NAAWAN, Misamis Oriental (MindaNews / 5 Aug) — Our yard is lush year-round because we planted various fruit trees, flowers, and vegetables. My wife cultivated an orchid garden that enhances the beauty of the surroundings. Our place attracts winged, magnificent, colorful beauties.
Dragonflies (alindanaw) used to hover around like little helicopters, and butterflies (kabakaba) hop from one flower to another. The orange, black-spotted ladybugs cocoon themselves in the flowers of the crawling squash. Bumblebees also love the place. But the scary buzzing bees prefer to build their homes with earthen material, of all places, inside the house.
And the creek beside our cottage was also home to colorful fiddler crabs (amimihig) and talasak, a small jumping fish.
It was a sight to behold, but all have seemed to disappear unnoticed.
I don’t know if you also share my observation.
The alindanaw and kabakaba are nowhere to be found in our garden, and I have not seen them lately elsewhere. And no more buyog with their scary buzzing have flown into our house to build their individual homes.
What happened to them?
Some opine that they are not yet gone but are getting scarce quite fast, requiring urgent intervention to protect and preserve them.
The application of chemicals, such as fertilizers and pesticides, to increase crop production poison the environment—the land, the atmosphere, and waterways, resulting to massive loss in biodiversity.
Hence, it should be mandatory to use organic fertilizers in crop production; and research on pest control should be selective and bug specific to protect other bugs that are natural agents in plant production.
(MindaViews is the opinion section of MindaNews. William R. Adan, Ph.D., is retired professor and former chancellor of Mindanao State University at Naawan, Misamis Oriental.)