I’ve seen people on the internet asking each other “where did all the christmas beetles go?” for several years now.
You’d have to have your head in the sand to not know that there’s been a devastating loss in the insect population globally in general, but I suppose the seasonal event of christmas beetles assaulting every home after dusk was especially hard to ignore.
I tend to assume that most of the mass die-offs of insects is, even in urbanised areas, ultimately mostly the result of agricultural activity.
But a couple of weeks ago, christmas beetles climbed out of the ground in my backyard. It was pretty cool.
I’d never bothered to learn about christmas beetles. What their lifecycle is etc. But I had a suspicion- I’ve never heard my boomer dad talk about lawn grubs (and poisoning them) until a couple of years ago. After doing a quick search, sure enough christmas beetles in their larval stage are one of several species which collectively make up the group of “lawn grubs.”
Even so, I don’t know shit about “lawn grubs” - have they been a plague upon boomer lawns since time immemorial? Did we just hit an environmental (and pesticide) tipping point where they started to die out?
I still don’t know. But maybe. I did some searches on google trends to see whether lawn grub killing was an ancient tradition with humans only recently winning the war. No. No it’s really modern, if google search trends are a reasonable metric.
No interest in the phrase “lawn grub” in Australia until 2008.
The graph for the phrase “lawn grub killer”
and a graph for the phrase “lawn grub bunnings” (bunnings basically holds the monopoly on retail sales of house and garden / DIY supplies in Australia)
The second two graphs which show interest specifically in killing lawn grubs shows a distinct consistent increase in public interest starting around the end of 2017.
Despite lawn grubs being known by that name and searched for since at least 2008, searches for poisoning them only started about 8 years ago.
Why do people kill lawn grubs?
Because they damage lawns.
“Grub lawn damage looks like big, irregular dead patches of turf”
They deposit their eggs into garden soil and when those eggs hatch into a larvae (the lawn grub) the larvae eat the roots of the growing grass. Once they reach maturity they tunnel out of the ground and fly around looking to fuck and to find pale faced people to dive-bomb.
Not only are they cool as fuck, but they also kill the lawn. Both good things.
Don’t let your boomers poison christmas beetles just to preserve an ornamental lawn that requires constant maintenance and resources.
The common poisons used on them are marketed as an “organic pesticide” and explicitly as “not a scheduled poison” - no shit it’s not scheduled, if it were you’d need a license to buy it and regulations would cover how you use it, it’s a marketing non-sequitur. It’s poison and they’re killing far more than grubs.
Shame them. Appeal to their nostalgia and Australian spirit. Whatever. I miss christmas beetles. Who wouldn’t want glorious native scarab beetles to thrive?
I would bet a lot of money (if I had any) that lawn grubs rarely cause issues even for lawn-lovers except in rare circumstance, and that boomers have been psyopped to fear the humble christmas beetle larvae so they will spend money on chemicals to give their fuckin grass patch prophylactic treatments just in case.
Look at this bullshit. It's from the material safety data sheet for one of these so-called "organic pesticides":
Notice that they do not actually disclose the chemicals in the product. Fuck anyone that uses it but we’re just to accept that “it’s a special blend of safe ingredients”. Fuck this pathetic country I stg.
An older MSDS for the same product suggests that:
Swallowing large quantities may cause nausea, headaches, irregular heartbeat, cramps and breathing difficulties
and even the most recent MSDS lists
So fucken dodgy. Regulatory bodies in Aus have been getting a lot more lax recently. Still plenty of energy to regulate the private citizens though. /cooker
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The irony is that if you don’t poison them for a few years, their natural predator, a parasitic wasp that uses a long ovipositor to lay eggs in the grubs while they’re still underground, thins them out enough that they probably barely harm the lawn.
The “gardening” industry is full of products designed to fuck up your environments natural regulation. This is good for these companies, because it means your environment (your garden, lawn whatever) now requires you to buy these products every few months because now it’s regulation depends on them.
It’s ridiculous. Especially in my dad’s case like, old man, your “lawn” isn’t that impressive anyway and I know you don’t actually care, so why are you doing this. Haven’t seen many wasps around either now that you mention them. Shit’s sad.
I was reading the unabomber’s manifesto earlier for unrelated reasons. Lawn related fuckery and the sociodynamics around it are peak Surrogate Activities.
Yeah it’s a feedback loop type thing, if there are no beetles for the wasps to lay eggs on, the wasps themselves leave.
Oh, OH AND IF YOU DIDN"T ALREADY LOVE THEM, THE SCIENTIFIC NAME FOR ONE OF THE CHRISTMAS BEETLE TYPES (THE EMERALD TIP BEETLE) IS:
Anoplognathus brunni_pennis_
I rest my case.
I stand for penis beetle
I am currently responsible for a property up in the blue mountains and holy shit the amount of boomer damage I’ve had to undo.
I don’t use pesticides, lawn is the bane of my existence, I’ve been ripping out exotics and planting habitat providing natives (not all endemics) and the amount of life that’s returned… it’s astounding. We get swarmed with crickets, redbacks, wolf spiders, a few trap doors, rove beetles, sugar ants, millipedes etc. It was a fucking wasteland when we moved in.
Some chrissies are starting to show which is kinda cool.
Idk why you’d move next to bush to cut it down and replace it with monoculture :(
Im in a similar position and climate to you but a bit further west. The property literally didnt have a single tree on it when we started on it, just old cattle grazing land that’s compacted to all shit. I think ive planted over 100 native trees and shrubs so far. Still a long way to go but getting there. I got super excited when i noticed some lomandra spring up in patches everywhere
Holy shit you’re literally living my dream life. I always thought if I had fuck you money I’d buy one of the hideous carnist sheep farms farms on depleted land and reforest it.
