Beetlemania: can eating insects help save the environment?

Christmas - along with Thanksgiving for Americans - has probably got to be the most obvious time of the year when Westerners over-indulge in animal protein. However, this meatfest comes at a severe cost to the planet, as anyone who is environmentally aware is likely to know. Although many people have started making changes to mitigate climate change and pollution, compared to say recycling and reducing your carbon footprint, cutting down on meat seems to be far more challenging.

Actor and former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has suggested Americans should have one or two meat-free days each week, but that's easier said than done in a continent raised on heaped platefuls of red meat. It isn't as if switching from cattle, sheep and goat to more unusual species would help either, as recent research confirms the likes of kangaroo and reindeer as sources of high methane emissions too. As a side note, it isn't just meat consumption that needs to be reduced; there's also dairy farming to consider. Does anyone really like soya milk? Mind you, I haven't tried almond milk yet...

United Nations reports suggest that greenhouse gas emissions from farming, primarily due to livestock and artificial fertilisers, have almost doubled in the past half century. As you might expect,these are likely to continue increasing at a similar rate over the next fifty years. In addition, vast tracts of Amazonian rainforest - amongst other unspoilt natural habitats - are being destroyed to make way for cattle grazing. At around three million acres lost each year, there's obviously not much in the way of sustainability about this particular development!

So is there any good news in all this culinary doom and gloom? Both Europe and especially North America have recently seen a profusion of companies marketing manufactured foods intended as meat replacements that are derived from of all things…insects. These products range from burgers to crackers and usually offer little appearance or taste to indicate their source material. Is it possible that the future for developed nations could include the delights of grasshopper goulash and wormicelli pasta?

It isn't as strange as it sounds. Over a quarter of mankind routinely eats insects from several thousand species as part of their traditional diet, usually with the source animal obvious in the presentation. This makes sense for developing nations, since wild insects can be caught en masse, farmed bugs fed on cheap waste material that can't be converted into conventional animal feed - and of course they require comparatively little water. Although the material isn't being converted to highly processed foodstuffs, Thailand - with over 20,000 insect farms - is an example of a nation currently increasing its insect consumption.

The species used in the new ‘hidden' insect foods varies widely, with crickets prominent on the menu. It isn't as straightforward as just killing the wee beasties and grinding them into powder, but many of the new American and European companies are conducting extensive research, developing mechanised processes that bode well for industrial-scale production.

The nutritional analysis shows promise to say the least, with some Hymenoptera species containing up to three times the protein yield of domestic cattle. The vitamin and mineral statistics are pretty good too, sometimes exceeding both farmed mammals and birds as well as plant staples such as soya beans. Not bad, considering that bug farming should prove to be at least four times as efficient as cattle husbandry.

Whether a trendy novelty can become mainstream remains to be seen, since the fledgling industry faces more than just the ‘yuck' factor. As with much cutting-edge technology, legislation has yet to catch up: there could be issues around safety concerns, with short shelf life, uncaught impurities or pollutants and allergic reactions all potential factors that could inhibit widescale production.

Bug protein isn't the only dish on the table (see what I did there?) as there are even more sophisticated approaches to reducing the environmental degradation caused by meat production. One well-publicised technique has been the cultivation of animal flesh in-vitro. However, it's only been a couple of years since the (nurturing? propagation?) of the first petri dish burger and so the process is still prohibitively expensive. By comparison, insects (bees and butterflies excepted) are not currently in short supply.

As a someone who hasn't eaten any land-based flesh for over a quarter of a century - and yes, I try to be careful with which aquatic species I consume - I suppose I have a fairly objective opinion about this matter. It does seem to make environmental sense to pursue processed insect protein as a replacement for domesticated mammal and bird species, but how often has logic taken a backseat to prejudice and the irrational? I look forward to near future developments, not least the massive brand campaigns that will no doubt be required to convert the Western public to the likes of Cricket crackers and Wormer schnitzel. Look out turkeys, your Christmases could be numbered...

Local heroes: helping the ecosystem – with or without leaving your backyard

Thomas Henry Huxley, A.K.A. Darwin's Bulldog and the man who coined the word 'agnostic' (and less-than-incidentally, my hero) once remarked that "We live in a world which is full of misery and ignorance, and the plain duty of each and all of us is to try to make the little corner he can influence somewhat less miserable and somewhat less ignorant than it was before he entered it." With this years' UN Climate Change Conference about to start in Paris, there have been around 2000 marches around the world as current generations advise their governments that cleaning up our planet cannot be postponed any longer.

