Blog – Connecticut Audubon Society

The day after Milan Bull, our senior director of science and conservation, wrote about how Connecticut Audubon Society is participating in a Partners In Flight effort to protect the wintering grounds and stop-over areas of migratory birds, an interesting nugget came across the Connecticut Birds listserve about a banded Semipalmated Sandpiper seen a month ago […]

A new study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicates that spraying pesticides to kill ticks on your property does not reduce the rate of Lyme disease – meaning that people who apply pesticides to their yards are not just risking ecological damage but are wasting their money too. The study was conducted […]

Because of the rain, this workshop has been postponed til Friday, August 16, same place, same time:WHAT: Shorebird Workshop for Municipal OfficialsWHEN: Friday, August 16, 11 a.m. – 3 p.m.; WHERE: Margaret Eagan Center, 35 Matthew Street, Milford, CT, & Guided walk at Milford Point The Audubon Alliance for Coastal Waterbirds, in cooperation with Connecticut […]

You might have noticed this week that Time magazine put Andrew Revkin on its list of Top 25 bloggers of 2013, for the Dot Earth blog he writes for the New York Times. If you were lucky enough to be at our Annual Meeting last September you heard a terrific talk by Andy, who was […]

There’s good news today out of Hartford, where Gov. Malloy has vetoed a bill that could have ultimately allowed the use of all-terrain vehicles on state parks and other state lands. His veto letter is below. We opposed the bill because of the damage widespread use of ATV’s can cause to wildlife habitat (there’s more […]

Connecticut Audubon Society has joined other state conservation organizations in calling on Gov. Malloy to veto a bill that would mandate the state to open its lands to all-terrain vehicles.

The bill requires the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection to carry out an ATV policy that was adopted in 2002 but never implemented. The policy has become obsolete and could easily lead to habitat damage on important state conservation lands.

Here’s is the letter we sent yesterday to Gov. Malloy:

June 18, 2013
Governor Dannel P. Malloy
State Capitol
210 Capitol Ave.
Hartford, CT 06106

Gov. Malloy,

Connecticut Audubon Society joins with its allies in the Connecticut conservation community in urging you to veto Senate Bill 190, An Act Concerning All-Terrain Vehicles and the Certification of Household Goods Carriers.

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.

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

From the Hartford Courant, Sunday, April 14, 2013 by Milan BullSpring 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 […]

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 […]