permaculture

[Lawrence London <lfljvenaura@gmail.com>]

Steve, John and Darren will be interested in this.
[You will love this classic propaganda from a criminal lying industry
sycophant-slave-prostitute in a comment after the NG article: "
Philip Germann <https://members.nationalgeographic.com/342143019554/> 4
days ago "We have to remember there is the world to feed as well.  If we
stop using the neonics totally, how many additional children in third world
countries would starve due to higher crop prices?  There are many direct,
provable links with this as well.  Would a 1-3% increased starvation rate
be worth saving the birds we are losing now?  To me, a bird population
decline of 3-4% is alarming, but no reason to have a knee jerk reaction.
It actually sounds manageable if it does not accelerate.  There will be
blowback with anything we do. It sounds like we just need to be more
careful in the use of these pesticides to make sure the problem does
not accelerate." And there's more: "I don't have any answers for that
question. It is a fundamental problem any way you look at it.  I
agree-lower population would be better, but is there any way to control the
world population outside of the unconceivable eugenics programs?  Do we let
children starve to death because the population is too high?  Who chooses.
If it was your children starving, you would not feel so sorry for the bird
loss...  According to some theorists, the dinosaurs exceeded their carrying
capacity and pushed themselves into extinction..."]

<>

Second Silent Spring? Bird Declines Linked to Popular Pesticides
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/07/140709-birds-insects-pesticides-insecticides-neonicotinoids-silent-spring/

Second Silent Spring? Bird Declines Linked to Popular Pesticides
Neonicotinoids are aimed at insects, but they're affecting other animals
too, study says.

Pesticides don't just kill pests. New research out of the Netherlands
provides compelling evidence linking a widely used class of insecticides to
population declines across 14 species of birds.

Those insecticides, called neonicotinoids, have been in the news lately due
to the way they hurt bees and other pollinators. (Related: "The Plight of
the Honeybee."
<http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/13/130510-honeybee-bee-science-european-union-pesticides-colony-collapse-epa-science/>
)

This new paper, published online Wednesday in *Nature*
<http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature13531.html#ref-link-43>,
gets at another angle of the story—the way these chemicals can indirectly
affect other creatures in the ecosystem.

Scientists from Radboud University <http://www.ru.nl/english/> in Nijmegen
and the Dutch Centre for Field Ornithology and Birdlife Netherlands (SOVON)
<https://www.sovon.nl/en> compared long-term data sets for both farmland
bird populations and chemical concentrations in surface water. They found
that in areas where water contained high concentrations of imidacloprid—a
common neonicotinoid pesticide—bird populations tended to decline by an
average of 3.5 percent annually.

"I think we are the first to show that this insecticide may have
wide-scale, significant effects on our environment," said Hans de Kroon
<http://www.ru.nl/plantecology/people/de_kroon/>, an expert on population
dynamics at Radboud University and one of the authors of the paper.

*Second Silent Spring?*

Pesticides and birds: If this story sounds familiar, it's probably
because Rachel
Carson <http://www.rachelcarson.org/> wrote about it back in 1962. Carson's
seminal *Silent Spring* was the first popular attempt to warn the world
that pesticides were contributing to the "sudden silencing of the song of
birds."

"I think there is a parallel, of course," said Ruud Foppen
<https://www.sovon.nl/nl/content/ruud-foppen>, an ornithologist at SOVON
and co-author of the *Nature* paper.

Foppen says that while Carson battled against a totally different kind of
chemicals—organophosphates like DDT—the effects he's seeing in the field
are very much the same. Plainly stated, neonicotinoids are harming
biodiversity.

"In this way, we can compare it to what happened decades ago," he said.
"And if you look at it from that side, we didn't learn our lessons."

*How Neonicotinoids Work*

In the past 20 years, neonicotinoids (pronounced nee-oh-NIK-uh-tin-oyds)
have become the fastest growing class of pesticides. They're extremely
popular among farmers because they're effective at killing pests and easy
to apply.

Instead of loading gallons and gallons of insecticide into a crop duster
and spraying it over hundreds of acres, farmers can buy seeds that come
preloaded with neonicotinoid coatings. Scientists refer to neonicotinoids
as "systemic" pesticides because they affect the whole plant rather than a
single part. As the pretreated seed grows, it incorporates the insecticide
into every bud and branch, effectively turning the plant itself into a
pest-killing machine.

This lock, stock, and barrel approach to crop protection means that no
matter where a locust or rootworm likes to nibble—the root, the stem, the
flower—the invader winds up with a bellyful of neurotoxins.

"The plants become poison not only for the insects that farmers are
targeting, but also for beneficial insects like bees," said Jennifer Sass,
a senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council
<http://www.nrdc.org> (NRDC) who's been building a case against the
widespread use of neonicotinoids. The pesticide's top-to-bottom coverage
means the plants' flowers, pollen, and nectar are all poisonous too.

Worse still, Sass says, neonicotinoids can persist in the soil for years.
This gives other growing things a chance to come into contact with and
absorb the chemicals.