Meanwhile, like something out of a typical piece of Hollywood schmaltz, New Zealand law student Sarah Thomson is taking her country's government to court over lack of progress on climate change. Unfortunately as this is the real world - and since the UN's Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) targets aren't legally binding at nation-state level - the outcome is unlikely to provoke a Spielberg-style public cheer when the case is decided.

From a New Zealand-centric view, we may seem removed from the overcrowded, polluted hell-holes scattered around the world, but there are plenty of problems in store for this little corner of paradise, and not just from climate change. New Zealanders have only recent begun to understand that far from the '100% Pure' tourist brand, there has been a long-term degradation to their ecology, primarily from invasive species and an unsustainable level of development.

But although we may seem powerless in a wider context, individuals in any nation can still make a difference to help maintain or even restore their local environment without a great effort and at minimal cost. You might think: why bother? One household can't help an entire planet! But then, if everyone dropped one piece of litter every day we would rapidly become swamped with rubbish, so the antithesis holds true. Whilst the following are tailored towards New Zealand, the majority of actions can be undertaken anywhere. So enough proselytising: on with the show!

1) Reducing your carbon footprint. This week the New Zealand Herald website launched a climate action tool to show where households could reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. I'm never fond of quoting statistics, but if the country's emissions really have increased by the quoted 21% since 1990, then clearly something is going very wrong. Among the most basic methods - that at the same time can reduce household spending - are reusing bags when grocery shopping; and cutting down on food waste (which in New Zealand equates to half of household rubbish) by buying less and then having to bin out-of-date food. It's not rocket science!

2) Careful consumerism. Stop being a slave to fashion and don't just upgrade to a new smartphone when the old one still works perfectly well. It may be difficult to cut down on methane-hefty dairy products, but it's easy to avoid items that contain environmentally unfriendly materials, such as nanosilver or palm oil that comes from unsustainable sources. After all, two American girl guides spend five years on a successful mission for clear food labelling and the introduction of palm oil from deforestation-free sources. If they can do it, why can't we all?

3) Reduce, reuse and recycle. I discussed this back in 2010 and think that all the points are still relevant. Again, this can actually save money. If you have a garden, then a tiger worm farm is a pretty good way to get free fertiliser and soil conditioner from the likes of vegetable peelings, egg shells, tea bags and even discarded hair.

4) Encouraging wildlife. Talking of gardens, you can easily help the local fauna with the right type of vegetation and feeders. Of course, it's not all plain sailing: although I feed native silvereye birds during the winter with fruit, my seed feeders are most likely to be utilised by non-native species imported to New Zealand from the UK in the late Nineteenth Century. You win some, you lose some.

5) Discouraging invasive species. From marine fan worms on the underside of ships' hulls to pet cats, New Zealand's native species have long faced the onslaught of aggressive outsiders. Current biosecurity regulations are very important, but in NZ sometimes have the ring of the stable door about them, in this case with the (foreign) horses having bolted into the stable - and promptly munched their way through much of the local biota. One simple thing I have done is to discourage South African praying mantises by methods such as changing garden planting and moving hatchlings to more conspicuous places in the garden where birds might find them. In this way numbers have reduced from hundreds of individuals three years' ago to seeing just one hatchling this year - and no adults - despite carefully examination of the garden. As for cats, don't get me started! NZ has over 1.4 million of them, and whoever can prevent them catching native birds and lizards would probably deserve a Nobel prize.

6) Eco-activities. Talking of trees, various local groups are more than happy to accept volunteers for tree-planting, pest trapping and litter removal schemes. In New Zealand, Tiritiri Matangi has gone from being a denuded patch of scrub to an island sanctuary for endangered bird species in just three decades, largely thanks to volunteers planting over 280,000 trees. As for litter, volunteer beach patrols are unfortunately a necessity, as an example from 2011 shows: 130,000 pieces of rubbish were collected from the uninhabited island of Rangitoto in just one day.

