Here is the story on this from today's Independent:
Car 'splatometers' may help scientists solve riddle of insect decline
By Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor 30 June 2003
Introducing the splato-meter! You might think it's wacky. You might think it's the midsummer version of an April fool. But it's a perfectly serious invention, and may yet unlock the secrets of an ominous yet little-publicised environmental phenomenon: the widespread disappearance of insects.
It's so simple you wonder why no one has thought of it before. A postcard-sized piece of plastic film, the splatometer fits to the front of your car and measures the number of airborne bugs that splat against it during a road journey. It is intended to give a statistical basis to a growing public perception - that a lot fewer of them are about than there used to be.
It has been devised by conservation scientists at the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds who intend it to be used by tens of thousands of people in a mass "citizen science" exercise, like its Big Garden Birdwatch, which more than 300,000 people responded to this year.
Concerned over declines in many bird species, the RSPB thinks - like a growing number of conservationists - that a general decline in insect numbers may well be responsible. Bumblebees, mayflies, butterflies, moths, beetles and many other insect species appear to be tumbling in numbers and vanishing from many places, the common species as much as the rare ones.
It is a critical development, because insects are the most numerous of all organisms and underpin all ecosystems, providing food for countless other species and playing a crucial role in plant pollination. But it is only just being noticed by scientists, and hard data is lacking.
The splatometer aims to remedy the data deficiency. At the end of a journey, it peels off from the front of your car and can be scanned by a computer to show how many bugs you have splattered.
"We think the splatometer will give us better information on insect abundance than has been collected before," said Dr Mark Avery, the RSPB director of conservation. "We do think insects are declining, but there aren't lots of long-term data sets that show it, like there are for birds and plants. Insects have been a neglected group."