When I was a boy, I could go walking for an hour in the fields within a few minutes walk from here and expect to see dozens of cottontails and at least a couple of jackrabbits. Now, I might have to go 150 miles to see a jackrabbit and almost that far to expect to see at least two cottontails.
And it isn't just the rabbits. What has become of the blue birds? I really miss the aerobatics of the scissortails.
I know when they poisoned off the red ants, that spelled the end for the horned toad. Now there is danger for the hineybee? Is what is killing honeybee hives harming other bee and wasp types?
There was a pack of red wolves that ranged through the woods and hills along the Clear Fork of the Trinity back then. They provided so many hours of boyhood learning.
Chalking it all up on the board to "progress" is a lie!
It is flagrant irresponsibility and greed.
Posts: 11304 | From: Fort Worth, Texas | Registered: Mar 2005
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Please try to forget that you dislike the Munchkin Man for a few moments.
For the Munchkin Man would like to make a positive contribution to this thread.
The Munchkin Man has no doubt that there are a number of species of plants, animals, and insects which are disappearing, due to changes in the world's climatology.
This is because the Munchkin Man was a close personal friend of one of the most brilliant naturalists the world has ever known.
Actually, he was not known that well. He did not seek and achieve the fame and fortune that he truly deserved.
He died in a state of poverty last year.
He used to tell the Munchkin Man that many species of life were disappearing, due to the long term effects of the maltreatment that man has inflicted upon the planet.
He used to blame the capitalists and the Republicans.
The Munchkin Man refrained from arguing with him over this particular point.
Otherwise, he might get mad at the Munchkin Man and challenge the Munchkin Man to a duel.
The Munchkin Man is afraid of guns.
Here is a link to a very interesting story about this remarkable gentleman:
posted
we have yet to see much damage from global warming munchie, the Jack rabbits and cottontails? thats from spraying all kinds of chemicals on our lawns and crops...
i saw tons of 'em in Nebraksa (where they've done little spraying... here in the MS Delta? this place is like a big Agro-factory, and they been spraying all kinds of stuff for years... Arsenic based sprays were used here for years and the residue is still in the water and soil... DDT made them obsolete in WW2 (that's how long they been spraying heavy here, since before WW2)....
here's a good example of how "BAD" we've been:
this is OLD SCHOOL: Paris Green is a common name for copper(II)-acetoarsenite, or C.I. Pigment Green 21, an extremely toxic blue green chemical with four main uses: pigment, animal poison (mostly rodenticide), insecticide, and blue colorant for fireworks.
Other names for the chemical are Emerald Green, Parrot Green, Schweinfurt Green, Imperial Green, Vienna Green, and Mitis Green. It is almost never called Paris Green when referencing its use as a pigment. Since the use of Emerald Green as a pigment has been abandoned (around 1960), if one comes across the chemical today it is usually referred to as Paris Green.
It was once a popular pigment, C.I. Pigment Green 21, used in artists' paints. When used as a pigment it was almost always given a color-based name, usually Emerald Green. The brilliance of this pigment has not been matched by modern pigment chemistry. The modern, significantly less vivid, substitution is a mixture of phthalocyanine green (blue shade), an organic lemon yellow, and white. Modern imitations either call themselves "Emerald Green" or "Permanent Green". The closest match to true Emerald Green in watercolors, Winsor & Newton's "Emerald Green", is impermanent and was recently discontinued.
It was once used to kill rats in Parisian sewers, hence the common name Paris Green. It was also used in America and elsewhere as an insecticide for produce, such as apples, around 1900, where it was blended with lead arsenate.
yummy! an apple a day!
This outrageously toxic mixture is said to have burned the trees and the grass around the trees. Old pianos may contain this mixture, or either of its components. It may still be found in limited use as an insecticide, primarily in the developing world, and as a fireworks colorant. It is reportedly very difficult to obtain a good blue in fireworks with any other chemical. Paris Green was once a popular pigment for painting ships, because its toxicity prevented the accumulation of barnacles.
very few bunnies here, (much to no-no-bad-dogs disappointment)...
GM crops will will help reduce the use of pesticides...
and? beleive it or not? what we spray today is much much better than what we used to use.. MUCH!!
-------------------- Don't envy the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise. Posts: 36378 | From: USA | Registered: Sep 2003
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posted
In the later 1970s I knew several of the "flock" of duster pilots that sprayed Northern Mississippi and Alabama with insecticide, working on a Federal Program to eliminate fire ants. Other flocks were responsible for southern Mississippi and Alabama, Tennessee, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Florida, ans some other places. I don't recall the exact chemical they were spraying, but I do know it was the same as the ones I knew were using to spray cotton and soy beans. (Didn't have any noticable effect on the fire ants, you may have noticed.)
