Archive for Blog – Connecticut Audubon Society

The decline in Barn Swallows might be partly attributable to the to the use of pesticides. Photo by Melissa Groo.

It’s been a crazy year for pesticide legislation in the General Assembly in Hartford and it’s hard to tell what the result will be. Here’s what’s been happening:

Several bills were introduced in February and Connecticut Audubon Society supported all of them. One would have banned the use of lawn pesticides in parks (Senate Bill 914), another in all schools from 12th grade down(SB 981), and a third to ban the use of two specific pesticides in the coastal area (House Bill 6438). (You can find details of the bills and our positions on our Tracking Legislation page.)

In fact, our Connecticut State of the Birds 2013 report detailed how pesticides were among the reasons that 17 bird species that nest in Connecticut and eat only insects they catch on the wing were experiencing a dramatic, long-term population decline.

All these bills were in addition to a law from several years ago that banned the use of lawn pesticides in pre-schools, elementary schools and middle schools.

But then we were told that businesses and interest groups that were unhappy with that school ban – pesticide manufacturers and school groundskeepers, among them – were working together to overturn the school ban, and that they were likely to succeed. The only way to avoid that, we were told, was through a compromise: the General Assembly would pass a bill creating a task force of experts to study the pesticide issue and make recommendations for the state.

I have no idea what the pro-pesticide side thought about that compromise but many environmental organizations opposed it. They feared that it would be taken over by pro-pesticide members and that its conclusions would be skewed in favor of pesticides.

Connecticut Audubon Society did not necessarily agree. We, along with Audubon Connecticut (the state office of the National Audubon Society) and the Rivers Alliance, expressed our view that if a wildlife biologist were added to the task force, we would support it.

But then the task force bill was sent to the Education Committee for review, and it was killed.

But that presumably meant that the compromise was dead. Within days, the bill that would ban the use of pesticides in high schools (SB 981) was revived, in the Education Committee.

Connecticut Audubon Society supports this bill. Given the ups and downs of pesticide legislation this session, we really have no idea what its fate will be. But we’ll be asking our members to get in touch with their legislators about it next week.

Again, details of the bills and our positions are on our Tracking Legislation page. — Tom Andersen, director of communications and community outreach

The European Union has banned so-called neonicotinoid pesticides, which have been linked to the widespread deaths of honey bees.

We wrote about the connection between these dangerous, nicotine-derived poisons and bee colony collapse disorder in a previous post, here.

Details about the EU ban are here, from The Guardian, via @CarlSafina on Twitter. Here’s a key excerpt:

“Bees and other insects are vital for global food production as they pollinate three-quarters of all crops. The plummeting numbers of pollinators in recent years has been blamed on disease, loss of habitat and, increasingly, the near ubiquitous use of neonicotinoid pesticides.

“A series of high-profile scientific studies has linked neonicotinoids – the world’s most widely used insecticides – to huge losses in the number of queen bees produced and big rises in the numbers of “disappeared” bees – those that fail to return from foraging trips.

“The commission proposed the suspension after the EFSA concluded in January that three neonicotinoids – thiamethoxam, clothianidin and imidacloprid – posed an unnacceptable risk to bees. The three will be banned from use for two years on flowering crops such as corn, oilseed rape and sunflowers, upon which bees feed.” – Tom Andersen, director of communications and community relations.

April 30: Here is today’s New York Times story on the ban, which is for two years.

A monarch and milkweed, shown in this detail from a mural at our Pomfret Center, painted by Amy Bartlett Wright

The number of monarch butterflies that overwinter in Mexico dropped this year, by an estimated 59  percent, which drew the attention of news outlets last month. It will surprise no one that a key suspect is pesticides, especially Monsanto’s Roundup, which is used to kill milkweed on midwestern farms.

Monarchs depend on milkweed, which grows among the corn and soybeans. Farmers now use Roundup, the active ingredient of which is glyphosate, to kill milkweed and increase their crop yields. The crops they are harvesting are so-called Roundup ready, which means they’ve been genetically modified to survive glyphosate.