"So they actually end up in plants that grow on the sides of fields and
that were never meant to be targeted," she said.

*Bye Bye Birdie*

The new *Nature* paper shows strong evidence that neonicotinoids are
dangerous even if not ingested.

The study looked at population statistics for over a dozen species of birds
common to farmlands in the Netherlands. Most of these species are dependent
on insects for all or part of their diet, though some also munch on seeds
and grains. This means that there are two ways neonicotinoids could be
harming the Netherlands' birds.

The first is ingestion. Studies have shown that while neonicotinoids are
commonly considered to be safer for mammals and birds than for insects, they
can still be lethal
<http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11356-014-3180-5>in high
enough doses. And the best way to get a concentrated dose of neonicotinoids
is to eat seeds coated with them. A 1992 study
<http://www.pesticide.org/get-the-facts/pesticide-factsheets/factsheets/imidacloprid>
by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency found that sparrows have
difficulty flying after consuming a tiny amount of imidacloprid, and become
immobile at higher doses.

The second way neonicotinoids can affect birds is by eliminating their food
sources. Since these pesticides kill target and nontarget species alike,
there are fewer flies, grasshoppers, stinkbugs, and caterpillars for the
birds to feast on.

*Causation vs. Correlation*

While the new paper shows a *correlation* between high concentrations of
neonicotinoids and declining bird populations, it doesn't claim the
pesticides are a direct *cause* of the decrease.

To make sure the correlation wasn't some sort of coincidence, the team
analyzed a number of alternative explanations.

Caspar A. Hallmann <http://www.ru.nl/plantecology/people/hallmann/> is an
ornithologist and population ecologist at SOVON and Radboud University. As
the lead author of the *Nature* paper, he explained that there are numerous
causes for population declines in birds, from changes in the kinds of crops
planted in any given year and the amount of fertilizer used to the
urbanization of former farmland. But when the team looked at the data, none
of these explanations held up.

Hallmann said that, as with any correlative study, caution is a watchword.
"But still," he says, "we think we have a line of evidence that is building
up."

*Pesticide Maker Disagrees*

Bayer CropScience <http://www.cropscience.bayer.com>, the primary
manufacturer of imidacloprid, defends the use of neonicotinoids. In a
statement responding to Hallmann and his colleagues, the company writes
<http://www.bayercropscience.us/news/press-releases/2014/0709-bee-statement---response-nature-magazine>:
"Neonicotinoids have gone through an extensive risk assessment which has
shown that they are safe to the environment when used responsibly according
to the label instructions."

The statement concludes by saying that the *Nature* paper fails to
establish a causal link, and therefore "provides no substantiated evidence
of the alleged indirect effects of imidacloprid on insectivorous birds."

"Indeed, we showed a negative correlation, which is already very alarming,"
the Dutch scientists said in response to Bayer CropScience's critique.
"Showing causal links at the ecosystem scale would require landscape-scale
experiments," which would be "difficult and probably very unethical."

*A Third View*

The Dutch scientists say neonicotinoids are negatively affecting bird
populations. Bayer CropScience says neonicotinoids are safe when used
correctly. Whom do we trust?

Maybe an independent group that just completed a review of over 800
scientific studies on the effects of neonicotinoids on wildlife. The Task
Force on Systemic Pesticides <http://tfsp.hifrontier.com/>, composed of 29
multidisciplinary scientists, recently released its landmark report
titled *Worldwide
Integrated Assessment of the Impact of Systemic Pesticides on Biodiversity
and Ecosystems* <http://www.tfsp.info/worldwide-integrated-assessment/>.

Overall, the scientists concluded that even when neonicotinoids were used
according to the guidelines on their labels and applied as intended, the
chemicals' levels in the environment still frequently exceeded the lowest
levels known to be dangerous for a wide range of species—and were "thus
likely to have a wide range of negative biological and ecological impacts."

*Not Just Bees Anymore*

David Gibbons, a member of the task force and head of the RSPB Centre For
Conservation Science <http://www.rspb.org.uk/ourwork/science/>, the largest
nature-conservation charity in Europe, explained that many European
countries have already restricted three types of neonicotinoids
<http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/about/intheworks/ccd-european-ban.html>—including
imidacloprid—because of the mounting evidence that they harm bees.

(As of yet, similar protections do not exist in the U.S. Though not for
lack of trying—the NRDC filed a legal petition just this week asking the
EPA to withdraw its approval of neonicotinoid pesticides
<http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/jsass/nrdc_recently_filed_a_legal.html>.)

"Over the last decade, there have been a number of mass die-offs of bees in
several European countries," said Gibbons.

The process of planting corn can actually dislodge the neonicotinoid
coating, which tractors then kick up into the air with the dust from fields.

"These clouds of dust contain very high concentrations of neonicotinoids,"
says Gibbons, "and are instantly lethal to bees."

But part of the goal of the *Worldwide Integrated Assessment* report is to
show that bees aren't the only animals affected. The task force presents
evidence that earthworms, aquatic invertebrates, lizards, fish, and many
other animals are suffering ill effects as a result (either direct or
indirect) of systemic pesticides.