The spraying was done, mostly at night, to avoid as much as possible alerting the public to the effort and was usually done from a couple of thousand feet AGL from a formation of planes flying a grid pattern.
Potent stuff! And the public and their animals got to breath it an live in it.
Not long before that, I was witness to U.S. Forest Service contractors spraying powerful herbicides (much the same crap they had perfected to use in Viet Nam) on great natural stands of hardwood that covered thousands of acres, to give excuse to bulldoze into huge piles and burn them. leaving absolutely barren soils over hill and dale (along public roadways, where the public might travel and witness, they would leave a strip if 20 to 30 feet of the forest, so that the clear cutting wouldn't be noticed). Of course, they denied doing what they were doing and denied that Weyerhaeuser and Scott and Gulf States other pulp corporations were the forces that led them to do so, but those acres were planted in evenly spaced and contoured row after row of southern pine seedlings (that are not the normal growth of the area and that were bought with OUR money) from the greenhouses of those corporations and it was those corporations that secured the right to harvest (by clear cutting, of course) the semi-matured trees later when they were at a perfect age to grind into pulp for paper to sell in Japan and India and Hong Kong.
I watched what had been a magnificent natural growth of forest and shrub covering thousand and thousands of acres of U.S. Forest Service owned land turned in to a well ordered paper farm, with hardly any wild thing, animal or vegetable, to be seen or smelled. It was disgusting and boring. It was done for the almighty dollar and nothing else. It was done to OUR land. It was done with poison, with NO concern for the people's health
Posts: 11304 | From: Fort Worth, Texas | Registered: Mar 2005
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When I was a boy, I could go walking for an hour in the fields within a few minutes walk from here and expect to see dozens of cottontails and at least a couple of jackrabbits. Now, I might have to go 150 miles to see a jackrabbit and almost that far to expect to see at least two cottontails.
And it isn't just the rabbits. What has become of the blue birds? I really miss the aerobatics of the scissortails.
I know when they poisoned off the red ants, that spelled the end for the horned toad. Now there is danger for the hineybee? Is what is killing honeybee hives harming other bee and wasp types?
There was a pack of red wolves that ranged through the woods and hills along the Clear Fork of the Trinity back then. They provided so many hours of boyhood learning.
Chalking it all up on the board to "progress" is a lie!
It is flagrant irresponsibility and greed.
Your point about the "other bee and wasp types" is an interesting one. We've lived where we live now for 10 years. Up until about 2 years ago the wasp and hornet population was ridiculous. Every year I'd have to set out traps just so we could venture outdoors.
This year I can count on one hand the number of wasps and hornets we've seen. Last year there was a noticable decline but nothing like this year. Anyone know if the hive collapse syndrome affects other bee types as well?
Posts: 5729 | From: Wisconsin | Registered: Sep 2003
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posted
I got to thinking about that when I first heard of "hive collapse", because, of course, bees and wasp and hornets are all of the same family.
Then I thought that, at least, last year, I saw far fewer wasps than is normal. This year seems even more in that trend. I haven't see a single paper wasp nest on the property. NOT ONE!
Normally I have to start cleaning them out of the storage building and the workshop in the back and in various other spots by late February (last year was the first ever here I didn't have at least one paper wasp nest to clear out from under the fender of a car).
So, Up, your experience allows me to avoid imagining I am imagining a depletion of wasps varieties.
(I think I have also seen a depletion in bumble bees too.)
Posts: 11304 | From: Fort Worth, Texas | Registered: Mar 2005
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one of the things alot of people don't know is that there's thousands of "mini"-wasp types that you never see, and they are almost all predatory (on other insects and spiders)
wasps are absolutely fascinating critters...
some of them stun their prey with a sting, and lay an egg on or in it, then they seal it into a mud ball or paper cell and the stunned prey gets eaten alive.... good stuff for grade b horror movies huh?
-------------------- Don't envy the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise. Posts: 36378 | From: USA | Registered: Sep 2003
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posted
this is one of the most damaging pests in agriculture, a Tomato Hornworm.. they can eat poisonous plants, and most everything else we try to grow..
it's covered with wasp eggs, and yes, they'll eat it when thy hatch.. the best bio-control in action
i have full scale war going on in my studio: i have wasps hunting spiders in their webs, and then i have the (non-web type) Jumping Spiders trying to ambush the wasps while they hunt the other spiders... better than most TV...
