It is not a secret how human activities have been the leading cause of extinction for multiple wildlife species. While there are more or less 100 million different animals, insects and planets on earth, statistics claims that at least 10,000 species go extinct every year. Extinction is the environments natural response to evolution however due to human interaction the extinction rate is about 1,000 times higher than what is deemed natural.
Despite the alarming extinction rates being common knowledge, what is unbeknownst to the general public is the great threat the extinction of one species is to every day human life. In fact just recently, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services or IPBES published a startling report detailing what human beings can lose when certain insects have died out.
According to IPBES' study, the threat on the survival of bees and other pollinators can lead to the elimination of major food sources. They claim that pollinators are instrumental in producing $235 billion to $577 billion of the world's food supply. Without these various insect species, crops like apples, blueberries and coffee run the risk of being extinct as well.
"It's definitely harmful to wild bees, and we don't know what it means for populations over time" explained Simon Potts, leading author of the report from the University of Reading in England.
Thankfully, the same researchers explain that there are things farmers can do to prevent this catastrophic event. Planting flowers in between fields of crops and reducing the use of chemical pesticide can halt the extinction of bees and other pollinators. Moreover these scientists further suggest that normal individuals can also take part in saving these species. People living in cities can do as little as plant flowers and other plants in their property or even in their window boxes.