Insecticides are killing bees, birds, and who knows what else

[Mike Wehner]

• Pesticides used to kill off troublesome bugs have been killing off honey bees, and now birds are dying off, too.
• The insecticide works its way up the food chain, and when birds eat bugs that have come into contact with the chemical, it causes problems.
• In areas where the chemicals have been cut back, bird populations are rebounding.

Balancing the human need to grow crops to feed a booming population with the impact that various chemicals have on wildlife is delicate. To be perfectly blunt, humans tend to get things wrong a lot of the time, and pesticides sprayed over huge areas to give crops a chance to grow often have unindented consequences.

Bee populations have been hit particularly hard by pesticides in recent years, and scientists managed to reveal the culprit in the form of a type of insecticide that was widely used. Bees are good for the planet and are crucial to the health of the environments in which they live, so moving away from bee-killing chemicals is obviously a wise thing to do. Now, a new research paper suggests that those same chemicals that are so toxic to bee populations are also killing off birds at an alarming rate.

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Insecticides are killing bees, birds, and who knows what else originally appeared on BGR.com on Wed, 19 Aug 2020 at 20:10:52 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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