I regret to report that the Virginia Tech extension service is not actually
a good place to start. Call any extension office about a "pest" (I
hate this word) problem and you are bound to hear about the various pesticides
you can choose to treat your difficulty.
The fact is that no homeowner would need pesticides if yards were
landscaped more naturally. I know because I have gardened for my entire adult
life
in various places and have NEVER had the problems gardeners are CONSTANTLY
complaining about. This is the reason I wrote my book, The
Nature-friendly Garden. It occurred to me that people didn't understand why
they had
problems and their huge amount of pesticide usage was harming our wildlife.
Having gotten my degree in physics from Tech, I thought they would be
supportive of my efforts. I tried to get the horticulture department and
extension to support a workshop I envisioned. When that didn't come to pass,
I
then asked the head of extension to publicize my classes I was going to
teach at Piedmont Virginia Community College in Charlottesville. I sent him
the write-ups for the classes. In one of them I mentioned that homeowners
shouldn't need to use pesticides and that these chemicals didn't really
address the source of the homeowner's problem so they didn't really work.
The head of extension wrote back to tell me they would not advertise my
classes if I kept in my comments about pesticides because it wasn't true. I
wrote to tell him that if he could give me just ONE example where pesticides
had solved a problem, I would delete my remark. I pointed out that we
have had Japanese Beetles since 1916 and Gypsy Moths since the mid-1800s and
obviously pesticides have not eradicated them nor lessened the number of
people complaining about them. Neither insect is a problem in my yard. I
never heard back from the man.
I've been writing for years against the use of pesticides and how harmful
they are to our environment. But things have only gotten worse as
pesticide companies advertise more and more against practically every insect
out
there and gardening magazines and books continue to talk about "pests". In
reality all of these animals provide important services to our environment
and they are not pestiferous unless they overpopulate an area. That only
happens in landscapes that are not functioning properly because they are not
following natural "laws".
It's very sad and sometimes I feel it's hopeless to expect things to
change. Even people who consider themselves environmentalists are using
pesticides as if everyone now believes they are harmless. I've come to
realize
that things will not change until more people take time to learn about the
natural world, stop supporting the use of pesticides, and complain to places
like VA Tech that support pesticide usage.
Sincerely,
Marlene
Marlene A. Condon (Author, The Nature-friendly Garden, Stackpole Books)
Nature Writer/Photographer/Speaker
Crozet, VA 22932-2204
E-mail: MARLENECONDON@xxxxxxx
_www.MARLENECONDON.com_ (http://www.marlenecondon.com/)
In a message dated 7/15/2010 11:50:55 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
mariangk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
Virginia Tech would be a good place to start. Suggest you call your
local extension agent. If you don't get response, write to me and I
will talk to my agent and see if can get a specialist contact from
Tech for you. Sounds like a good idea and some of the data may
already be available.
On Jul 15, 2010, at 10:01 PM, steveyoung@xxxxxxx wrote:
I hope the Cornell Lab folks won't mind my mentioning this... Years
ago, I visited them and talked with them quite a bit about the eBird
project, of which I'm a big fan. At some point we also shifted to my
own worries about possible pesticide poisoning incidents affecting
birds, and how modern technology could be used to help. Years ago
there was a wildlife pesticide poisoning hotline, but I believe it
was discontinued way back. The Cornell guys said they had thought
about this too and even conceived of an application that they with
morbid humor called "D-bird", but had not had resources to pursue.
Maybe in our modern email, Web, Twitter, Facebook, etc.age we could
find "free" ways to track possible incidents so that experts could
note possible patterns and perhaps begin to correlate them with
possible causes... I sure know that there's a lot more I can do now
to map, photograph, etc. than I imagined 20 years ago.
Cheers,
Steve, Arlington
(I'm glad to be able to report that all my local Catbirds seem to be
fine. I have noticed that we have a Northern Cardinal that seems to
be singing in a new dialect with a really cool trill in the song.)
-----Original Message-----
From: Paula Sullivan <paula.sullivan2@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: VA-BIRD <va-bird@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thu, Jul 15, 2010 9:15 pm
Subject: Re: [Va-bird] Dying Catbirds
I, too, found a Catbird in my yard dead of a mysterious cause. It
was about 9-10
days ago. It was uninjured and intact and not under a window. I am
providing no
food, only water, in my yard at the moment. I use no pesticides, but
one of my
adjacent neighbors had a lawn service application recently. I find
this very
strange. Perhaps, if others on this list report similar incidents of
dead birds
of any species in their yards or on birding trails, some pattern
might emerge
that could suggest a cause.
Paula Sullivan
Alexandria
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