7. Needless Havoc
AS MAN PROCEEDS toward his announced goal of the conques t of nature, he has
writte n a depres s ing record of des truction, di rected not only agains t the earth he inhabits but
against the life that shares it with him. The history of the recent centuries has its black
passages—the s laughter of the buffalo on the wes te rn plains , the mas s acre of the s horebirds by
the market gunne rs , the near-extermination of the egrets for their plumage. Now, to these and
others like them, we are adding a new chapte r and a new ki nd of havoc—the direct killing of
birds, mammals, fishes, and indeed practically every form of wildlife by chemical insecticides
indis criminately s prayed on the land. Under the philos ophy that now s eems to guide our
des tinies , nothing mus t get in the way of the man with the s pray gun. The incidental victims of
his crusade agains t ins ects count as nothing; if robins , pheas ants , raccoons , cats , or even
lives tock happen to inhabit the s ame bit of earth as the target ins ects and to be hit by the rain
of ins ect-killing pois ons no one mus t protes t.
The citizen who wis hes to make a fair judgment of the ques tion of wildlife loss is today
confronte d with a dilemma. On the one hand conservationists and many wildlife biologists
assert that the losses have been severe and in some cases even catas trophic. On the othe r hand
the control agencies tend to deny flatly and categorically that such losses have occurred, o r that
they are of any importance if they have. Which view are we to accept? The credibility of the
witness is of first importance. The professional wildlife biologist on the scene is certainly best
qualified to discover and interpret wildlife loss. The entomologist, whose specialty is insects, is
not so qualified by training, and is not ps ychol ogically dis pos ed to look for undes irable s ide
effects of his control program. Yet it is the control men in state and federal governme nts—and
of cours e the chemical manufacture rs—who s teadfas tly deny the facts reported by the
biologists and declare they see little evidence of harm to wildlife. Like the priest and the Levite
in the biblical s tory, they choos e to pass by on the other s ide and to s ee nothing. Even if we
charitably explain their denials as due to the s horts ightednes s of the s pecialis t and the man
with an interes t this does not mean we mus t accept them as qualified witnesses.
The bes t way to form our own judgment is to look at s ome of the major control programs and
learn, fro m o bs ervers familiar with the ways of wildlife, and unbiased in favor of chemicals, just
what has happe ned in the wake of a rain of poison falling from the skies into the world of
wildlife. To the bird watche r, the s uburbanite who de rives joy from bi rds in his garden, the
hunter, the fis herman or the explore r of wild regions, anything that destroys the wildlife of an
area for even a single year has deprived him of pleasure to which he has a legitimate right. This
is a valid point of view. Even if, as has s ometimes happened, s ome of the birds and ma mma l s
and fis hes are able to re-establish themselves after a single spraying, a great and real harm has
been done. But s uch rees tablis hment is unlikely to happe n. Spraying tends to be re petitive, and
a single expos ure from which the wildlife populations might have a chance to recover is a rarity.
What usually results is a poisoned environment, a lethal trap in which not only the res ident
populations succumb but those who come in as migrants as well. The larger the area s prayed
the more s erious the harm, becaus e no oas es of s afety remain. Now, in a decade marked by
ins ect-control progra ms in which many thous ands or even millions of acres are s prayed as a
unit, a decade in which private and community s praying has als o s urged s teadily upward, a