7) Joining organisations. There are plenty of societies ready, willing and able to use membership funds for ecological activities, from global giants such as the World Wide Fund for Nature to local groups such as New Zealand's Forest and Bird. As a member of latter I've been pleased to study their new 25-year strategic plan, aimed on raising important environmental issues and presenting detailed information to the NZ Government in support of campaigns. The good thing is your subscription money is being used positively regardless of how much or how little active time you yourself can dedicate.

8) Armchair petitioning. Even for people unable to get out and about you can also petition your local politicians and other relevant figures without leaving home. A good example in recent years has been British chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's fish discards campaign, which gained massive public support and succeeded in less than three years in not only gaining an update to European Union by-catch legislation, but had positive knock-on effects in other aspects of commercial fishing within the EU. Nice one, Hugh!

9) Citizen science. A fairly recent definition, this encapsulates an enormous range of passive and active methods. The former includes crunching science project data whilst your home computer is idling, whilst a painless example of the latter would be participating in wildlife surveys; recent New Zealand examples include one-off garden bird and butterfly counts, through to monthly assessments of a single square metre of rocky beach. There are numerous projects that are suitable for children to participate in, so a side-effect is to encourage children to accept science as an integral component of their lives, not just something to do at school.

10) Education. Talking of school...saving the most difficult to last. I was recently accosted on the street by an admittedly junior employee of a petroleum giant whose argument - if I can dignify it as such - was that snowfall in New Zealand in October was clear proof global warming isn't occurring. Clearly, there is a severe lack of public understanding of basic science, this particular case relating to the fact that climate change can include local cooling at the same time as warming on a global scale. Thanks to the ubiquity of information channels from climate change-denier News Corp (now the proud owner of National Geographic, for crying out loud), it seems certain that grass-roots environmental education needs to be the way forward, considering how much misinformation and nonsense is being spread by global news networks. So don't be afraid to talk - spread the word!

I'd like to end on two quotes: the first is by American cartoonist and author James Thurber, who said: "Let us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around in awareness." The second comes from a decorative plate that hangs on my wall: "Other planets cannot be as beautiful as this one." Let us hope we can leave a legacy such that our descendants continue to think so.

Cutting edge: can New Zealand hold its own as an innovation nation?

On a recent trip to MOTAT (for those not in the know, Auckland's Museum of Transport and Technology) I was looking around a restored Edwardian period school room when I came across a list of classroom rules. One in particular stood out: 'Do not ask questions'. How times have changed! As the late New Zealand physicist Sir Paul Callaghan once said: "You don't need to teach a child curiosity. Curiosity is innate. You just have to be careful not to quash it. This is the challenge for the teacher - to foster and guide that curiosity." But are there enough resources in New Zealand today to support that curiosity, not just in children but for science and technology professionals too?

In the shadow of the seemingly endless Rugby World Cup coverage, the New Zealand Science and Innovation Minister Steven Joyce has launched the National Statement of Science Investment (NSSI). Although investment in the science and technology sector has increased within the past decade, I've come across various kiwi scientists with prominent social media profiles who constantly vent their frustration at the amount of timing spent bidding for funds - only for the majority of those bids to fail.

New Zealand is somewhat towards the lower end of the scale in government investment in research and development, but the nation appears even more hampered by apathy from the private sector. A key aim of the NSSI is to attract more private funding towards science, technology and engineering but with a very small internal market and many of the larger corporations controlled from overseas, the record to date hasn't been particularly good. Comparisons to other small developed nations bear this out. For example, the Republic of Ireland has only a slightly larger population than New Zealand but double the industrial research and development spend as a percentage of GDP. Other European countries fare even better, with Finland spending correspondingly more than quadruple New Zealand's figure!

Perhaps it is not surprising then to hear that after a comparatively high quality education, many New Zealand post-graduates and science professionals seek opportunities abroad. Not that this is a recent phenomenon; all three New Zealand-born science Nobel laureates spent their professional lives working in the UK, USA or Canada. For a nation that produces a relatively large output of STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) articles, the impression is that kiwi ingenuity can only make limited resources go so far. As long as industry fails to support more than a paltry amount of research, there just won't be enough funding to support native talent.

But it isn't all doom and gloom. In addition to projects aimed at short-term improvements in native sectors such as the dairy industry, New Zealand is one of ten nations involved in the Square Kilometre Array radio telescope. However, investment for this long-term project - one apparently lacking immediate practical benefits too - appears to be primarily via public rather than private finance.

