Letter: These 'pesky pests' are vital to our very lives
I think the Shropshire Star may have a finely tuned sense of irony; in your article of May 2, headlined, "Pesky pests" you quoted one pest controller as saying "and the bumble bees will start nesting soon."
Underneath this article you have one headed, "Public asked to join Great British Bee Count" and quote conservationists as saying bees "are under threat from loss of habitat, pesticide use and climate change." And also, it would seem, pest controllers.
Without these "pesky pests" we could all be at risk of starving to death, as wasps are pollinators too and many of their exquisitely made nests are in places, where they are of no threat to humans, but their demise is demanded simply because they exist at all.
Wasps are themselves pest controllers, one nest possibly killing five metric tons of insects a year.
This is also the time of year, when the council sends out its verges maintenance teams, to cut down all the cow parsley that looks so pretty, and is such a good source of food for the bees. Clearly, on some parts of the roads, it needs cutting back for visual safety reasons, but it is usually unnecessarily mown down and does not regenerate, where mowing has been over-enthusiastic.
If Shropshire has seen a big fall in the number of call-outs for pest controllers, shouldn't we be just a little bit worried that we may be destroying more bee colonies than is sustainable?
Our "public orchards" would be useless without our bumble bees. A farmer with tomatoes under glass, will pay a fortune for a bumble bee nest, apparently, so clearly they are not just beneficial, but vital.
Nicola Jones, Shrewsbury
