10. Indiscriminately from the Skies
FROM SMALL BEGINNINGS over farmlands and fores ts the s cope of aerial spraying has
widened and its volume has increased so that it has become what a British ecologist recently
called ‘an amazing rain of death’ upon the s urface of the earth. Our atti tude towards pois ons
has undergone a s ubtle change. Once they were kept in containe rs marked with s kull and
cros s bones ; the infreque nt occas ions of their us e were marked with utmos t care that they
s hould come in contact with the ta rget and with nothing els e. With the developme nt of the
new organic ins ecticides and the abundance of s urplus planes after the Second World War, all
this was forgotten. Although today’s pois ons are more dangerous than any known before, they
have amazingly become s omething to be s howere d down indis criminately from the s kies. Not
only the ta rget ins ect or plant, but anything—human or nonhuman—within range of the
chemical fallout may know the sinister touch of the pois on. Not only fores ts and cultivated
fields are sprayed, but towns and cities as well.
A good many people now have mis givings about the aerial distribution of lethal chemicals over
millions of acres, and two mas s-s praying campaigns undertake n in the late 1950s have done
much to inc reas e thes e doubts. Thes e were the campaigns agains t the gyps y moth i n the
northeas tern s tates and the fire ant in the South. Neither is a native ins ect but both have been
in this country for many years without creating a situation calling for desperate measures. Yet
drastic action was s uddenly taken agains t them, under the end-justifies-the-means philos ophy
that has too long directed the control divis ions of our Department of Agriculture.
The gyps y moth program s hows what a vas t amount of damage can he done whe n reckles s
large-scale treatment is s ubs tituted for local and mode rate control. The campaign agains t the
fire ant is a prime example of a campaign based on gross exaggeration of the need for control,
blunde ringly launched without s cientific knowledge of the dos age of pois on require d to des troy
the target or of its effects on other life. Neither program has achieved its goal....
The gyps y moth, a native of Europe, has been in the United States for nearly a hundre d years. In
1869 a French scientist, Leopold Trouvelot, accidentally allowed a few of these moths to escape
from his laboratory in Me dford, Mas s achusetts , where he was attempting to c ros s them with
s ilkworms. Little by little the gyps y moth has s pread throughout New England. The primary
agent of its progressive spread is the wind; the larval, or caterpillar, stage is extremely light and
can be carried to cons iderable heights and ove r great dis tances. Another means is the s hipment
of plants carrying the egg mass es , the form in which the s pecies exis ts over winte r. The gyps y
moth, which in its larval stage attacks the foliage of oak trees and a few other hardwoods for a
few weeks each s pring, now occurs in all the New England s tates. It als o occurs sporadically in
New Jers ey, where it was introduced in 1911 on a s hipment of s pruce trees from Holland, and
in Michigan, where its method of entry is not known. The New England hurricane of 1938
carried it into Pennsylvania and New York, but the Adirondacks have generally s erved as a
barrier to its wes tward advance, being fores ted with s pecies not attractive to it.
The tas k of confining the gyps y moth to the northeas tern corne r of the country has been
accomplished by a variety of methods , and in the nearly one hundre d years since its arrival on
this continent the fear that it would invade the great hardwood f ores ts of the s outhe rn
Appalachians has not been jus tified. Thirteen paras ites and predators were importe d from