggs and move them to a small pool that I set up just for the frogs, where I would feed the tadpoles and change the water as needed (keeping the tadpoles in buckets during the changes).

“After I had been living here for six years, the first cell tower was erected at the edge of town. Over the next few years, more towers went up, until the whole area was saturated with RF radiation. The town also used a federal grant to change all the electric meters to electronic ones and do away with the analog meters. Each year since, the number of bumblebees seemed to shrink by half, even though I still have the clover and dandelions. During the past 4-5 years, I could count the number of bumblebees on one hand. The last two years I’ve seen only one or two per YEAR. The hummingbirds are totally gone. I used to find their nests in the fall when thinning.

“Worst of all is the complete annihilation of the tree frogs. Even friends who live out in the sticks and have ponds on their property have noticed the recent “silent spring” phenomenon. Speaking of silent springs: It used to be nearly impossible to sleep past dawn with the windows open in spring, summer and fall here due to the enormous numbers of songbirds that produced a daily morning and evening symphony. Their numbers have declined to the point where I have to actively listen for them in order to hear them at all.

“I could go on about the diminished numbers of butterflies, crickets, praying mantises, spiders and earthworms I’ve observed. The declines are not limited to the smaller critters; there used to always be cottontail rabbits in the yard, and I haven’t seen one of them in recent years. I have lost more pets to cancer since 2010 than I care to count. There aren’t even any mice anymore! My personal health has declined severely as well. At the same time there have been notable increases in the numbers of mosquitoes, chiggers and ticks — to the point where it is miserable spending a few minutes outside.”

Birds and spiders eat ticks and chiggers. Birds and bats eat mosquitoes. So mosquitoes, chiggers and ticks, being hardy, multiply when their predators are gone. But not for long:

Marie writes from Sweden: “Even the ticks are gone in some areas.”

Daniel writes from Los Angeles: “I hardly see any moths anymore.”

Sonya writes from Surrey, England: “Last year I only had two large flies in the house and both died within a few hours. When I was a teenager in the Midlands during the 1950s, I couldn’t open my bedroom window during the hot summers because there were banks of midges swarming under the eaves; even here in Surrey five years or so ago, there used to be a few midges around inside the house during a hot evening. I saw none last year.”

Renee write from the UK: “For the last 3 years, we’ve seen fewer and fewer bees, butterflies and other pollinators. This last growing season we saw only a few bees or butterflies — hardly any insects at all!”

Robert writes from Austria: “I worked for 30 years in a large hospital in Vienna. There I worked with the air conditioning systems. They were very large and had correspondingly large filters. When I first worked there in the ‘90s, we had to sweep up all sorts of flies under the external filters. A 110 liter plastic bag was pretty much full. 30 years later there are only a few hand shovels full (approximately 20 liters) to sweep up. The continuous decline of insects has really shocked me.

The e-radiation decimates the insects so much. It is the worst massacre in the world. It finally has to stop.”

Marianna writes from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada: “There are new 5G cell phone antennas put onto an apartment house here with a giant crane. It’s a room of antennas on two buildings near me and I am suffering!

“There are very few songbirds or robins, no skylarks, no sparrows, fewer ducks and Barrow’s goldeneyes, fewer crows, etc. Also, there have been no flowers on bushes or fruit produced as in the past. I have watched a fig tree produce fruit in 2022 only to see the fruit harden and shrivel at harvest time as all the leaves cascaded to the ground at once. This year I watched again and actually got a few handfuls of figs but watched the majority shrivel and harden and the leaves fall in one swoop before fall! It’s devastating and almost no one sees or cares. There are few bumblebees and zero honey bees. My son does art work on the demise of bees! Harmony Arts Festival, West Vancouver.”

Nat writes from Newcastle, Australia: “There is now a noticeable decrease in insects in our region, even flies and mosquitoes. At this time of year flies and mossies are a pest and appear in great numbers but not this year. I could count the number of flies I see each day on one hand and I have yet to see a mosquito. Spiders are a rarity in the garden now and should be abundant. Five years ago I had an accident and couldn’t drive for several months. A pair of finches took the opportunity to build a nest outside of the garage, under the house, and continued to breed there until this year. There were thirty-four finches sitting on the power lines earlier this year but they seem to have gone. What have we done to the planet?

Howell writes from Thailand: “I went to Penang, Malaysia. In the evening I could hear an insect sound but then realised it was coming from only one place. I looked and saw it was coming from a loudspeaker. In the day the hotel played bird sounds because there are so few birds and insects now.

“Back in my hometown about an hour from Bangkok I realised the same thing was happening, no mosquitoes, very very few cockroaches, no ants, et cetera et cetera.

“This morning I was shocked and saddened by seeing only one House Martin from the 8 nests on the wall below my window. That they have actually survived for so long is remarkable because there is so little food for them–so few insects. The colony has been there for years. One day I noticed a House Martin on the ground that could not fly because its wings had been mutated and were too wide.

“I also saw a squashed 5-legged frog on a walk. I cut down my walking because noticing the lack of insects was very upsetting. There are urban birds like sparrows and pigeons but even their numbers seem to be declining.

