What's your first thought when you see a bug in the house? Is it to grab a shoe? If so, you're not alone. Environmental educator Kevin Wiener used to be scared of spiders ... but now he's a huge bug advocate.
WNIJ's Jess Savage sat down with him to find out what changed and why he left a career in pest management to advocate for bugs, specifically arthropods.
Arthropods are invertebrates with a hard outer shell called an exoskeleton. They make up more than 85% of animal species.
"Bugs supply every single thing on this planet," Wiener said. "Bugs, or plants, are providing everything on this planet with their food, and all of them, the larger fauna out there they need the bugs. ... they're the foundation of all life on this planet."
Many people don't think about arthropods unless they find their way into our homes. Many common household pests are arthropods: spiders, ants and cockroaches.
But Wiener says most people don't have pest issues; they have "fear issues."
“They didn't like it being there," Wiener said, "but just because I don't like something doesn't, to me, mean that I should have a free reign to kill it. And if I'm going to kill it, I should be thinking about the bigger consequences of my actions and how that affects other things.... I think that's a pretty big decision to make."
Wiener himself was afraid of bugs — specifically spiders. He says he started to think more deeply about why.
"Most of my fears came from bad information," he said. "It didn't come from bad experiences. I never was bitten by a spider that I know of. I never had somebody throw them on me ... It was misinformation. That's where my fear stemmed from ... And perception is reality, even if my perception is not accurate. If I'm perceiving this spider moving in my direct maliciously, if all the information I have is that spiders are malicious and likely to bite, well, I'm thinking that spiders are out to get me. But, when I took the time to learn, I started to realize that spider bites are exceptionally rare.”
And that gave way to seeking more information.
"To see people on social media that were really knowledgeable on the subject," Wiener said, "continually say things that went against everything I believe to be true, it made me say, 'I need to stick around and pay attention, because something I learned is probably not correct.' And then once I started to see one thing after another, after another that I had learned was incorrect, I just kind of washed it all out of my brain and said, 'I just need to learn all fresh new information, because I think that I've just been really misinformed across the board on these animals'... I wrote them off for so long that I just want to make it up to them, because they are such amazing and such needed animals."
Wiener’s passion for bugs and mission to educate others grew alongside an interest in photography. He encourages people to get out and photograph bugs to get over their fear. It can also open budding photographers' eyes to perspectives they don't usually consider.
"We have this massive world under our feet that we are just totally overlooking," he said. "I think if other people got out there with their phones ... and photograph stuff and start learning, and you will start to realize there's this world out there you never realize."
He also said it’s important to conserve all animals, not just the ones we can easily see. Bugs are mainly threatened by habitat destruction, pesticides and climate change. While The Illinois Endangered Species Protection Act protects some arthropods, they’re still vulnerable.
”Almost all of our birds are protected," he said. "If I go outside and shoot a bird ... then I could be fined and even imprisoned if I continue to do so. We have so many animals that are protected, but then the ones who are basically the foundation of life for all of those protected animals, we're not protecting them."
Now, he moderates a very popular Facebook group called All Bugs Go To Kevin, where nearly 300,000 members can help identify mystery bugs or seek help overcoming their fears. He has high hopes for the online community.
"My goal is to have you walking away with information that's new and exciting," he said. "Something that, hopefully, is explained in a way that you can repeat it to somebody else to educate further. And hopefully they can do the same and so on. And we can actually snowball good information going to people."
The group has changed his life, and the lives of so many people in the community.
"I wanted to help people take the same kind of journey that I took from fear to fascination," Wiener said. "I wanted to see people change. I wanted to see their hearts change. But ultimately, I just wanted to see people to gain an understanding of these animals, why they're important, and at the very least, want to stop harming them. But, what's happening is people are going beyond that, and they're falling in love. And when you fall in love with something, you want to protect it."