Dark Skies

For billions of years, all life has relied on Earth’s predictable rhythm of day and night. It’s encoded in the DNA of all plants and animals including us. Humans have radically disrupted this cycle by lighting up the night sky. Plants and animals depend on Earth’s daily cycle of light and dark to govern life-sustaining behaviours such as reproduction, nourishment, sleep and protection from predators.

Nocturnal animals are divided roughly into two groups. There are those who strenuously avoid light often going on long routes round lit areas so wasting precious energy; alternatively delaying or even giving up on mating and feeding routines. Toads may be particularly affected by increased levels of artificial light as they have a very short breeding season and may use light to orient towards ponds and aid in synchronicity in breeding. Owl numbers are falling, which it is claimed is partly due to the reduction in suitable feeding areas caused by light pollution. Bats such as brown long eared, greater horseshoe and Natterer's bats are used to operating in very dark conditions using echolocation and encountering bright ALAN can lead to the equivalent of blindness leading to crashes. This also happens to exhausted and confused migrating birds who have to navigate by the stars or visible land masses and encounter unexpected light. Migratory birds depend on cues from natural light sources for timing their migration.Artificial lights can cause them to migrate too early or too late and miss ideal climate conditions for nesting, foraging and other behaviours.

Other animals are attracted to the lights - moths waste energy in their confusion as they batter against the lights and become prey to pipistrelle bats who in turn can become prey to cats in this artificial environment. Outdoor lighting is directly and significantly contributing to the loss of insects and biodiversity everywhere. 60% of insects are nocturnal and it is estimated that a third of those attracted to artificial light are killed as a result. A new research paper in the scientific journal  BIOLOGICAL CONSERVATION  printed November 21st 2019 raises new concerns over the impact of artificial light at night (ALAN) on our environmental health. The journal says we have to take the Insect Apocalypse seriously if we really hope to prevent a terrible situation from getting worse. Insects are lynch-pins of the environment and necessary for most life forms to survive including ourselves. Numbers of bats have decreased so dramatically over the last century that all 17 resident species are now protected by law. Most of us have seen the awful films of baby turtles wandering off to the towns thinking they are following the moon light on the sea. While poor glow-worms only emit low, greenish light to attract mates and can't compete with our LEDs.

So what can we do to help in our village?

There is hope. It is an easy matter to eliminate, reduce or change the ecologically devastating artificial lighting on our homes, schools, businesses if we want to, simply by turning off exterior lights as much as we can. The dark skies campaign has managed to get the message out there that street lights need only light downwards and leave the night sky visible. “Security lighting” similarly should only be directed where needed at the doorstep, keyhole and steps etc. and should only come on with movement to help our wildlife survive. Have thick curtains and close them at dusk to save energy on heating and prevent blazing house lights affecting the night sky. Lastly we can help further by always selecting warm yellow shades of light and even better choose red hues which affect wildlife less, but avoid greenish tones(think of those glow worms!) and ice white and blue shades which have been found to damage the retina and upset our sleep patterns causing health problems for us and wildlife. Our village plan stated that we did not want light pollution at night in our villages.