Durban - Load shedding happens to benefit more than just the capacity of the embattled grid.
Earth Hour is an international campaign to highlight the effects of climate change and involves people switching off their lights for 60 minutes. It starts in South Africa at tonight at 8 o’clock.
Insects appreciate it too because many species spend far too much time and energy flying around lights they are attracted to at night.
Candide, the free gardening app, sees Earth Hour as an opportunity to bring awareness on the negative effects artificial night light has on our nocturnal pollinators.
“According to the most comprehensive review of the scientific evidence to date, artificial light at night – in combination with habitat loss, chemical pollution, invasive species, and climate change – is driving insect declines around the world,” warns Candide.
“Artificial light at night affects these pollinators in different ways, exposing them to predators, interfering with their sense of direction, curtailing their hunting abilities, reducing the time they have to find food, shelter or mates, luring them to their deaths and obscuring mating signals.
“It also alters and interferes with the timing of necessary biological activities, creating mass confusion that deters or distracts pollinators, preventing them from doing their jobs.”
According to KwaZulu-Natal Museum entomologist John Midgley, light affects many species that play an important part in pollination as well as cleaning water for human consumption.
“Hover flies, such as Eristalinus taeniops, are decomposers in semi-aquatic environments as larvae (known as rat-tailed maggots), while other species such as Episyrphus trisectus feed on aphids as larvae. Both species are affected by lights to varying degrees as adults,” said Midgley.
“Many adult beetles are also attracted to lights as adults, and as larvae are decomposers of wood and other plant material, for example, Philematium natalense.”
For early risers, University of KZN student Refilwe Mofokeng is observing Earth Hour at the BAT Centre from 9am to 11.30am, leading volunteers in socially-distanced groups on a campaign to pick up plastic pollution in the harbour.
The Independent on Saturday