Gibbons says it's hard to say whether we've entered a second "silent
spring."

"However," he adds, "[neonicotinoid] use is now so widespread—nearly 40
percent of the global insecticide market—that there are valid reasons to be
worried."

<>

Comments from Redditors:

Silent spring is right. Ten years ago the wetland behind my home was loaded
with insect and bird life. Now there is silence. After a rain the ground
would be be covered by hundreds of worms of all sizes. I haven't seen a
worm this year. About seven years ago honey bees began to die. They were
the canary in the coal mine we ignored. Now many animals are dieing. Two
weeks ago I drove by a farmer spraying insecticides. Long before I saw him
I smelled the poison. He was spraying about 30 acres but the poison mist
covered several hundred acres.

We used to drive long distance and had to frequently stop to clear the bugs
of the windshield and hose the bugs off the radiator. Not anymore. When did
we collectively agree to exterminate life on the planet? And where is the
reaction and shock to this? Have we completely forgotten about our place in
the world?

Because the multinational biotech corporations have enough money to buy
local and national politicians, change laws, subvert regulatory processes
and hire an army of PR shills to turn science into a "debate" (even right
here on Reddit) just enough to delay any action.Meanwhile, biotech is
developing robot pollinators because they're just too greedy to stop the
beepocalypse their Neonic pesticides are causing.

It's funny you use the word "shill", I've been saying the same thing here
on reddit about these people posing and their purpose is to distract us
from the truth and moving towards real change. What hubris these uber-rich
have. And what a bunch if dumbed down sheeple we've become. I just can't
sit and watch. I have to do something about it.
 Comments from readers of the NG article:

Big corporate power has negatively affected every crucial institution
whether it is public education or scientific research, helping to make this
environmentally destructive trend feasible on a large scale (because the
profit motive won't get "challenged" as Carson had said) without notable
repercussions for the big polluters and destroyers. In fact, many people
cheer them on, or view them as "saviors." It's the power of propaganda at
work. A fitting example is the so-called "war on cancer" led by the highly
lucrative cancer industry that also flourished with the re-structuring of
the American Cancer Society into a marketing tool for this industry,
whereas this charity continues to obfuscate the known causes of cancer,
such as toxicants (read the afterword of this:
http://www.supplements-and-health.com/mammogram.html ). With big corporate
power come big abusive practices and big propaganda.
According to these extensive studies, Bayer's claim for
imidacloprid/neonicotinoids as 'safe' for birds (and mammals?) appears to
be a lie. The article states various vectors beyond the eating of affected
insects that would compromise those poor and often non-citizen/unprotected
human farm workers who actually tend the fields along with all of us who
eat this treated produce.Imidacloprid is also difficult to avoid for both
home gardeners and pet guardians. Plants and seed for the general public
are automatically treated, but still unlabelled with this poison if not
organic or rarely, marked "un-treated", (so not applying
pesticides prevents nothing.)  Bees, ladybugs, butterflies, earthworms,
spiders, hummingbirds or other delightful/dependable wildlife species are
decimated,And veterinarians recommend it as a monthly flea killing drop on
our dogs, cats, (ferrets & rats?)  Who knows how close pet contact,
guardening or even regular small-dose eating of treated (most non-organic)
produce affects us directly as a neurotoxin or indirectly through our most
critical gut biomes?

We have also noticed that more birds are living around our home/farm/forest
because we, as beekeepers, do not use chemicals or kill living
things--i.e., the purple martins are more plentiful because we don't kill
the insects like our neighbors do, so we enjoy their "natural abilities."
Plus we have many human (me: hormone breast cancer with NO risk
factors--same for other neighbors plus pancreatic, non-smoker lung, brain,
liver, and skin cancers) and canine cancer cases in our area, which is
right in the middle of grain farm country and chemicals are widely
used.When will the madness stop? When we're all dead?
The world is changing and not in a good way. People need to speak up and
protest the use of these type of chemicals. I for one do not wish or choose
to eat poisonous food crops but the birds and the bees do not know any
better. Grow local, eat local and just maybe BIG AG will slowly fade back
into blackness from where them came.

As I drive through the corn fields of Illinois and Indiana, I used to
squash millions of bugs on my windshield which would become quickly coated
with goo. No longer, I can drive for miles now and not squash a bug. They
are not there any more. So the birds cant eat them. I don't know where they
went or why. I just know my windshield stays clean in corn and
soybean country now and it didn't used to.

Since I learned that neonicotinoid pesticides are being used on annual
garden plants I buy each spring at box stores such as Lowe's, Home
Depot & Walmart,
I will not be buying them in future, unless they change this practice. So
much for attempting to grow bee friendly plants in my garden. Fortunately,
most of my plants are now perennials and organic. To date, this season I
have seen only a handful of butterflies and 2 bees in my garden. Only 1
monarch. I use a paper lantern "hive" to deter wasps from settling nearby.
I hope people are no longer buying the bee and wasp traps, which kill them.
We can't afford to lose any more  of these important insects.  I only buy
organic corn for my family- better for them, plus the birds & the bees!