On #WorldEnvironmentDay #WED2020, we celebrate our environment to muster support #ForNature. And yet most of the wildlife imagery is of mammals and birds, which are wonderful and inspiring but numerically very much the junior partners in the world's #biodiversity. So to celebrate the smaller cogs in our #ecosystem, I have put together a montage of insect life - a sort of tales from the riverbank - in #GashakaGumti National Park, #Nigeria. Video No.79 to #BrightenYourDay in #Covid19 #lockdown.
I regret I can't give you the species names (do chip in if you recognise any) but look out for the vivid green leaf-hopper, a glass-winged butterfly uncoiling its proboscis, a green praying mantis swept down the River Gam-Gam, colourful butterflies, a friendly dead-leaf mantis and finally - another example of the positive power of poo - lots of little stingless bees and brown butterflies feeding on minerals and nutrients in a scat, maybe of an African civet. At the end, I pan up to the gap in the canopy to leave you thinking about the insectivorous birds overhead that benefit from this wealth of entomological diversity. Now consider this:
Nigeria is one of the nations that barn swallows and swifts, cuckoos and corn crakes, and numerous other #migratoryspecies head to from Europe, either to spend the winter months or to act as a staging post to feed up for the journey down to/from Central Africa. Thus, the conservation of this kind of habitat in West and Central Africa is essential for the conservation of birds that bird-watchers delight in seeing and hearing in Britain and Europe, and whose calls mark our seasons. If we want cuckoos to call in Spring and swallows to make our summer in UK, nations must collaborate to conserve habitat all along their flyway, which is why the UN Convention on Migratory Species exists - www.CMS.int