Long sleeves and long pants with boots – mandatory in July? 

Bruh. 

My trepidation at losing forty pounds to sweat in the span of two hours at Fontenelle Forest in Bellevue was unfounded. 

While waiting for the event to start, I was seated on a pleasant wooden bench under the awning's shadow of a million leaves at sunset, crickets and a myriad of bugs rejoiced alongside me as they sang in their own way, praising the low 80-degree air. Fontenelle had invited members of the public to ask questions about and witness their Insect Survey and Night Trapping. Beyond the pleasant weather, I was thankful that I was surrounded by nature once again. Attendees trickled in and struck up conversations on short grass; some spoke of the weather of the planet, some about pesticides, and many about bugs. 

I had found myself in hobbyist company who cared about the health of the world, and among the trees and the fragrances of the earth. Before the program started, I was able to get a few words from the Director of Operations at Fontenelle, Michelle Foss, who has worked in her role for five years and for twelve years has worked in Land Stewardship. Honestly, the best part of my job, beyond what I had listed, was that she was fantastic to interview; unlike others who give me one-word answers, Foss was able to speak well at length with little prodding from a journalist.

 The Insect Survey and Night Trapping was part of a ten-year check on a baseline study of the restoration of Nebraska Oakland Wood-Savannah (and adjacent) biomes. That evening was one of the “pulse point" checks to see if there have been any notable developments, though in her words, "It takes a while to see change; we are seeing what is out there. Looking for oakland wood indicators, vegetative and insect indicators.” Foss noted that “There are more insects than there are anything else,” and yet there are far fewer entomologists than there are otherwise, doing the types of studies and tracking that Fontenelle is doing. 

Part of the Night Study was an attempt to get people interested who might not otherwise be. It is her and the Forest’s hope to continue to do more outreach programs, to get people to ask questions about the environment and connect them with the natural world. There is an app called “iNaturalist” which anybody can download and use. By taking pictures of bugs and plants around them, Fontenelle Forest and other conservation and education programs can see even more than is in their jurisdiction and immediate purview. 

After a short introduction from the director, we were invited to follow her onto a path that isn't normally open to the public, to where a big white bed sheet was laid across the ground, and another hung up across the path atop it. Strewn yet across the top sheet were three fancy-looking lights, and before it were volunteers and their entomologist Tony Palmer, who explained the project in more detail to the group of twenty or so women and five men that gathered before him.

Every 100 meters or so throughout the forest, he and the volunteers had plots where they took out their different types of lights (black-lights, all-color-wavelength lights, etc.) They then counted and identified the different species of insects present in each area. Some of the forest had been zoned by being manicured with fire, very particular pesticides, or simply tree cutting in an attempt to change parts of its (micro) biome to invite in species and plants native to oakland-wood/savannah indicators. His plots go through those zones, as well as “control zones" which have had nothing done to them, and sit behind people’s houses. Drawing laughter, Tony noted, "people may not like their trees cut down.”

The entomologist hoped that someday someone with a higher degree than his could use the data to chart more important observations and changes with the bug population over the course of many decades. During a single test, he noted his team had counted over 900 species of insects alone. Recently, he had even found bugs native to Missouri in Fontenelle, possibly due to the increasing temperature. Over the course of their investigations, they hope to see a large swing of forest bugs to savannah bugs, though he did note that some bugs are " generalist” bugs and are just happy to be living anywhere. 

Interestingly, I did learn that one of the lights they were using to attract bugs at night was a full-spectrum-light, which was used to simulate moonlight, and that alone would attract certain insects different from the blacklight. Of note, Tony said the same as Director Michelle, that he could not find any good literature that spoke to their findings at the Forest, that there were just not enough entomologists out there doing fieldwork. 

"We need so many more people asking” (about bugs), Michelle stated. 

Currently we are living in a warming Earth, as per Nasa research; around a third of the currently vegetative lands have seen an increase in greening and new plant life due to the huge increase of Co2 levels over the past 35 years, while bug populations have been reduced by 9% per decade, as per the research paper Insect Decline in the Anthropocene: Death by a Thousand Cuts. The University of California, Riverside, has noted that some areas of the Earth have lost more than 45% of their insect population over the last four decades. Thankfully, we do have some good people over at Fontenelle Forest tracking as much data as they can as they try to restore the natural woodland. 

To see more events at Fontenelle Forest visit their website and check out the calendar: https://fontenelleforest.org/

Austin Petak is an aspiring novelist and freelance journalist who loves seeking stories and the quiet passions of the soul. If you are interested in reaching out to him to cover a story, you may find him at austinpetak@gmail.com.