Subject: Pesticides present threat to predatory birds
Date: Tue, 09 Jan 2001 08:42:06 -0500
From: Stephen Tvedten <steve@getipm.com>
Organization: Get Set Inc. (www.getipm.com)
To: Paul Helliker <phelliker@cdpr.ca.gov>
Director, State
of California, Department of Pesticide Regulation
cc: Carol Browner browner.carol@epa.gov
Dear Mr. Helliker,
I thought you might like
to read an article a friend of mine Ron Atkins, sent me, it is from the DAYTON
DAILY NEWS, Neighbors, In Your Back Yard entitled: Pesticides present threat
to predatory birds. by Pete Lane, dated: Thursday, January 4, 2001.
Recently I saw a photo of a snowy owl that is apparently
wintering in the Miami Valley.
The accompanying story said these Arctic residents
sometimes push south during winter in search of prey.
I’d like to offer the field behind my barn for any future immigrants.
The snow cover has revealed dozens of trails made by
various critters, some of which may be burrowing under the floor of my barn.
I remember a ride on a snowy evening long ago when the snowflakes
curving in front of the windshield were interrupted by a huge white form that
thumped against the glass.
We stopped the car and got out to find a large white own
on the road behinds us, very much alive and angry. We scooped it into an empty box, took it inside for the
evening and set it out the next morning.
By noon it had disappeared, but I’ll never forget its
blazing yellow eyes.
I’d like to think that it’s not just the snowy winter
that may be causing the return of these giant visitors. Being predators, their food was once tainted by poison their
prey had ingested.
The mice and shrews they ate had fed on insects which had
accumulated poisons such as DDT. And
while those poisons didn’t kill the owls, they caused their egg shells to
weaken and collapse.
One of the first acts of the Environmental Protection
Agency some 30 years ago was to ban the use of DDT in the United States.
That’s allowed the populations of many predatory birds to recover,
such as the peregrine falcons that summer on downtown buildings.
But while DDT is no longer used, some other insecticides
are still causing problems for birds.
This summer, the EPA announced that Dursban would have
all of its residential uses canceled by 2001.
And in early December, the producer of Diazinon announced that it would
begin phasing out the residential uses for that product.
Those two products account for the vast majority of
insecticide used in homes, lawns and landscapes.
They were versatile, cheap and effective.
That alone may have encouraged overuse or misuse.
And they were both in the same family of chemicals, so switching from
one to the other mad little difference in preventing potential effects of
chronic exposure.
So when the EPA began examining potential risk from
families of chemicals, rather than individual products, it seemed there was
too much of both for either to stick around.
Soon similar reasoning will probably curtail the uses of
Malathion or even Sevin, which isn’t in the same family but produces similar
results. Even rotenone, once the
mainstay of organic gardeners, is now gone.
The remaining alternatives for home pest control are not
as versatile and seldom as cheap or effective.
But they’re also not as persistent in their targets.
No longer can we shoot first and ask questions later.
Few remaining pesticides can achieve the kind of indiscriminate and
lasting effects that the old standbys had.
Gardeners will need to more vigilant in their plants, but
they’ll have more allies in lady beetles, mantids and birds.
And maybe they’ll see a few more butterflies or even a
snowy owl.
Pete Lane is an agent for agriculture and
natural resource development at the Ohio State University Extension in
Montgomery County. To contact
Lane, call him at 224-9654 or e-mail him at lane.2@osu.edu.
Well Mr. Helliker,
If we already have safe and far more effective (unregistered)
alternatives --- Why not "legally" allow them to be used?
There is an old expression: "Worry
doesn't help tomorrow's troubles, but it does ruin today's happiness." I would like to add that if you continue to mandate that only
your "registered" POISONS be used to "control" pest
problems -- we will not have to worry about tomorrow. Please stop threatening the Life of our planet!
Respectfully, Stephen
L. Tvedten
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