The result? The agricultural use of glyphosate has tripled over the last 16 years.

I learned that in Yale Environment 360, the online journal of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Science, which published an interview earlier this month with insect ecologist Orley R. “Chip” Taylor, of the University of Kansas, who has been working on monarch conservation.

Here’s an excerpt from the introduction to the interview:

“Monarchs are beloved for their spectacular migration across Canada and the United States to overwintering sites in central Mexico — and back again. But a new census taken at the monarchs’ wintering grounds found their population had declined 59 percent over the previous year and was at the lowest level ever measured.

“In an interview with Yale Environment 360 contributorRichard Conniff, Taylor — founder and director of Monarch Watch, a conservation and outreach program — talked about the factors that have led to the sharp drop in the monarch population. Among them, Taylor said, is the increased planting of genetically modified corn in the U.S. Midwest, which has led to greater use of herbicides, which in turn kills the milkweed that is a prime food source for the butterflies.”

He asked Taylor to describe the situation in the United States. Here are Taylor’s answers:

“What we’re seeing here in the United States is a very precipitous decline of monarchs that’s coincident with the adoption of Roundup-ready corn and soybeans. The first ones were introduced in 1997, soybeans first, then corn. By 2003, 2004, the adoption rate was approaching 50 percent, and then we really began to see a decline in monarchs. And the reason is that the most productive habitat for monarch butterflies in the Midwest, in the Corn Belt, was the corn and soybean fields [where milkweed, which monarchs feed on, grew]. Before Roundup-ready crops, weed control was accomplished by running a tiller through those fields and chopping up the weeds and turning over the soil, but not affecting the crops. The milkweed survives that sort of tillage to some extent. So there were maybe 20, 30, 40 plants per acre out there, enough so that you could see them, you could photograph them.

“Now you are really hard pressed to find any corn or soybeans that have milkweed in the fields. I haven’t seen any for years now because of the use of Roundup after they planted these crops. They have effectively eliminated milkweed from almost all of the habitat that monarchs used to use.

“e360: The amount of herbicide sprayed on these fields has gone up?

“Taylor: Oh, yes, it’s gone up. The glyphosate used in agriculture has tripled since 1997, when they first introduced these Roundup-ready crops. The developers of these crops not only provided the seeds that were glyphosate-resistant, but they also provided the glyphosate — the Roundup. And, boy, that was a pretty good system. You could make money on both, right?”

Monsanto touts its Roundup ready “system.” Here’s what the company’s website says: “Developed in 1974, Roundup® brand agricultural herbicides continue to be a perfect fit with the vision of sustainable agriculture and environmental protection.”

To be clear, in Monsanto’s view, poisoning milkweed is good for sustainable agriculture and environmental protection. For monarch butterflies, not so much.

A number of pesticide bills were introduced in the Connecticut General Assembly in Hartford this year. None seem likely to pass. Instead, legislators want to create a task force to study the pesticide issue.

Pesticides have always been a concern to Connecticut Audubon Society. We are concentrating on the issue now because of the findings of our Connecticut State of the Birds 2013 report, which documented the long-term population decline of 17 species of native birds that eat only insects they catch on the wing – so-called aerial insectivores.

It will surprise no one that a key suspect is pesticides. Connecticut Audubon Society will continue to work for stronger pesticide regulations and a reduction in pesticide use. – Tom Andersen, director of communications and community outreach

Eastern Tailed-blue butterfly. Photo by Scott Kruitbosch/Copyright Connecticut Audubon Society

Scientists in Massachusetts are conducting a fascinating climate change study using baseline data collected in the mid 1800s. It caught my attention because the data have led the researchers toward a speculative hypothesis that reminded me of something similar in our recent Connecticut State of the Birds 2013 report.

It also caught my attention because the data from the 1800s consist of records of the first blooming dates of spring wildflowers, recorded by Henry David Thoreau.

