Category: Pesticides

Here We Go Again-Emerald Ash Borer

©Marlene A. Condon

The United States Department of Agriculture started putting up purple boxes throughout Virginia in 2012 to detect the arrival of Emerald Ash Borers, a nonnative insect. These nondiscriminatory sticky boxes needlessly kill hundreds of innocent insects, including butterflies. Photo: Marlene A. Condon.

The Emerald Ash Borer, an Asian insect that was probably brought into the United States via cargo ships and airplanes carrying solid wood packing material, was first discovered in the Detroit area in 2002. From its initial occurrence, it has moved outward to 31 states and is expected to continue spreading throughout the country.

The adult beetle feeds on the foliage of an ash tree without causing any real harm. However, the immature beetle feeds on the inner bark where water and nutrients are transported throughout the tree. If there is an abundance of these larvae, they can kill the tree by interfering with its ability to get these essential liquids where they need to be.

The United States Depart-ment of Agriculture (USDA) has reported that the Emerald Ash Borer has killed hundreds of millions of ash trees in North America. Needless to say, and as is typical when a new foreign animal is found within the country, there is widespread panic. Municipalities, property owners, forest-products industries, and nursery operators are concerned about losing their ash trees.

In the beginning, the USDA behaved rationally, restricting and enforcing quarantines to prevent ash logs and firewood from potentially carrying Emerald Ash Borers into new areas. But as the insect’s spread continued unabated, the agency moved to pesticide usage.

Humans have become so used to the idea of employing poisons throughout the landscape that hardly anyone gives it much thought. Yet the consequences are profound.

A catastrophic result of treating trees with an injected pesticide (the main method of treating ash trees against the Emerald Ash Borer and hemlock trees for the Woolly Adelgid) is that those trees themselves become killing agents of non-targeted species as well as the targeted one. In these times of environmental consciousness, everyone knows that the wanton extermination of non-targeted species is an unsound practice.

Strangely, some environmentalists argue that we cannot afford to lose our native ash trees because they support native insects. However, there is no ecological value to keeping alive a poisoned ash tree that will attract and then snuff the life out of such critters as the caterpillars of Tiger Swallowtail and Hickory Hairstreak butterflies, among many others.

Imidacloprid, one of the commonly used pesticides suggested for use on ash trees, is already implicated in the decline of honeybees, and kills all kinds of insects and other kinds of invertebrates by interfering with the transmission of nerve impulses.

Proponents for the use of this pesticide always point to its safeness for use around people and their pets. But people and their pets are not the organisms that make the environment habitable for the rest of life on Earth, and therefore should not be seen as the only determinant for whether a pesticide is acceptably safe.

Although humans and pets would not, presumably, have much opportunity to eat this pesticide, the probability for other mammals, as well as birds, reptiles, and amphibians, is much higher. Employed systemically (injected into the tree), Imidiclopid moves easily throughout the entire plant, filling roots, leaves, pollen, nectar, and fruit with this toxic substance.

What this means is that any kind of animal making use of any part of a treated tree is susceptible to serious poisoning, whether it is a White-footed Mouse eating an ash seed or a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker getting sap. Does this matter? It certainly does when you consider that both of these species eat Gypsy Moths (an alien species brought to this country deliberately) and thus help to limit their numbers.

Although the United States government has spent millions of dollars trying to eradicate the Gypsy Moth from our forests via the use of pesticides, it is a battle that can never be won because pesticides simply breed resistance into the species, making it more of a problem for humans to deal with. 

It would be far more sensible to preserve ash seeds that could be planted after the borer populations have plummeted. Once large ash trees have been greatly reduced in number, the borers will starve for lack of a food source. A natural buildup of predator populations will take place and that will work to keep borer populations in check.

This scenario has already played out with the Brown Marmorated Stink Bug. Although populations of this nonnative insect (first detected in the US in 1998) were still noticeable in Virginia in 2017, its numbers were substantially reduced from previous years.

You might question my assessment, because for most folks, finding several dozen of these stink bugs around the house still counts as too many. However, just a few years ago there would be hundreds of them in the fall on house siding. In Shenandoah National Park, we couldn’t even exit the car because stink bugs were flying and landing everywhere! It was quite a phenomenon.  

Although my initial assessment of the population decrease was based upon what was happening in my yard throughout the 2017 growing season, I confirmed from bird-sighting and hawk-watch reports throughout the fall season that the population drop had occurred throughout the state. The complaints of stink bugs were very few and far between as compared to previous years! Lastly, a sure sign that numbers were way down was the absence of stink bug media coverage.

It’s strange that when some kinds of critters become problematic, the common and hysterical reaction of folks is, “We’ve got to do something!”, even if that “something” is to employ poisons that are harsh in their effect and non-selective in their action. No one considers that this demand for pesticides demands cruelty from researchers.

All pesticides are tested for toxicity by feeding them to animals and applying these substances directly onto their skin and/or into their eyes. Should people worry more about trees than about the inhumane treatment of animals, such as the bunnies and guinea pigs used in Imidacloprid testing?

If people would open their eyes to the big picture and learn more about all of the unseen but very real impacts of using pesticides, the world would be a much better place for us and the creatures that share it. Animals would no longer be subjected to immense physiological and psychological pain and suffering to test poisons, and our tax burden would be less because we wouldn’t be forced to support pesticide research and applications.

No species of organism has ever been eliminated by pesticides. Please reconsider your options the next time you think pesticides will solve your problems. 

Blue Ridge Naturalist: Here We Go Again— Emerald Ash Borer

Pesticides Are a Danger to All Life

 

BLUEBIRD-PAIR-DEAD-2016-04-19
A dead bluebird pair, possibly killed by pesticides, lies beside its eggs that will never hatch. Photo: Paula Ziebarth.

