Silent Spring (13 page)

"Once again we are walking in nature like an elephant in the china cabinet." So C. J. Briejèr, a Dutch scientist of rare understanding, sums up our use of weed killers. "In my opinion too much is taken for granted. We do not know whether all weeds in crops are harmful or whether some of them are useful," says Dr. Briejèr.

Seldom is the question asked, What is the relation between the weed and the soil? Perhaps, even from our narrow standpoint of direct self-interest, the relation is a useful one. As we have seen, soil and the living things in and upon it exist in a relation of interdependence and mutual benefit. Presumably the weed is taking something from the soil; perhaps it is also contributing something to it. A practical example was provided recently by the parks in a city in Holland. The roses were doing badly. Soil samples showed heavy infestations by tiny nematode worms. Scientists of the Dutch Plant Protection Service did not recommend chemical sprays or soil treatments; instead, they suggested that marigolds be planted among the roses. This plant, which the purist would doubtless consider a weed in any rosebed, releases an excretion from its roots that kills the soil nematodes. The advice was taken; some beds were planted with marigolds, some left without as controls. The results were striking. With the aid of the marigolds the roses flourished; in the control beds they were sickly and drooping. Marigolds are now used in many places for combating nematodes.

In the same way, and perhaps quite unknown to us, other plants that we ruthlessly eradicate may be performing a function that is necessary to the health of the soil. One very useful function of natural plant communities—now pretty generally stigmatized as "weeds"—is to serve as an indicator of the condition of the soil. This useful function is of course lost where chemical weed killers have been used.

Those who find an answer to all problems in spraying also overlook a matter of great scientific importance—the need to preserve some natural plant communities. We need these as a standard against which we can measure the changes our own activities bring about. We need them as wild habitats in which original populations of insects and other organisms can be maintained, for, as will be explained in Chapter 16, the development of resistance to insecticides is changing the genetic factors of insects and perhaps other organisms. One scientist has even suggested that some sort of "zoo" should be established to preserve insects, mites, and the like, before their genetic composition is further changed.

Some experts warn of subtle but far-reaching vegetational shifts as a result of the growing use of herbicides. The chemical 2,4-D, by killing out the broad-leaved plants, allows the grasses to thrive in the reduced competition—now some of the grasses themselves have become "weeds," presenting a new problem in control and giving the cycle another turn. This strange situation is acknowledged in a recent issue of a journal devoted to crop problems: "With the widespread use of 2,4-D to control broad-leaved weeds, grass weeds in particular have increasingly become a threat to corn and soybean yields."

Ragweed, the bane of hay fever sufferers, offers an interesting example of the way efforts to control nature sometimes boomerang. Many thousands of gallons of chemicals have been discharged along roadsides in the name of ragweed control. But the unfortunate truth is that blanket spraying is resulting in more ragweed, not less. Ragweed is an annual; its seedlings require open soil to become established each year. Our best protection against this plant is therefore the maintenance of dense shrubs, ferns, and other perennial vegetation. Spraying frequently destroys this protective vegetation and creates open, barren areas which the ragweed hastens to fill. It is probable, moreover, that the pollen content of the atmosphere is not related to roadside ragweed, but to the ragweed of city lots and fallow fields.

The booming sales of chemical crabgrass killers are another example of how readily unsound methods catch on. There is a cheaper and better way to remove crabgrass than to attempt year after year to kill it out with chemicals. This is to give it competition of a kind it cannot survive, the competition of other grass. Crabgrass exists only in an unhealthy lawn. It is a symptom, not a disease in itself. By providing a fertile soil and giving the desired grasses a good start, it is possible to create an environment in which crabgrass cannot grow, for it requires open space in which it can start from seed year after year.

Instead of treating the basic condition, suburbanites—advised by nurserymen who in turn have been advised by the chemical manufacturers—continue to apply truly astonishing amounts of crabgrass killers to their lawns each year. Marketed under trade names which give no hint of their nature, many of these preparations contain such poisons as mercury, arsenic, and chlordane. Application at the recommended rates leaves tremendous amounts of these chemicals on the lawn. Users of one product, for example, apply 60 pounds of technical chlordane to the acre if they follow directions. If they use another of the many available products, they are applying 175 pounds of metallic arsenic to the acre. The toll of dead birds, as we shall see in Chapter 8, is distressing. How lethal these lawns may be for human beings is unknown.

The success of selective spraying for roadside and right-of-way vegetation, where it has been practiced, offers hope that equally sound ecological methods may be developed for other vegetation programs for farms, forests, and ranges—methods aimed not at destroying a particular species but at managing vegetation as a living community.

Other solid achievements show what can be done. Biological control has achieved some of its most spectacular successes in the area of curbing unwanted vegetation. Nature herself has met many of the problems that now beset us, and she has usually solved them in her own successful way. Where man has been intelligent enough to observe and to emulate Nature he, too, is often rewarded with success.

