excerpts from Neonic Nation: Is Widespread Pesticide Use Connected To Grassland Bird Declines? By Scott Weidensaul
https://www.birds.cornell.edu/home/
Christy Morrissey, the ecotoxicologist at the University of Saskatchewan, is concerned about the lack of government oversight as seed companies morph their treated-seed products by adding more and more pesticides to each seed. “So we’ll see a neonic, plus one of the newer diamides [a neonicotinoid replacement], plus three fungicides on them,” Morrissey said. “They’re like Whoppers.”
The actual quantities of neonics involved are essentially unknown. In the U.S. this is due to a loophole in federal regulations known as the “treated article exemption,” under which pesticide-coated seeds are not considered “pesticides” at all, and their use is thus not tracked by the EPA or most state governments.
Dave Goulson, the pollinator expert in the U.K., thinks part of the danger with neonics is that they’re trending, both as a pesticide and a bogeyman. “I think there is a danger that neonics have become an obsession with the environmental movement, and there is a danger of losing sight of the bigger picture,” he told me. “There are many other issues affecting insects, many other pesticides that are probably harmful, maybe just as bad as neonics … but some people seem to think we just need to ban [neonics] and all of our problems will go away, which is just nonsense.”
When compared with plots using no insecticides at all, 89% of the field trials in the Cornell study saw no increase in corn yield using neonic-treated seeds. Other studies, including one by the EPA, have found a similar lack of consistent yield benefit for soybean farmers. “This is the piece that’s almost criminal. It’s the fact that these treatments aren’t providing tangible economic benefits to the people who are using them.”
“How can we, as scientists, get to the bottom of this?” he said. “It’s this pervasive, really, really gnarly problem. … [But] we can’t let up on discovering the causes of the decline, because if we don’t know what it is, we can’t know that we’re acting in a way that’s going to restore populations.” “I think House Sparrow would be a great global model species since it’s in decline, [and] it is associated with agriculture,” Rosenberg said. “So use them as a bio-sentinel species.”
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