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Thin-shelled, fragile eggs fractured in bird nests, unable to support the weight of a growing embryo. The biocide also interfered with calcium metabolism in egg production, particularly in birds of prey, which were “catastrophically impacted,” says Alexander Lees, a conservation biologist at Manchester Metropolitan University and an associate of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
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It leached into soil and water, contaminating the rodents, worms, insects, fish and other prey that birds fed on, killing some outright. Later studies determined that it causes neurological damage, is toxic to wildlife and humans, stores in fatty tissues, and bioaccumulates in greater and greater concentrations up the food chain.ĭDT sparked a global avian catastrophe. Image courtesy of the Science History Institute.ĭDT was the world’s first modern synthetic insecticide, a chlorinated hydrocarbon that lingers in the environment. Its toxic bioaccumulation proved to be a disaster for birds, leading to the biocide’s being banned.
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DDT was hailed as a miracle biocide and was produced and marketed for years with virtually no environmental testing. military declared this revolutionary biocide to be “the most powerful of the new weapons the army is now using in its war on insect-borne diseases,” specifically malaria, yellow fever, typhus and bubonic plague.Īfter the war, planes “broadcast sprayed” leftover stockpiles across the United States and many other countries to kill weeds, crop-eating insects and to control mosquitoes. On the mornings that had once throbbed with the dawn chorus of robins, catbirds, doves, jays, wrens, and scores of other bird voices there was now no sound only silence lay over the fields and woods and marsh.” In her landmark 1962 book, Silent Spring, biologist Rachel Carson chronicled the damage - and looming consequences - of human “contamination of air, earth, rivers, and sea with dangerous and even lethal materials,” which she called “elixirs of death.” In the book’s spellbinding opening parable, which profiles a fictional town of the future, she wrote:
LARGE PRINT SILENT PREY BOOK UPDATE
The 2022 update to the “State of the World’s Birds” report notes winners and losers amid increasing human alteration of the planet, but documents a continuing downward trend.Birds are impacted by land-use changes, pollution (ranging from pesticides to plastics), climate change, invasive species, diseases, hunting, the wildlife trade, and more. Now, 60 years later, birds may face more threats than any other animal group because they live in - or migrate through - every habitat on Earth.and most other nations, though DDT has since been replaced by a growing number of other harmful biocides. Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” catalyzed the modern environmental movement and sparked a ban on DDT in the U.S.