Neonicotinoid Pesticides – Why Can’t We Just STOP?

Topic: Neonicotinoid Pesticides – Why Can’t we Just STOP?

Presenter: Maureen Temme

Date: February 13, 2014

Time: 7:00 – 8:30 pm

Location: Grosvenor Lodge, 1017 Western Road

 

For more information call: 519-685-2845

 

Maureen Temme, is a passionate and active member of the environmental community in London. She was named to the Mayor’s New Years Honours list in 2012, for her work on environmental sustainability, food security and community gardens and has a wealth of knowledge to share on so many related topics including composting and seed saving. Maureen will speak on the topic of neonicotinoid pesticides and the need for their use to be stopped.

 

Join others to learn and to discuss the possibility of creating a no-use buffer zone within London’s urban boundary.

 

TREA was instrumental in the creation and promotion of the Pesticide By-Law for London. Having a By-law does not ensure that there are no pesticides being used. This session will raise awareness about the negative impact a particular class of pesticides, neonicotinoids, have on the ecosystems that involve our food supply.

 

Background:

Neonicotinoid pesticides have become the most used class of pesticides worldwide. Reports are coming out worldwide that they are deadly or harmful to honeybees and other pollinating insects, to birds, and to many invertebrates and vertebrate animals.

Neonicotinoids are systemic to plants, and persistent in the environment (staying in watercourses for over a year). They travel through foodchains and their effects are cumulative so that low doses build over time and cause problems like paralysis, immune system suppression, embryo malformation resulting in neonatal death, and inability to navigate through landscape. A situation often cited about honeybees is that bees lose their way and don’t get back to the hive.

A major report on neonicotinoids and birds, commissioned by the American Bird Conservancy, refers to the seriousness of pollinator loss: “…it would be foolhardy to argue that dramatic losses of insect biomass from ecosystems is not going to have potential consequences on the integrity of those ecosystems”.  That word “integrity” has gravitas in that use.  Animals eat other animals, and if one critter is missing, the others are affected.  Since an “ecosystem” may include all of environmentally sensitive areas, woodlots, farm fields, and urban yards, a loss at one point really matters … things fall apart