Are Greenhouse Lights creating Ecological Dead Zones?
The introduction of artificial light represents one of the most drastic changes we have made to our environment. Plants and animals depend on earth’s daily cycle of light and dark rhythm to govern life-sustaining behaviors such as reproduction, food, sleep and shelter from predators. Scientific studies have suggested that greenhouse lights at night have a negative and deadly effect on many creatures including birds, mammals and insects. Greenhouse light can affect mammals in many ways, such as changes in foraging patterns, predation risk escalations, biological and circadian clock interruptions, and changes in distribution patterns in artificially lit landscapes. Light pollution turns night into day. In general, light favors a predators’ attempt to find food, which is why so many prey animals seek the cover of darkness: prey species use darkness as cover and predators use light to hunt. A variety of nocturnal mammals avoid open areas in greenhouse lit conditions. Herbivores eat less food in greenhouse lite nights to avoid predators. While artificial night lighting may in the short term seem beneficial for the predators, it is not beneficial for the prey species and may not even benefit the predator species in the long term. Birds that hunt and migrate at night navigate by moonlight and starlight. Artificial light can cause them to roam off course and toward the dangerous nighttime landscapes, migrate too early or too late and miss ideal climate conditions for nesting and foraging.
gogreenpestcontrol.ca Ladner Tsawwassen Delta B.C. randy Bilesky
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/greenhouse-lights-creating-ecological-dead-zones-randy-bilesky/?published=t
