I'm 54 and have seen animal populations tank. There used to be more animals in 70s-80s midtown Tulsa than there are now in my NW Florida forests. I walk miles and miles and miles through the woods around here and don't see shit.

Cleaning the bugs off the windshield was just something you did at every fill up, sometimes you stopped for that purpose alone. Can't remember when I last did that. Even driving back country highways in Alabama and Mississippi doesn't collect bugs. When I came here 20-years ago, love bugs were a huge nuisance, swarmed everywhere in September. You had to wash your car a couple of times or their guts would eat your clear coat. I saw a few pairs in my driveway this year, once.

From the swampy bits of my camp drying out the last two years in a row, I hardly have any dragonflies. (The larva take 2-years to mature underwater.) Banana spiders, and what ever the other huge ones are, are far thinner than they were just 4 years ago. Haven't seen a deer this year and only a three rabbits. Never hunted but thought I try popping a squirrel for dinner. Sat perfectly still for almost an hour, barely saw one from afar.

Went far into the swamp to get to the creek last week, truly wild in there, even more so than my neighborhood creek. There should be animal tracks of all sort in that flat, muddy terrain. Couple of deer tracks and that was it. Frogs, salamanders and other amphibians should be so thick you have to avoid stepping on them. Haven't seen a turtle yet.

Hell, I've seen animal populations crash on my front porch over only 4 years. The door light used to get covered with bugs and frogs and salamanders used to hang out for free lunch. As of this year, I haven't seen one vertebrate. Used to have a population of 6-8 hummingbirds fighting around the feeder. This year I never saw more than one at a time, think it was the same dude. And my bird feeder drains about half as fast as it did.

The creek in the woods behind my hood should be teeming with life. If feeds out a swamp upstream that should be popping with fish. Yeah. Not so much. I walk, swim and hike all over and around that place. One time I saw an 11" fish! One time. Not shit for tracks either, just deer and coyote and the occasional trash panda. We did see a little group of 5 teenage armadillos last summer!

And for all the tromping around the woods and creeks and rivers, I just saw my first vipers in the wild this fall. There used to be the occasional indigo snake in the yard. Not this year. Gators should be totally common. I've only seen 2 in all my travels, and I'm constantly looked for slides, nests and eyeballs at night.

If you're young and worried about climate change, you would be fucking enraged if you had seen what I've seen. The natural world has been stolen from you.

Animal populations have plummeted by nearly 70% in last 50 years, new report says

There is some good news! Heard coyotes for the first time in the hood. There's a monster flock of Great Egrets at the swamp. Saw the biggest bird track I've ever seen last Tuesday. The kids and I saw some kinda brown, aquatic animal last March. Beaver? And I know of two really sweet beaver ponds. I see a great deal of raptors in the sky, but they should be even more common. Managed to attract pileated woodpeckers at camp and caught my first bear on the trail cam!