We from thereabouts your to my generation (I'm sixty.) may have had the DDT metabolite, DDE, in our structure for a long time after the bann, as it has shown up in certain birds and perhaps other animals. Not sure. I'd have to do extensive research of the available literature. But, it takes DDE long to leave bodies and the ecosystem. And I do not know if all countries have banned DdT. Maybe unep.org, the United Nation's Environmental Program website, is a source of that. But pesticide companies spend 100 millions of dollars each advertising neonics, and stuff like granular lawn fertilizer, which birds often are known to pick up and ingest thinking they are food or grit with deleterious results definitely, and if I remember correctly, sometimes death. An agonizing one. This ignorance is hard to fathom given a little ground leaf littler on your lawn, or leaving the leaves, is a lot better for the lawn, which eventually grows up beyond the litter tall and naturally. Thank you for your devout conservation education and wisdom. Critical thinking these days is an endangered species, especially regarding the natural world. Perhaps we need to emulate the latter more in our thinking, as Janine Benyus put it in the title of her 1997 crucial book, Biomimicry. Well written, it compares to Lester Brown and Paul Ehrlich books at the time, but maybe indeed because she was female, perhaps didn't get the attention it so richly deserved. I highly recommend it to all nature students and conservationists. Sorry to be so long again.
So well written and, on one level, discouraging, to think the malice and misinformation you so forcefully called out is ongoing. Thank you for this eye opener of a post.
A few months ago I finished reading your book: 101 Ways to Help Birds...it is appalling that the pesticide, etc. companies are so vitriol (I think that is the word I want to use) in defaming Rachel Carson...still... Thank you so much for your book and this current blog!
We from thereabouts your to my generation (I'm sixty.) may have had the DDT metabolite, DDE, in our structure for a long time after the bann, as it has shown up in certain birds and perhaps other animals. Not sure. I'd have to do extensive research of the available literature. But, it takes DDE long to leave bodies and the ecosystem. And I do not know if all countries have banned DdT. Maybe unep.org, the United Nation's Environmental Program website, is a source of that. But pesticide companies spend 100 millions of dollars each advertising neonics, and stuff like granular lawn fertilizer, which birds often are known to pick up and ingest thinking they are food or grit with deleterious results definitely, and if I remember correctly, sometimes death. An agonizing one. This ignorance is hard to fathom given a little ground leaf littler on your lawn, or leaving the leaves, is a lot better for the lawn, which eventually grows up beyond the litter tall and naturally. Thank you for your devout conservation education and wisdom. Critical thinking these days is an endangered species, especially regarding the natural world. Perhaps we need to emulate the latter more in our thinking, as Janine Benyus put it in the title of her 1997 crucial book, Biomimicry. Well written, it compares to Lester Brown and Paul Ehrlich books at the time, but maybe indeed because she was female, perhaps didn't get the attention it so richly deserved. I highly recommend it to all nature students and conservationists. Sorry to be so long again.
So well written and, on one level, discouraging, to think the malice and misinformation you so forcefully called out is ongoing. Thank you for this eye opener of a post.
A few months ago I finished reading your book: 101 Ways to Help Birds...it is appalling that the pesticide, etc. companies are so vitriol (I think that is the word I want to use) in defaming Rachel Carson...still... Thank you so much for your book and this current blog!
Thank you so much for reading my book!!!