You have only to consider New Zealand retail prices compared to other developed nations to understand that a combination of a remote geographic location and low population size and density are prime economic movers. This doesn't prevent canny kiwis from attempting STEM innovations, although it frequently ends with large-scale development implemented in larger, wealthier nations.

Two recent examples show these issues in vivid detail. Award-winning high school student Ayla Hutchinson invented the Kindling Cracker, a much safer way to split wood kindling than the traditional axe-on-a-stump method. However, when her Auckland-based manufacturers were unable to produce the device without a large cost increase, the young inventor was forced to seek an overseas company to produce it.

Another success story of Kiwi ingenuity is the field-leading wireless power technology firm PowerbyProxi, which in the past few years has formed a business relationship with international giants such as Samsung and Texas Instruments. One key issue they have faced in their home nation has been a shortage of skilled staff, further evidence that a brain drain on a small population can lead to the ultimate irony of having to recruit specialists from abroad. The NSSI and last year's strategic plan A Nation of Curious Minds - He Whenua Hihiri i te Mahara are aiming to address this via changes within state education and citizen science. But will the private sector follow suit and step up to the mark in order to give the next generation of New Zealand scientists a 'fair go'?

New Zealand has long been acclaimed as punching above its weight in many arenas, not just rugby, but its future in STEM fields seems uncertain. I wonder if the canny kiwi/pioneer attitude (think: number eight fencing wire solutions) that has been so successful in the past is still suitable at a time when even if not requiring LHC mega-budgets, much science and technology innovation requires stable funding sources? The Government clearly have the country's long-term prospects in mind with the new strategies, but without adequate private sector finance the next generation of STEM graduates might well consider pursuing their careers abroad. Considering the nation-specific developments in science and technology that the future clearly requires, this would not be a good thing!

Resurrecting megafauna: the various problems of de-extinction

The record-breaking success of Jurassic World proves that if there's anything a lot of people want to see in the animal kingdom it is species that are both large and fierce. Unfortunately, in these post-glacial times that type of fauna has been much reduced and will no doubt wane even further - not that I particularly wish to encounter an apex predator at close quarters, you understand.

Hollywood, of course, has much to answer for. There was plenty of poor science in the original Jurassic Park movie - the use of gap-filling frog DNA being a far worse crime in my book than the over-sized velociraptors (think Achillobator and similar species) but the most recent film in the franchise has pointedly ignored the advances in dinosaur knowledge made in the intervening period. Perhaps a CGI test of a feathered T-Rex looked just to comical?

In contrast, the amount of publically-available material discussing de-extinction has increased exponentially in the two decades since Jurassic Park was released, with the line between fact and fiction well and truly blurred. That's not to say that an enormous amount hasn't been learned about the DNA of extinct species during this period. I recently watched a rather good documentary on the National Geographic channel (yes, it does occasionally happen) about the one-month old baby mammoth Lyuba, recovered in Siberia almost forty-two thousand years after she died. The amount of genetic information that has been recovered from mammoths is now extremely comprehensive, but then they were alive until almost yesterday at geological timescales. Needless to say the further back in time a creature existed, the more problematic it is to retrieve any genetic material.

A lot has been written about the methods that have been, or could in the near future, be used to resurrect ancient animals. Some procedures involve the use of contemporary species as surrogate parents, such as elephants standing in for mother mammoths. But it seems fair to say that all such projects are finding difficulties rather greater than originally planned. One common misconception is that any resurrected animal would be a pure example of its kind. Even the numerous frozen mammoth carcasses have failed to supply anywhere near a complete genome and of course it isn't just a case of filling in gaps as per a jigsaw puzzle: one primary issue is how to know where each fragment fits into the whole. Our knowledge of genetics may have advanced enormously since Watson and Crick's landmark 1953 paper, but genetic engineering is still incredibly difficult even with species that are alive today. After all, Dolly the sheep wasn't a pure clone, but had nuclear DNA from one donor and mitochondrial DNA from another.