Thoreau was as steadfast in those observations as today’s birders are in noting the comings and goings of birds. He wrote somewhere (I’m working from memory here) that if he fell asleep and woke up in spring he would know the date by which flowers were in bloom.

The researchers have gone through his Journals and are comparing the first flowering dates from the mid-1800s to the first flowering dates in the 21st century. There’s a good essay about the project, written by Andrea Wulf, in Sunday’s New York Times Book Review. Wulf writes:

“Many of the species Thoreau saw have disappeared from the Concord area, but by studying 32 spring-flowering native plants from a variety of habitats, the modern researchers have discovered that they are now flowering much earlier. On May 11, 1853, for example, Thoreau noted the blooming of the highbush blueberry (Vaccinium corymbosum), now the most widely grown blueberry for commercial use in North America and, with its distinctive white, dangling, bell-shaped blossoms, an easily identifiable plant. If Thoreau were to search for it today in mid-May, he’d be out of luck, since it now flowers during the last two weeks of April. After the very warm winter of 2011-12, he would have missed it by a good six weeks. Last spring, its appearance in Concord was recorded on the first day of April.

“Matching Thoreau’s lists with temperature records kept for over a century by the Blue Hill Meteorological Observatory in Milton, Mass., Primack [the lead researcher, Richard Primack, of Boston University] and his associates have determined that plants in Concord are reacting to warming temperatures by flowering roughly two days earlier for each degree increase in temperature. In Thoreau’s time, the average spring temperature was 42 degrees and the average date of first flowering of the 32 species in the study was May 15. For the years 2004-12, it has changed by 11 days (to May 4) and by 6 degrees (to 48 degrees).”

The area, Primack says, is “a living laboratory for climate change.” Wulf writes:

Cicada Killer wasp. Photo by Scott Kruitbosch/Copyright Connecticut Audubon Society

“By studying Thoreau’s records, Primack and his colleagues are trying to find ways to predict how plant communities may react to climate change. It is now clear that certain plants are affected more strongly by rising temperatures than others. Flowering times for early-­season plants are shifting more sharply than those of late-season plants. And there might be more changes to come. The alterations in flowering times may also affect pollinators associated with specific plant species. More research needs to be done, but one hypothesis suggests that some plants might now be maturing too early for the breeding cycle of their specialist pollinators, with results that could be ruinous to both.”

It was the latter two sentences that made me think of Connecticut State of the Birds 2013. Titled “The Seventh Habitat and the Decline of Our Aerial Insectivores,” the report described how 17 species of birds native to Connecticut, and which eat only bugs they catch on the wing, are experiencing a population decline that is at least five decades in duration.

There are lots of possible causes, or combinations of causes, and of course climate change is among them. In the report, Jon D. McCracken, director of national programs for Bird Studies Canada, writes:

“ … perhaps there are subtle shifts taking place in the seasonal timing of insect emergence as a consequence of climate change. Even minor mismatches in the timing of seasonal cycles of birds and their insect prey have been shown to have important implications for bird survivorship and nesting productivity.”

Flowers blooming at the wrong time for their pollinators, birds returning at the wrong time for the insects they eat – it’s speculation, of course, and more research needs to be done, but if it turns out to be true, it’s a major mess.

“In a pleasant spring morning all men’s sins are forgiven,” Thoreau wrote in Walden. Let’s hope that still holds. — Tom Andersen, director of communications and community outreach

On Earth Day, the Fairfield Sun newspaper ran a piece in which it asked a number of prominent conservationists about what individuals can do to make the planet a better place. Our senior director of science and conservation, Milan Bull, discussed the problems caused by invasive species, which the Connecticut Council on Environmental Quality has called “the single biggest threat to Connecticut’s natural ecosystems.”

