Pesticides: Connecticut Audubon Society Supports Pesticide Reduction Bills in Hartford
Eastern Phoebes are among the aerial insectivores that are in decline. Pesticides are suspected as being part of the cause. Photo by Sandee Harraden.
We testified before the General Assembly’s Environment Committee in Hartford on Monday in favor of four bills, the most prominent of which was a proposal to ban the use of pesticides in Connecticut’s municipal parks.
The rationale for pesticide bills in Hartford generally is that they would limit the exposure of people, especially children, to dangerous chemicals – an excellent rationale. Those bills would limit the exposure of birds and other wildlife to the same chemicals, and that makes them on-mission for Connecticut Audubon Society as well.
Pesticides are implicated in the disturbing population decline of 17 species of aerial insectivores that nest in Connecticut, which was the subject of our Connecticut State of the Birds 2013 report, which we released on Friday.
Here’s our testimony:
Connecticut Audubon Society strongly supports passage of Senate Bill 914, An Act Concerning the Application of Pesticides at Municipal Parks.
As conservationists, we tend to view bugs not as pests but as food for birds and as essential parts of our ecosystem. While we realize there are some legitimate uses for the poisons that kill these bugs, we support a general reduction in their use.
Pesticides limit the amount of food available for birds and poison them indirectly when they eat bugs that have recently ingested pesticides. And as we know from the example of Ospreys and Peregrine Falcons, which came close to extinction because DDT made their shells too brittle to be incubated, pesticides can have drastic indirect affects too.
But this is a timely issue for us in a more specific way. On February 22, we released our 8th annual Connecticut State of the Birds report, The Seventh Habitat and the Decline of Our Aerial Insectivores.
In articles by the Connecticut State Ornithologist, wildlife biologists for the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, a Cornell University professors, the conservation staff of Connecticut Audubon and others, the report details the dramatic population decline of 17 species of birds that nest in Connecticut and eat only insects that they catch on the wing – so-called aerial insectivores.
The population decline has been so drastic that the report states that “unless rates of decline are halted or reversed in a timely way, total population collapse eventually becomes something of a mathematical certainty.”
Much more research needs to be done but the consensus is that pesticide use has played an important role in the decline of these birds. Senate Bill 914 is a small step. But it’s a step in the right direction and we urge its passage.
