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" American songbirds are being wiped out by banned pesticides
By Leonard Doyle in Washington
Friday, 4 April 2008
The number of migratory songbirds returning to North America has gone into sharp decline due to the unregulated use of highly toxic pesticides and other chemicals across Latin America.
Ornithologists blame the demand for out-of-season fruit and vegetables and other crops in North America and Europe for the destruction of tens of millions of passerine birds. By some counts, half of the songbirds that warbled across America's skies only 40 years ago have gone, wiped out by pesticides or loss of habitat.
Forty-six years ago, the naturalist Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring, a study of the ravages caused to wildlife, especially birds, by DDT. The chemical's use on American farms almost eradicated entire species, including the peregrine falcon and bald eagle.
The pesticide was banned and bird numbers recovered, but new and highly toxic pesticides banned by the US and European Union are being widely used in Latin America.
Because of changed consumer habits in Europe and the US, export-led agriculture has transformed the wintering grounds of birds into intensive farming operations producing grapes, melons and bananas as well as rice for export.
Ornithologists say another silent spring is dawning across the US as birds are being poisoned by toxic chemicals or killed as pests in their winter refuges across South and Central America as well as the Caribbean. They say that many species of songbird will never recover, and others may even become endangered or extinct if controls are not put in place or consumer habits changed.
More problems await those birds which make it home. Millions of acres of wilderness the birds use as nesting grounds have been ploughed under in the drive to grow corn for ethanol, for bio-fuel.
Some 150 species of songbirds undertake extraordinary migrations up to 12,000 miles every year as they move from the south to nesting grounds in the US and Canada every spring. Ornithologists say that almost all these species are at risk of poisoning.
The migratory songbirds in most trouble include the wood thrush, the Kentucky warbler, the eastern kingbird and the bobolink, celebrated by the 19th century American poet Emily Dickinson as "the rowdy of the meadows".
Bridget Stutchbury, an ornithologist and professor at York University in Toronto, said: "With spring we take it for granted that the sound of the songbirds will fill the air with their cheerful sounds. But each year, as we continue to demand out-of-season fruits and vegetables, fewer and fewer songbirds will return."
The bobolink songbird has experienced such a steep decline, it has almost fallen off the charts. The birds migrate in flocks from Argentina, Bolivia and Paraguay to the east coast of the US, feeding on grain and rice, prompting farmers to regard them as a pest. Bobolink numbers have plummeted almost 50 per cent in the past four decades, according to the North American Breeding Bird Survey.
Rosalind Renfrew, a biologist who studied bobolinks as they were feeding in rice paddies in Bolivia, found about half of the birds had been exposed to toxic chemicals banned in Europe and the US. Some 40 to 50 species, which include the barn swallow, the wood thrush the dickcissel as well as migratory birds of prey, are starting to disappear.
It is only recently that the decline has been definitively linked to the use of toxic pesticides in the Caribbean and across Latin America. "Everyone who has looked for pesticide poisoning in birds has found it," Professor Stutchbury said. "When we count birds during our summers we are finding significant population declines in about three dozen species of songbirds."
She wrote in the comment pages of The New York Times: "They are the modern-day canaries in the coal mine." She said: "The imported fruits and vegetables found in our shopping carts in winter and early spring are grown with types and amounts of pesticides that would often be illegal in the United States." Growers are using high doses of pesticides, which the World Health Organisation calls class I toxins. These are also toxic to humans and are either restricted or banned in the US and EU. But controls in Latin American countries are easily flouted. "I believe that if we don't make drastic changes quite literally many birds which are common now are going to become rare," said Professor Stutchbury.
Testing by individual EU countries and the US Food and Drug Administration reveals that fruits and vegetables imported from Latin America are three and sometimes four times as likely to violate basic standards for pesticide residues."
obviously if the pesticides were perfectly safe, the professional lawn services would not put up a warning sign in the 1st place, Adios.
Did you read what you quoted? The report is not about the use of regulated pesticides in your town of Ct. It is about unregulated toxic pesticides killing birds outside of the country. I'm not saying that the pesticides in the U.S. are 100% safe, but I doubt they are killing off all birds who venture near them, or people other than yourself would be seeing thousands of dead birds in total. Take Willow Wind's advice and collect some dead birds for testing.
did you read what you quoted? The report is not about the use of regulated pesticides in your town of ct. It is about unregulated toxic pesticides killing birds outside of the country. I'm not saying that the pesticides in the u.s. Are 100% safe, but i doubt they are killing off all birds who venture near them, or people other than yourself would be seeing thousands of dead birds in total. Take willow wind's advice and collect some dead birds for testing.
I tend to agree with Willow Wind about West Nile Virus making a comeback. The state already announced that the virus is coming back strong this year. I did see a few dead birds at the Montgomery Pinetum this year; no pesticides are used in the nature preserve but the birds were relatively close to a large body of stagnant water where I'm sure tons of mosquitoes are breeding.
It seems very unlikely that the pesticides are killing the birds. Chemical-laced seeds that birds are actually ingesting would make more sense, but a virus would be the first thing I'd suspect.
I tend to agree with Willow Wind about West Nile Virus making a comeback. The state already announced that the virus is coming back strong this year. I did see a few dead birds at the Montgomery Pinetum this year; no pesticides are used in the nature preserve but the birds were relatively close to a large body of stagnant water where I'm sure tons of mosquitoes are breeding.
