Robert Van Den Bosch: Stop the Pesticide Conspiracy
(Page 9 of 12)
July/August 1979
By the Mother Earth News staff
There are other examples, too. Integrated control has been quite effective in solving what was once a severe insect problem in northern California's Marin and Sonoma counties.
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You see, during World War II, fliers from Hamilton Field often dropped their dummy bombs in the 2,000-acre Petaluma Marsh area. This created a number of potholes which were filled with water during flood tides but weren't subject to regular tidal "flushing". Eventually, the little ponds reached just the right stagnancy level for breeding mosquitoes, and the infestation was on!
Fortunately, Dr. Alan Telford—manager of the Marin County Mosquito Abatement District—had a firm understanding of the ecology of the pests and opted for an integrated control program. Telford devised a pothole drainage system that wiped out the bugs' "nurseries" . . . and put an end to the use of expensive aerial spraying. Best of all, though, Alan stopped the use of parathion . . . a dangerous nerve-gas derivative which the chemical people had been selling as the answer to the mosquito problem.
PLOWBOY: Hasn't integrated control made a few breakthroughs in urban areas, too?
VAN DEN BOSCH: Yes. For instance, the Berkeley City Parks and Recreation Department spent years spraying streetside trees with chemical insecticides ... it was a regular routine for them.
However, the city's populace didn't like the idea of all those chemical molecules floating around in their environment. The public complained about the spraying, and one day I found an irate housewife—complete with babe in arms—in my office. That woman was accompanied by a couple of Parks and Recreation people, and she was taking them to task for spraying the trees near her house and letting the pesticide drip onto her organic garden. She wanted my Division of Biological Control to do something about the problem.
Well, as it happened, the aphids that were being sprayed were old ''friends" of mine . . . and I knew they'd been controlled in Europe by natural parasites. So a group representing the Northern California Committee for Environmental Information, the University, the city of Berkeley, and the USDA got together and procured some of the European parasites. We then set up a program, and the end result is that-after two years of integrated control-we've virtually eliminated the need for and use of heavy pesticides on Berkeley's streetside trees.
PLOWBOY: How much money did this program save the taxpayers?
VAN DEN BOSCH: It cut the area's insect control costs by about $22,000 in cold cash every year . . . to say nothing about the possible expenses in terms of health hazards and environmental side effects that were avoided by the elimination of chemical spraying.
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