Milan Bull, senior director of science and conservation. Photo courtesy of the Fairfield Sun

Here’s what Miley said:

“What is harming not only Fairfield, but really the whole country is the influx of invasive species that we have now. Everywhere you look, all the plantings people put in their yards are cultivars. Nurseries sell them as disease- and insect-resistant because they come from another country, usually Asia. If you bring a plant in from Asia it either it can’t do well, or it does really well — as there are no predators to eat it. Insects and plants evolve together. Plants evolve toxins so insects don’t eat them and insects develop mechanisms to get around this. So if you take a plant from another country and bring it over here, it has toxins our insects haven’t had to deal with, so they can’t eat that plant. Because insects don’t eat them, we now have all these neighborhoods that are so full of foreign insect-resistant species that there are no insects for the birds. That decreases biodiversity. On a large scale it’s a big problem. It throws a monkey wrench in the whole web of life.

“One thing I would suggest is that people learn about what native plants that are beautiful and attractive and can still be helpful to wildlife. They should plant these when they are buying a house or landscaping.

“Another thing is to reduce the use of pesticides. We need to look at a better way to manage insect control other than put hard-core chemicals out. Consider having a little birdscaping area in your yard where things are natural.

“Keep in mind that we are trying to live with nature, not against it.”

From the Hartford Courant, Sunday, April 14, 2013

Empidonax flycatcher, one of Connecticut’s aerial insectivores. Photo by Melissa Groo/Melissagroo.com

by Milan Bull
Spring birds are arriving in Connecticut. Eastern phoebes returned recently, and before the end of April we’ll be seeing and hearing barn swallows, tree swallows and purple martins.

Those four birds are among 17 species native to our state that eat only insects they catch on the wing.

There’s another similarity too. Since the mid 1960s, all 17 of these “aerial insectivores” have experienced a severe population decline throughout their range and especially in New England and Canada.

Purple martins, for example, have declined by 40 percent, according to annual breeding bird records kept by the federal government. Barn swallow populations have fallen by 64 percent and chimney swifts by a frightening 95 percent.

Read more …

The Hartford Courant published our op-ed in today’s edition. Titled “Native Birds Could Use a Helping Hand,” it summarizes our Connecticut State of the Birds 2013 report about the decline of swallows, swifts, whip-poor-wills and other species that eat only bugs they catch on the wing. It also discusses how all of us might help to slow or reverse the decline.

Head out to buy a copy or read it here.

A new category of insecticides, meant to kill bugs that threaten food crops, may also be responsible for the colony collapse disorder that is wiping out our bee population, thereby threatening food crops.

The pesticides are called neonicotinoids, and are derived from nicotine. A front page story in today’s New York Times reports that the winter die-off of bees was far worse than expected, with some beekeepers losing 80 percent of their bees. Here’s what the Times says:

“… many beekeepers suspect the biggest culprit is the growing soup of pesticides, fungicides and herbicides that are used to control pests.

“While each substance has been certified, there has been less study of their combined effects. Nor, many critics say, have scientists sufficiently studied the impact of neonicotinoids, the nicotine-derived pesticide that European regulators implicate in bee deaths.

“The explosive growth of neonicotinoids since 2005 has roughly tracked rising bee deaths.

“Neonics, as farmers call them, are applied in smaller doses than older pesticides. They are systemic pesticides, often embedded in seeds so that the plant itself carries the chemical that kills insects that feed on it.

Older pesticides could kill bees and other beneficial insects. But while they quickly degraded — often in a matter of days — neonicotinoids persist for weeks and even months. Beekeepers worry that bees carry a summer’s worth of contaminated pollen to hives, where ensuing generations dine on a steady dose of pesticide that, eaten once or twice, might not be dangerous.”

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Agriculture are investigating. – Tom Andersen, director of communications and community outreach.

Estimated number of birds killed in North America each year by:

Feral cats: 1.4 billion to 3.7 billion (source).

Insecticide poisoning: 67 million (source).

Collisions with buildings: 100 million to 1 billion (source).

It’s amazing there are any birds left to sing each spring. – Tom Andersen, director of conservation and community outreach.