It seems very unlikely that the pesticides are killing the birds. Chemical-laced seeds that birds are actually ingesting would make more sense, but a virus would be the first thing I'd suspect.
Regarding the lawn pesticide...I just thought I'd share this. A few years ago, a friend of mine let her border collie run through people's lawns on their nightly walk. Some of these lawns were posted with these signs. Her dog got very sick, and had to be treated by the local vet for poisoning. She was extremely upset about the pesticide, and I would be too, but I thought, why in the world are you letting your dog run through other people's lawns in the first place?? My next was, yes, there really is a reason for these signs. It's pesticide, people.
A second experience - since we rent, we have no say over the use of pesticide in our lawn. Each spring, the dude shows up and does the lawn. Last year the guy, nicknamed Rocket, who had apparently spent WAY too much time around his product, couldn't talk fast enough, and was very hyper. (Perhaps another drug?) Anyway, this year, I decided to call the lawn company after coming home and finding one of those little signs in our yard (always upsets me, but oh well, what can I say?)
and asked the lady what the ingredients were, since it wasn't listed in our information they left on the door. She hemmed and hawed, and said 'oh, it's not toxic.' I said, I want to know what they are. She still put me off, then said she didn't have that information, she'd have to get a service tech to call me back. Well, I knew right then he wasn't going to, and no, he never did.
My advice? Do your research. Find our EXACTLY what they are putting on your lawn, look up the ingredients, and find out for yourself. This is only good wisdom. I am learning to never take sales people's word on most products today, as they are out to make money, and I'm finding they you can't always trust people. In fact, when my husband accused me of being slightly paranoid about stuff like this, I said, remember Coca Cola? It started out with Cocaine in it. Remember the medicines of old? Most were nearly 100% alcohol. Remember Ray Charles? A quack put a poultice on his eyes, and it blinded him for life. Remember the morning sickness drug in the 70's? Ended up causing extreme birth defects. I'm not an extremist, but I am getting more cautious as I get older.
And yes, for what it's worth, I'm thinking it's West Nile disease too. Call the state EPA or whatever dept handles this and report this. I had a hawk die in my back yard last year, called them, and they came and got it.
PS: Love the cat photos! LoL!
Last edited by newenglanders2; 07-22-2011 at 06:50 AM..
Reason: ps added
Erm, maybe you should lay off the conspiracies. Ray Charles went blind because he had what was believed to have been glaucoma. He started losing his sight when he was around 5, and he was completely blind within a few years.
And Coca Cola did start with cocaine in it, it was marketed and sold as a tonic - which it most certainly was. This was before cocaine was determined to be a dangerous drug and made illegal. Cocaine was a common "tonic" medicine at the time, sold in a variety of forms. And it did pretty much exactly what it was advertised to do.
Medicines of old? Really? Which phrase book did you get that from? Which medicines of old are you referring to? 100% alcohol? That would be - stronger than even grain alcohol which is only around 95% alcohol at most, 72% at least. Old fashioned medicines included the aforementioned cocaine, various opiates including morphine, coedine, and laudanum and of course including opium itself. It included leeching (which is still an effective treatment for certain odd ailments), maggots to eat away necrotized flesh (which is still an effective treatment for eating away necrotized flesh), enemas, brandy, tobacco, LSD (it was available by prescription as a treatment for certain psychoses)...
Most of them were not 100% alcohol; though, many of them were dispensed as a tincture, which means the medicine was diluted in an alcohol solution, and you'd take 1 teaspoon a few times per day. Which, oddly enough, is exactly how Nyquil is dispensed, even now.
So much for trying to be helpful. I was sure that in the movie about R.C. that his mother had tried to get treatment for him, which is why I'm thinking about the poultice. And yes, I see that they believe now he likely had glaucoma, but apparently neither he nor his mother knew that at the time. I could be mistaken. It could have been someone else I was thinking of. It wasn't unheard of.
When I said nearly 100% alcohol, I wasn't talking about proof. I was talking about percentage compared to other ingredients.
I am well familiar with most of what you referred to, I do read too. However, I wasn't trying to give a professional report on drugs, past or present. I was simply trying to say that we should be aware of what's in our products. That's all.
You would have been much more helpful without the sarcasm.
I figured it was a given that people should be aware of what's in the products they use, or hire people to use, in and around their homes. Of course, if you're using a responsible service, you won't be -getting- things that will kill hundreds of birds, or kill your dog (unless he's allergic or attacks the bag of pesticide when the service guy isn't looking), because the stuff that's truly deadly to these creatures, is illegal to use in lawn preparations.
This was already mentioned though, and as you said, you can read. So I'll leave you to find the post that explains that law and I believe also links to the pertinent website.
I'd venture to guess that people who are -not- aware of the ingredients, who don't -care to find out- the ingredients, are probably careless about other things as well and the mole killer on their front lawn is likely the least of Duke the Dog's worries.
Also, yes, medicine -was- mostly alcohol, because medicine was mostly provided in the form of tinctures - which I already specified. And tinctures, by definition, are small quantities of active ingredients suspended in an inert liquid, most often alcohol. They're still around now and still widely used in pharmaceuticals.
This would be the case if this was an ideal world. But unfortunately it isn't. In regards to lawn service and anything else, a family in a new area isn't going to know who is reputable right away, mistakes can and will be made.
I don't care to continue this conversation, so this will be my last response. I have read several other of your posts, and I see a trend. I admit defeat, I am not as smart as you or apparently as well informed.
Have a nice day.
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