-------------------- Don't envy the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise. Posts: 36378 | From: USA | Registered: Sep 2003
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Tossing off concern for bees and wasp with flippancy and maybe a "Who cares?" is not only intellectually childish, it is dangerous.
Posts: 11304 | From: Fort Worth, Texas | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
LOL That's Great! Insect Wars! That should be a Saturday Morning cartoon series. Teach kids something and get rid of some of the crap thats out right now.
WE have Mud Daubers all over where I work. Great pest control but all most folk see are wasps with really long legs that creep em out.
-------------------- No longer eligible for government service due to lack of tax issues. Posts: 5178 | From: Up North | Registered: Dec 2005
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quote:Originally posted by bdgee: In the later 1970s I knew several of the "flock" of duster pilots that sprayed Northern Mississippi and Alabama with insecticide, working on a Federal Program to eliminate fire ants. Other flocks were responsible for southern Mississippi and Alabama, Tennessee, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Florida, ans some other places. I don't recall the exact chemical they were spraying, but I do know it was the same as the ones I knew were using to spray cotton and soy beans. (Didn't have any noticable effect on the fire ants, you may have noticed.)
The spraying was done, mostly at night, to avoid as much as possible alerting the public to the effort and was usually done from a couple of thousand feet AGL from a formation of planes flying a grid pattern.
Potent stuff! And the public and their animals got to breath it an live in it.
Not long before that, I was witness to U.S. Forest Service contractors spraying powerful herbicides (much the same crap they had perfected to use in Viet Nam) on great natural stands of hardwood that covered thousands of acres, to give excuse to bulldoze into huge piles and burn them. leaving absolutely barren soils over hill and dale (along public roadways, where the public might travel and witness, they would leave a strip if 20 to 30 feet of the forest, so that the clear cutting wouldn't be noticed). Of course, they denied doing what they were doing and denied that Weyerhaeuser and Scott and Gulf States other pulp corporations were the forces that led them to do so, but those acres were planted in evenly spaced and contoured row after row of southern pine seedlings (that are not the normal growth of the area and that were bought with OUR money) from the greenhouses of those corporations and it was those corporations that secured the right to harvest (by clear cutting, of course) the semi-matured trees later when they were at a perfect age to grind into pulp for paper to sell in Japan and India and Hong Kong.
I watched what had been a magnificent natural growth of forest and shrub covering thousand and thousands of acres of U.S. Forest Service owned land turned in to a well ordered paper farm, with hardly any wild thing, animal or vegetable, to be seen or smelled. It was disgusting and boring. It was done for the almighty dollar and nothing else. It was done to OUR land. It was done with poison, with NO concern for the people's health
The chemical was Mirex. Killed almost every bullfrog in Ms. They are still trying to make a comeback.
posted
I can remember talking to a group of those pilots that were spraying Mississippi with poison and asking them if they didn't maybe feel concerned that it was damaging the environment. There were 4 or 5 of them in that group that evening and all I knew to be college educated. All of them assured me that if it had any possible negative effects, then the government wouldn't be doing it.
I think, if my memory is reliable, the funding was from the agriculture department. I'd bet that that department didn't bother to clear it with any department that MIGHT have disagreed. That is how, almost by necessity, huge compartmentalized government works. It is the function of first, the Administration, then the Congress to wrangle those herds of diverse interest along a common, purposeful, and eventual positive trail and if those two can't or won't, then the courts should do so.
It isn't unpatriotic when one distrust such a huge mechanism, it is good sense.
Posts: 11304 | From: Fort Worth, Texas | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
my Grandad was a very energetic self-employed man who invested very heavily in stocks..
his attitude was the EPA was ruining the economy (circa 1975-85)...
one day i was lamenting how our family had passed up on the opportunty to buy an orchard with quite abit of land just about 75 miles from DC.. (this was in the 70's it was still agricultural up there. today it's part of the DC suburban sprawl.
any way he got kinda grim, and said "oh, it's agood thing you('re parents) didn't, all my friend that were in the orchard business died from cancers"... he woulda been under 60 at this time
i BIT my tongue hard, i wanted to tell him yeah, and the EPA is out to "fix" that problem...
out of respect, and knowing it wouldn't do any good? i kept my mouth shut...
IMO? the problem is that "stuff" really does cost alot more than we are "paying" for it..somebody, somehwere, no matter what ,pays the price...
total free market capitalism is nothing more than feudalism...
a gallon of lead paint was dirt cheap... but every time you open an old window painted with it? somebody breathes that dust..
-------------------- Don't envy the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise. Posts: 36378 | From: USA | Registered: Sep 2003
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