Therefore instead of resurrecting extinct species we would be engineering hybrid genomes. Jurassic World took this process to the extreme with Indominus rex, a giant hybrid of many species including cuttlefish! Some research suggests that the most of the original genes of any species over a million years old – and therefore including all dinosaurs – might never be recovered. Something  terrible lizard-ish may be built one day, but it would be closer to say, a chicken, with added teeth, a long bony tail and a serious attitude problem. In fact, George Lucas has been a key funder of the chickenosaurus project with aims along these lines. Let's hope he doesn't start building an army of them, totally obedient clones, ready for world domination…oh no, that was fiction, wasn't it?

But if – or more likely, when – creating variants of extinct species becomes possible, should we even attempt it? Apart from the formidable technical challenges, a lot of the drive behind it seems to be for populating glorified wildlife parks, or even worse, game reserves. The mock TV documentary series Prehistoric Park for example only contained large animals from various periods, frequently fierce carnivores, with no attention given to less conspicuous creatures or indeed flora. This gee-whiz mentality seems to follow a lot of the material written about de-extinction, masking some very serious long-term issues in favour of something akin to old-style menageries. Jurassic Park, in fact.

A big question that would be near impossible to answer in advance is whether such a species would be able to thrive or even survive in a climate far removed from the original, unless there was major genetic engineering just for such adaptive purposes. Again, the further back the animal lived, the less likely it is that there is a contemporary habitat close to the original. It may be possible to recreate glacial steppes suitable for some mammoth species, but what about the Earth of ten million or one hundred million years ago? Prehistoric Park got around the issue for its Carboniferous megafauna by housing them in a high oxygen enclosure, which is certainly a solution, if something of a fire hazard!

Any newly-created animal will lack the symbiotic microbial fauna and flora of the original era, but I've not seen much that tackles this issue. I suppose there could be a multi-stage process, starting with deliberate injections of material in vitro (or via the host /mother). But once the animal is born it will have to exist with whatever the local environment/habitat has to offer. The chimerical nature of the organism may help provide a solution, but again this takes the creature even further from the original.

Then there is the rather important issue of food. To his credit, Michael Crichton suggested in Jurassic Park that herbivorous dinosaurs swallowing gizzard stones might accidentally eat berries that their metabolism couldn't handle. It would be extremely expensive to maintain compounds large enough for megafauna that are constantly kept free of wind-blown, bird-dropped and otherwise invasive material dangerous to the animals.

If the hybrids were allowed free reign, what if they escaped or were able to breed naturally? Given a breeding population (as opposed to say, sterilised clones) evolution via natural selection may lead them in a new direction. It would be wise to consider them as an integral part of the ecosystem into which they are placed, remembering Darwin's metaphor of ten thousand sharp wedges. Is there a possibility that they could out-compete modern species or in some other way exacerbate the contemporary high rate of extinction?

I've previously discussed the dangers of deliberate introduction of foreign species for biological control purposes: surely introducing engineered hybrids of extinct species is the ultimate example of this process? Or would there be a complete ban on natural reproduction for resurrected species, with each generation hand-reared from a bank of genetic material? At this point it should be clear that it isn't just the nomenclature that is confusing.

Some research has been undertaken to investigate the de-extinction of species whose demise during the past few centuries can clearly be blamed on humans, obvious examples being the Tasmanian tiger and the nine species of New Zealand moa. It could be claimed that this has more to do with alleviating guilt than serving a useful purpose (assuaging crimes against the ecosystem, as it were) but even in these cases the funds might be better turned towards more pressing issues. After all, two-thirds of amphibian species are currently endangered, largely due to direct human action. That's not to say that such money would then be available, since for example, a wealthy business tycoon who wants to sponsor mammoth resurrection - and they do exist - wouldn't necessarily transfer their funding to engineering hardier crops or revitalising declining pollinating insect species such as bees.

As it happens, even species that existed until a few hundred years ago have left little useable fragments of DNA, the dodo being a prime example. That's not to say that it won't one day be retrievable, as shown by the quagga, which was the first extinct species to have its DNA recovered, via a Nineteenth Century pelt.

As Jeff Goldman's chaos mathematician says in Jurassic Park, "scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should". Isn't that a useful consideration for any endeavour into the unknown? If there's one thing that biological control has shown, it is to expect the unexpected. The Romans may have enjoyed animal circuses, but we need to think carefully before we create a high-tech living spectacle without rather more consideration to the wider picture than appears to currently be the case.