“It is good to see people around the world waking up to what is happening. Locals here are happy there are no more mosquitoes and very very few cockroaches. They do not realise what is causing it and they do not care.”

Bob writes from England: “I am very old and have always been a naturalist and observer of changes in the world of nature. In the past two decades, I have noticed the decline of butterflies especially those which migrate from France to England, and the absence of insects on the car windscreen. On our farmland we always had a strong rabbit population which soon picked up after the myxi [myxomatosis] decimation, but now I rarely see one. In past years in the spring at night we would have hundreds of Maybugs (cockchavers) flying into our house windows; I have not seen one for years.

“The work you are doing is essential as you know, our natural wildlife has been my life, several years ago I concluded that we had even then lost some seventy percent of it. We humans are a part of that wildlife. Since the introduction of atomic weapons our future has never been certain, but this is far more subtle and I believe threatening.”

Barbara writes from Québec, Canada: “I noticed a decline in the insects, birds and creepy crawly things after a cell phone tower went up behind our family’s home over 20 years ago. After two years, seven of our neighbors had died from cancers and heart attacks and all the animal life vanished. The June bugs died in the ground. It is too sad to remember or recount all that we experienced while living there during that time as it was a time of pure evil and torture.”

Author, poet and journalist Sean Arthur Joyce writes from Canada: “Today in our community in southeastern British Columbia is our local Christmas Bird Count. The results are positively eerie: hardly a bird to be found, and we live in a mountainous region that is at least 100 kilometres from the nearest major city. I’ve noticed just over the past couple of months that the birds coming to the feeder have plummeted. Where before, we had daily, regular visits from a dozen or so chickadees and nuthatches all through the year, this has dropped to the occasional pair only once or twice a week. At first I chalked this up to the squirrel monopolizing the feeder for a while, but since he stopped doing that the bird count has still not increased.

“Given how far we are from a major city, and the fact that we have no 5G here (though we do have 4G cell service in some areas, but it doesn’t work outside the villages), I’m assuming we may be experiencing radiation from the Starlink satellites even in this semi-remote, rural area.

“We’re going into a solar maximum cycle in 2024 (actually it has already started) according to scientists, which has already resulted in a flare affecting radio transmissions around the world. More are predicted in the coming months. There are days I pray we get such a major blast of solar flares from the sun that it knocks out ALL of the satellites.

“Of course, that would knock us back about 200 years but maybe that’s the only way we’ll see a return of the bird life.”

Maya writes from San Francisco: “My second-floor porch is at the bottom of a Prevailing North Wind funnel, that blows across the dozen backyards, that create the green space interior of our block. The south side of the porch is open to the sky, between buildings on either side that are much taller, creating the wind funnel, and at least a constant breeze.

“When I first moved here four decades ago, I often counted 20 or 30 birds and many bees and butterflies every day. They stopped by the plants I set out for them on the porch as they flew both north and south. Now I only see one or two small birds a week scurrying across the porch floor. But never any bees, and maybe one or two small white butterflies a week. Beginning five or six years ago, I’ve walked the same path in Golden Gate Park several times a week, and counted 50 or 60 Canadian Geese every time. Now, maybe there are 15 or 20 of them. And all the various ducks and hawks are rarely seen. And the glorious breath-taking seasonal Blue Herons are gone.

“Also now, there is a 5G tower more than 500 feet away, at eye level with the porch and my desk window. I spent a small fortune on EMF shielding screens for the desk area windows that look out on the porch. But they only shield 80% of the radiation. Lately I’ve noticed that when I must be at the computer for several hours, the left side of my face by the window, is red.”

Henrik writes from Sweden: “I have seen the same thing happen here in Sweden with the insects. The crane fly and the wasp are gone. In my filled compost bucket there was not a single fruit fly in July and August. Flies and butterflies have also decreased.”

Josephine writes from California:  “All of my ants are gone. No rising population of ants rescuing eggs when I water my roses. No little house cleaners coming in for jelly left on the counter in the kitchen. None coming in during the rain.”

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TAKE ACTION!

JOIN OUR NETWORK OF PEOPLE WITHOUT CELL PHONES

The only way to diminish the demand for bandwidth that is turning the Earth into a giant computer, with all living beings electrocuted inside of it, is to stop using cell phones. Not to use them less frequently, but to throw them away. The ability to use them, no matter how infrequently, requires the entire planet to be irradiated. Please join our network by forming a local chapter where you live.

You can set your own rules, but it is important to have meetings in person. Please contact me if you need help and let me know that you are doing it.

Our goal is to establish an expanding global presence of communities that do not use cell phones.

Arthur Firstenberg
President, Cellular Phone Task Force
Author, The Invisible Rainbow: A History of Electricity and Life
P.O. Box 6216
Santa Fe, NM 87502 USA
phone: +1 505-471-0129
arthur@cellphonetaskforce.org

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This work and these newsletters are supported entirely by donations from individuals.

We have no other source of funding. The Cellular Phone Task Force is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization and donations by U.S. residents are tax-deductible. Our Tax ID Number is 11-3394550.

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