We had no trees either (well, 2 palms), due to bushfire trauma. Literally just depleted salty lawn after decades of nitrate salt fertiliser. It’s amazing what pops up once you just create the conditions for nature to take over hey?
If you’re further west are you on gold/sapphire country? Would you let a comrade do some fossicking? :3
I always thought if I had fuck you money I’d buy one of the hideous carnist sheep farms farms on depleted land and reforest it.
That would be amazing, unfortunately im not on that much land. Just got 5 acres, but im going to give as much of it back to the native wildlife that i can.
It’s amazing what pops up once you just create the conditions for nature to take over hey?
Definitely, Its been challenging getting tubestock going though, we’re still surrounded by open grazing land so we get belted by wind and had 3 days of heavy frost about 2 weeks ago which destroyed all the new growth that was coming out.
Would you let a comrade do some fossicking?
haha more than welcome, but honestly we dont have much worth digging up here apart from old bricks and garbage that the farmer dickheads just plowed into the earth before us unfortunately.
5 acres is nothing to sneeze at, and hey every tree is home for so many over its lifespan. Every square meter matters really, in the clearing and the replanting.
Definitely, Its been challenging getting tubestock going though, we’re still surrounded by open grazing land so we get belted by wind and had 3 days of heavy frost about 2 weeks ago which destroyed all the new growth that was coming out.
Yeah I’ll bet! without wind breaks and microclimates it’s a struggle for so much. I can’t put a proper canopy in (power lines) and there’s a lot of progressive planting to try get conditions acceptable for key plants to properly establish. Surrounded by grazing land has to be a whole other kettle of fish, the winds out west are harsh.
haha more than welcome, but honestly we dont have much worth digging up here apart from old bricks and garbage that the farmer dickheads just plowed into the earth before us unfortunately.
Alas, I do a bit out near Oberon but a lot of the private landholders are getting cagier as the gold prices are getting people looking to cash in (rather than enjoy a day out) digging the shit out of everything and not cleaning up after themselves.
Idk why you’d move next to bush to cut it down and replace it with monoculture :(
Preach it. Thank you for rejuvenating your part of the mountains, I love that area. I’m in QLD at the moment and I’m lucky enough to have seen a big healthy blue tongue lizard and a juvenile echidna in the last week. I can’t imagine how much more vibrant the area would have been a couple of decades ago.
I’ve been browsing various .gov websites looking for ID on some insects and it’s disappointing how basically all advice regarding invasive species focuses on whether it is a threat to the agricultural industry.
You have no idea… they put plastic sheeting down to keep out weeds? except weeds are the only thing that can grow in the cm of soil that’s above it? and the plastic asphixiates the soil ecology and underneath it’s dead minerals?
I’m no green thumb but wtf???
Yeah that works for like a year or something at best.
I have distinct memories of going to my grandparents on Christmas and after lunch my sister and I would go out to the garden to look at Christmas beetles. This was up in Darwin.
Loved those little shiny lads
their lawn wouldnt be so vulnerable to root eating if they stopped torturing the plant with a mower and let it grow to a healthier length. then it could grow robust roots!
I know right! I’m growing only the hardiest of grasses in our yard. Survival of the fittest.
Good post! I looked at the top two results for Bunning’s grub killer and it looks like the active ingredient is bifenthrin. It is a pyrethroid pesticide, a class of pesticides derived from chrysanthemum. Which honestly doesn’t sound that nasty except at the end it gives
Can bifenthrin affect birds, fish, or other wildlife?
Bifenthrin is low in toxicity to birds. There are potential risks for birds and mammals that eat aquatic organisms because bifenthrin can last a long time in the environment and it may accumulate in fish.
Bifenthrin is highly toxic to fish and small aquatic organisms. It’s also very highly toxic to bees.
So given that people are being psyoped into caring about a grub that their predecessors didn’t mind and lawn-havers are probably sprinkling this stuff out with abandon I’d agree it’s a shame.
Oh look another case of “Organic pesticide is actually really fucking dangerous because it causes bee hives to die, collapsing the environment.” It’s really, really common and pesticides even here in the US will be “organic” to avoid regulations and so they can sell produce at a markup. A lot of the time, it’s no better than DDT. Some still have the heavy metals in them we avoid using other pesticides for, especially copper and arsenic.
Another reason capitalism can’t solve climate change. It can’t even solve health foods because it’s cheaper to lie and scam than actually provide what consumers think they’re getting.
chrysanthemum
could probably get this taken off store shelves by telling boomers it’s a crystal meth precursor
Interesting, yeah I imagine those chemicals are quite a problem for the waterways. Anything used in our yard will end up in the local creek for sure. Mind you that’s almost a write-off at this point from other more industrial scale pollution.
I managed to find another .gov database which apparently has active constituent ingredients for anything the Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority knows about. This seems to sidestep the shenanigans with MSDS documents not showing what’s in them if the ingredients are already established to be safe to work with.
Public Chemical Registration Information System Search https://portal.apvma.gov.au/pubcris
Cough.
The particular lawn grub treatment I was trying to skewer turns out to be tea tree and eucalyptus oil according to this DB, but that doesn’t support my narrative nor sustain my outrage so I’m going to believe most people are coating their yard with pyrethrins every year instead.
Edit: apparently cats are another animal (along with fish) that are especially sensitive to pyrethrin based poisons. lol
I literally cannot recall the last time I heard a cicada
They used to be so loud you’d struggle to think.
I saw a tiny one a month or so ago. Pretty sure it was a cicada anyway.
based beetles. fuck lawns and lawn people
Day of the Lawn People but it’s just my neighbours shambling after me pissed that I don’t mow enough.