© Marlene A. Condon
July, 2016

Local bluebirder Ron Kingston alerted me in April to a distressingly sad situation that occurred in a cemetery in central Ohio. He’d heard from Paula Ziebarth, who monitors nest boxes in the area, that a mated pair of Eastern Bluebirds had died after workers had put out earthworm-shaped poison bait (a product made by Bell Laboratories under the brand name of Talpirid) to kill moles.

It’s not clear if the birds had found “worms”—that perhaps someone had accidentally dropped onto the ground—and eaten them, unaware that within mankind’s world, something that looks every bit like an earthworm is not necessarily an earthworm. But even if the bluebirds didn’t eat this poison bait, there’s plenty to be concerned about.

(It should be noted that if the bait had been deliberately placed on top of the ground instead of within the mole tunnels, that application would be in violation of the manufacturer’s instructions for use.)

First of all, the idea of shaping poison bait into something that many different kinds of animals would think they could eat is horribly shortsighted. It’s akin to creating candy-shaped poison to be used in the home where a child might mistake it for a treat.

Additionally, this bait has been given “an attractive smell for hungry moles,” which means any animal able to smell it within a mole tunnel will be enticed to dig it up. Raccoons, skunks, and bears have a keen sense of smell and habitually dig up soil to feed upon underground critters.

Pets have sometimes been the unintended victims of pesticides, which people find abhorrent. Yet society has accepted the use of poisons to kill wildlife of every sort. What has happened to our humanity that most people accept the willful poisoning of these creatures when it’s terribly mean-spirited to cause any living being to die an excruciatingly painful death?

It’s as if people have lost their sense of compassion when it comes to wild animals, as though these critters pose such an enormous threat to their own well-being that they are somehow not worthy of mercy. Yet what crime is a mole guilty of that it should be given a death sentence?

Is making raised tunnels in grass or garden—tunnels that could easily be tamped down by foot and avoided by anyone not wishing to sink into the dirt—truly a crime worthy of poisoning when the critter is simply doing its job for the benefit of people? Yes, that is exactly what a mole is doing. It controls the numbers of organisms living within the soil so your environment can function properly.

When a mole feeds upon grubs—beetle larvae that normally feed upon dead plant roots to recycle them—it keeps the grubs from overpopulating the area. By having their numbers limited, these immature beetles won’t run out of dead roots and be forced into feeding upon the roots of living plants to avoid starving.

The mole’s action thus helps to perpetuate the life of both plants and grubs. Plants can’t remain healthy and strong without roots, so they would be unable to perpetuate themselves. Eventually the area could become devoid of plants, which means there would be no food for future generations of grubs that are necessary to recycle nutrients back into the soil for the benefit of future generations of plants.

When a mole feeds upon earthworms, it perpetuates their existence as well. If the earthworms become overpopulated, they too will run out of food and die off. The disappearance of earthworms would impact plants not only because earthworms are recyclers of nutrients that plants require for good health, but also because earthworms aerate the soil for the benefit of plants. Their roots require air, which is why plants do poorly in compacted soil.

The mole in your yard, garden, or cemetery (there is typically only one mole except during mating season) keeps these closed biological loops functioning properly. If you want your plants to remain healthy, you want your mole to do its job.

But even though there is no need to be killing a mole in a yard or garden, is there a need in cemeteries? Perhaps if folks would make the effort to understand our wildlife and to recognize the importance of these animals to their own existence, they wouldn’t mind being more vigilant about watching where they stepped within the cemetery.

Signs could be placed at entrances to alert visitors to the presence of mole tunnels, which the groundskeepers could do their best to tamp down.

Folks might realize the silliness of the things they get upset over if they weren’t so concerned with “perfection.” Today’s world is one in which appearances are everything, whether it be one’s own personal appearance or the appearance of one’s possessions, including his yard. Many people see mole tunnels as imperfections in their lawn’s appearance or, worse yet, as destructive of the health of the lawn.

In fact, the view that many forms of wildlife are exceedingly destructive and/or dangerous is ridiculously prevalent among folks these days. You can’t watch TV, listen to the radio, or read a newspaper without being exposed to ads for “pest” control. These ads don’t stick to facts; they exaggerate the supposed negative impacts of many kinds of animals upon people.

Even scientists talk about “pests’, even though the whole idea of organisms existing to destroy the very world that supports them is nonsensical. (Perhaps researchers take their cue from man, who’s the only creature to knowingly sabotage his surroundings.)

Life is all about perpetuating life, which can’t happen if insects, for example, are out there destroying the very plants they require for future generations of their own kind. The only reason people run into difficulties with plants being overwhelmed by insects is because people create improperly functioning environments in which plant-feeding insects are not kept limited by predators.

People completely misunderstand how the natural world works, and they are constantly bombarded with the idea that any wildlife causing the least bit of inconvenience or risk of harm to them should be killed. As a result, we have children and adults alike who expect to live their lives without ever seeing certain kinds of wildlife within their sphere of existence.

A few years ago I was told about an experience someone had while talking with an Albemarle County elementary school custodian. A young girl of eight or nine approached the custodian with a teacher by her side. She wanted to tell him, with much concern, mind you, that there was a dead spider outside the building.

Yes, she was concerned about a spider that was where it belonged, not one that had found its way into the building. However, even if the spider had been inside, it should not have caused such consternation as to require informing the custodian.

Viewing the natural world only from their own perspective, humans have totally misread it and are destroying it. We need to get back to seeing “Mother Nature” as the nurturing entity that this name so accurately depicts.

Blue Ridge Naturalist: Pesticides Are a Danger to All Life