Controlling Insecticides-III EVIDENCE SOUGHT ON WILD-LIFE DANGERS

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30481, 1 July 1964, Page 14

Controlling Insecticides-III EVIDENCE SOUGHT ON WILD-LIFE DANGERS

IB* ALAN HARDCASTLII

Birds and fish, as well as insects both harmful and beneticeut are destroyed by insecticides. The proof, by overseas experience, is all too abundant. What is happening in this country, no small user ot insecticides considering its relatively small acres ?

We use the same pesticides as other countries; and we share some of their fish and bird life as well as having some uniquely our own. No-one knows what is happening, because no-one has made a senous. orderly investigation.

The “rivers of death” of which the late Miss Carson wrote in “Silent Spring” and which were starkly pictured in a Canadian Government official documentary film, “Poisons, Pests, and People,” were smallish streams, lakes, bays, and estuarine coast waters sprayed to control, mosquitoes and gnats. These waters were poisoned by locality spraying, dusting, or pellet fall.

sects and through eating sick and dying birds. Largely as a result of this outcry, wellsupported by evidence, the British Government has decided to withdraw in stages from farm and garden use two widely-used insecticides, dieldrin and aldrin, and to look into the industrial uses also of pesticides for timber treatment, cloth-proofing, and other purposes. Evidence in N.Z.

done. Dead fish and birds should be sent to the Wildlife Division by fastest transport Use on “Bare Land"

A farmer jnay not, without a permit, buy any but pelleted or granulated DDT and some 20 other specified insecticides (not chlorinated hydrocarbons), with maximum dosages prescribed for each when applied to pastures But if the farmer tells the ven dor that his purchase is for "bare land” he can buy as much as he likes of any insecticide on the market with the exception of dust or spray hydrocarbons. He can put on as much as he likes, without regard to the limits set for pastures. This should cause „ deep concern to those who' believe that streams are being polluted. Under heavy rainfall bare land washes readily into streams.

Miss Carson foretold what would happen if the excessive and indiscriminate showering down of poisonons chemicals continued. This year the Mississippi has become the greatest “river of death” of all. This was very different from the destruction of fish and birds in streams running through forests, where trees were sprayed right up to the stream banks and sometimes poisons fell directly into the water.

The New Zealand Agricultural Chemicals Board has not denied the possibility of hazards, and has called for evidence. Clearly it wants proof of these dangers before action is taken.

Acclimatisation societies have been active in the matter.

The Forest and Bird Protection Society has asked members to report and to send specimens of dead birds to the Wildlife Division of the Internal Affairs Department, Wellington. The Fisheries Branch of the Marine Department and the Wildlife Division have pleaded lack of technical staff for field investigation. Animal ecology (which includes birds) remains on a fundamental research plane. The southern acclimatisation societies are angry about lands Department development areas in Central Otago being used for the disposal of pesticide dips and sprays bought back by the Government (400,000 or more) after the Americans rejected tainted meat from New Zealand. They have gone out and looked; but dead fish and birds are not easy to find. Fish decompose rapidly in water. Birds die in long grass and thickets.

The Freshwater Fisheries Regulations, 1951, say that nothing to the detriment of fish shall be added to water. Few farmers have ever heard of the Fisheries Regulations. 1951; and "bare land” is a term open to considerable difference of interpretation. The contribution of birds to our economic welfare and to the pleasure of living has had little official recognition. ■The Agricultural Chemicals Act, the basic legislation, does not mention birds, so that legally, the Agricultural Chemicals Board has no authority to concern itself with the effects of poisonous insecticides upon bird-life. The board should be reconstituted to include direct representatives of the biological and soil sciences and of the Government fisheries and wild-life departments. (To Be Concluded)

Mississippi Inquiry Last November the State of Louisiana, in which commercial river fishery is an important commercial industry, appealed for Federal aid to find the cause of death of the “millions of fish, ducks, and other birds in the river waters.” On March 22 United States Government investigators announced that endrin, dieldrin, DDT, and other similar substances had been found in dead fish, and that as no other cause was found it was concluded that pesticides sprayed on farmlands of the river basin were responsible.

Here was no isolated case of accidental pollution such as the chairman of the New Zealand Agricultural Chemicals Board no doubt had in mind when said that small incidents should not be given undue weight, “for accidents would always happen.” This was the poisoning, by surface run-off and by seepage of groundwaters in which poisons had accumulated, of the vast volume of the waters of the greatest river in North America.

So there has been much talk: but few specimens have been sent in for examination. Two trout found in Flaxy Creek, in the pesticide disposal area, arrived ' at the Wallaceville Laboratory in bad condition, but were found to contain .08 and .06 parts per million of pesticides in their flesh—not much, but .20 and 15 times respectively the .004 parts per million which were stated at a meeting of the Southland society to be lethal to trout.

The Federal Government, shocked into action, has recently passed the most brieflyworded legislation In American history. It provides for an expenditure of 3,200,000 dollars • in the remaining months of this year and of 5,000,000 dollars annually .in successive years on research and safeguarding of fish and bird life.

The analytical report commented that it was not possible from examination of the dead fish alone to determine positively that they had been killed by dieldrin. Until acclimatisation societies and others concerned go out and look for specimens nothing much is likely to be

In Britain ornithological societies and clubs have long protested against the destruction of birds, both through eating poisbned seeds and in-