Ted Williams

Ted Williams is a columnist for Audubon Magazine.

Thirty-five years after the publication of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring U. S.-made pesticides are still a major source of bird mortality around the world. Audubon Magazine, 1997.

Most of the bird-killing pesticides currently in use are carbonates and organophosphates, nerve gas relatives that short-circuit an organism's nervous system by binding with an enzyme that controls electrical impulses throughout the body. Muscles contract in random sequence, and the victim usually dies of respiratory failure. Ibid.

. . . the United States annually blasts itself with about half a million tons of pesticides, which cost $4.1 billion and provide fewer and fewer benefits. Ibid.

. . . despite a tenfold increase in the use of chemical insecticides since World War II, the loss of food and fiber crops to insects has risen from 7 to 13 percent. Ibid.

Cornell University researcher David Pimentel estimates that of the 672 million birds annually exposed to pesticides in the United States, 10 percent &emdash;67 million&emdash;are killed. This estimate is extremely conservative because it is extrapolated from the low range of mortality seen in study areas and because it does not include such factors as the well-documented bird losses caused by poisoning of invertebrate prey, eggs left to chill or young birds left to starve when adults die, and birds with blown-out nervous systems that mat migrate to places where they can't reproduce or even survive. Ibid.

. . . despite the well-documented lethal and sublethal effects of pesticides on birdlife, never has the EPA banned a pesticide for any reason other than presumed danger to people. Ibid.

So far, mostly chance discoveries have shown that about 40 pesticides, the bulk of them still registered in the United States, can kill birds even when used according to the directions on the label. Ibid.

The current procedure for pesticide registration is designed by industry to serve industry. It's a sham. Ibid.

Consider . . . aldicarb, sold under the trade name Temik, which, when used according to the label, kills robins, opossums, rabbits, shrews, doves, mice, sparrows, horned larks, and even lizards. Ibid.

Dead eagles have been found with their heads still in the gut cavity of carbofuran-poisoned coyotes, and magpies and vultures have died after feeding on the eagles carcasses. Ibid.

Even if you don't think birds are important, lots of dead ones indicate that something is horribly awry in the system that sustains all life-forms, including us. Ibid.