“Germany is planning to ban floodlights from dusk for much of the year as part of its bid to fight a dramatic decline in insect populations, it emerged Wednesday.
“In a draft law seen by AFP, the country's environment ministry has drawn up a number of new measures to protect insects, ranging from partially outlawing spotlights to increased protection of natural habitats.
"Insects play an important role in the ecosystem...but in Germany, their numbers and their diversity has severely declined in recent years," reads the draft law, for which the ministry hopes to get cabinet approval by October.”
Also:
“The use of weed-killers and insecticides would also be banned in national parks and within five to ten metres of major bodies of water, while orchards and dry-stone walls are to be protected as natural habitats for insects.
“The proposed reforms are part of the German government's more general "insect protection action plan", which was announced last September under growing pressure from environmental and conservation activists.”
This is what happens when people vote for the Greens.
Meanwhile, in France’s pretend-we-are-green Macron-led government this week:
“The French government will propose lifting a ban on certain pesticides blamed for harming bees to protect sugar beet crops that have been ravaged by insects this year, the agriculture ministry said on Thursday.
“The government plans to support a legislative amendment in parliament later this year to exempt sugar beet for up to three years from a general ban on neonicotinoids, the ministry said in a statement following a meeting with sugar industry representatives.”
As you can imagine, this went down like a shit sandwich in environmental circles.
Damn those pesky bees, eh?