An outstanding example in the field of controlling unwanted plants is the handling of the Klamath-weed problem in California. Although the Klamath weed, or goatweed, is a native of Europe (where it is called St. Johnswort), it accompanied man in his westward migrations, first appearing in the United States in 1793 near Lancaster, Pennsylvania. By 1900 it had reached California in the vicinity of the Klamath River, hence the name locally given to it. By 1929 it had occupied about 100,000 acres of rangeland, and by 1952 it had invaded some two and one half million acres.

Klamath weed, quite unlike such native plants as sagebrush, has no place in the ecology of the region, and no animals or other plants require its presence. On the contrary, wherever it appeared livestock became "scabby, sore-mouthed, and unthrifty" from feeding on this toxic plant. Land values declined accordingly, for the Klamath weed was considered to hold the first mortgage.

In Europe the Klamath weed, or St. Johnswort, has never become a problem because along with the plant there have developed various species of insects; these feed on it so extensively that its abundance is severely limited. In particular, two species of beetles in southern France, pea-sized and of metallic color, have their whole beings so adapted to the presence of the weed that they feed and reproduce only upon it.

It was an event of historic importance when the first shipments of these beetles were brought to the United States in 1944, for this was the first attempt in North America to control a plant with a plant-eating insect. By 1948 both species had become so well established that no further importations were needed. Their spread was accomplished by collecting beetles from the original colonies and redistributing them at the rate of millions a year. Within small areas the beetles accomplish their own dispersion, moving on as soon as the Klamath weed dies out and locating new stands with great precision. And as the beetles thin out the weed, desirable range plants that have been crowded out are able to return.

A ten-year survey completed in 1959 showed that control of the Klamath weed had been "more effective than hoped for even by enthusiasts," with the weed reduced to a mere 1 per cent of its former abundance. This token infestation is harmless and is actually needed in order to maintain a population of beetles as protection against a future increase in the weed.

Another extraordinarily successful and economical example of weed control may be found in Australia. With the colonists' usual taste for carrying plants or animals into a new country, a Captain Arthur Phillip had brought various species of cactus into Australia about 1787, intending to use them in culturing cochineal insects for dye. Some of the cacti or prickly pears escaped from his gardens and by 1925 about 20 species could be found growing wild. Having no natural controls in this new territory, they spread prodigiously, eventually occupying about 60 million acres. At least half of this land was so densely covered as to be useless.

In 1920 Australian entomologists were sent to North and South America to study insect enemies of the prickly pears in their native habitat. After trials of several species, 3 billion eggs of an Argentine moth were released in Australia in 1930. Seven years later the last dense growth of the prickly pear had been destroyed and the once uninhabitable areas reopened to settlement and grazing. The whole operation had cost less than a penny per acre. In contrast, the unsatisfactory attempts at chemical control in earlier years had cost about £10 per acre.

Both of these examples suggest that extremely effective control of many kinds of unwanted vegetation might be achieved by paying more attention to the role of plant-eating insects. The science of range management has largely ignored this possibility, although these insects are perhaps the most selective of all grazers and their highly restricted diets could easily be turned to man's advantage.

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toward his announced goal of the conquest of nature, he has written a depressing record of destruction, directed not only against the earth he inhabits but against the life that shares it with him. The history of the recent centuries has its black passages—the slaughter of the buffalo on the western plains, the massacre of the shorebirds by the market gunners, the near-extermination of the egrets for their plumage. Now, to these and others like them, we are adding a new chapter and a new kind of havoc—the direct killing of birds, mammals, fishes, and indeed practically every form of wildlife by chemical insecticides indiscriminately sprayed on the land.

Under the philosophy that now seems to guide our destinies, nothing must get in the way of the man with the spray gun. The incidental victims of his crusade against insects count as nothing; if robins, pheasants, raccoons, cats, or even livestock happen to inhabit the same bit of earth as the target insects and to be hit by the rain of insect-killing poisons no one must protest.

The citizen who wishes to make a fair judgment of the question of wildlife loss is today confronted with a dilemma. On the one hand conservationists and many wildlife biologists assert that the losses have been severe and in some cases even catastrophic. On the other hand the control agencies tend to deny flatly and categorically that such losses have occurred, or 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 psychologically disposed to look for undesirable side effects of his control program. Yet it is the control men in state and federal governments—and of course the chemical manufacturers—who steadfastly 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 story, they choose to pass by on the other side and to see nothing. Even if we charitably explain their denials as due to the shortsightedness of the specialist and the man with an interest this does not mean we must accept them as qualified witnesses.

The best way to form our own judgment is to look at some of the major control programs and learn, from observers familiar with the ways of wildlife, and unbiased in favor of chemicals, just what has happened in the wake of a rain of poison falling from the skies into the world of wildlife.

To the bird watcher, the suburbanite who derives joy from birds in his garden, the hunter, the fisherman or the explorer 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 sometimes happened, some of the birds and mammals and fishes are able to re-establish themselves after a single spraying, a great and real harm has been done.