I worked in agricultural research for nearly 35 years as a field ecologist specialzing in biocontrol. Parallel to my work there were several researchers involved in pesticide research, in which I sometimes played a minor role, mostly in evaluating results and looking for evidence for resistance to pesticides. I was always suspicious of pesticides. Early in my life I used to watch our landlord sprinkling Chlordane on ant nests not far from where he raised ducks and chickens. In my childish mind I thought “What is to keep the Chlordane from harming the ducks? Grownups must know what they are doing so I guess it is OK.” But as I grew older, the question persisted.
I used pesticides to protect my insect specimens when I was curating the arthropod collection at my final place of employment, but the dangers of Naphthalene and Paradichlorobenzene made me eventually phase out the pesticides after a colleague died of cancer following years of breathing the former in his lab. The collection, curated by another entomologist since I retired, freezes any drawer found to contain Dermestids, the main pest of museums.
However, I was involved on the periphery with several other pesticides, notably an Organophosphate, and very briefly, a chitin inhibitor. With the first I was set up to look at resistance in the Range Caterpillar, a native pest of rangeland grasses that competed with cattle and sometimes reached breakout phases, where the caterpillars would windrow along a front and proceed across the rangeland, destroying the forage grasses, especially Blue Grama, as they moved forward. Such happenings were rare, but useful for advertising cureall pesticides. The set up, which was not of my design, failed to provide analyzable data, in part because we had to throw out two reps. One because the rancher had an outbreak of anthrax and one because we had evidence that the rancher had cheated and used another pesticide on his rangeland. Both were key sites and I despaired of ever publishing the totally incomplete results. My supervisor insisted that I submit a manuscript, and so I did, but it was soundly rejected (as I would have done as a reviewer if it had been submitted to me.) The incomplete results, including the sites we had to reject, was giving us a picture that implied that resistance was indeed happening and further that the control sites were doing better than the treated sites. I think that I know why that might have been the case, based on an observation that I made at Wagon Mound, New Mexico. In gathering pupae for a sterilization study I found that almost 100% of the pupae were parasitized by ichneumonid and/or chalcidid parasites! I could not find enough healthy pupae to do that part of the experiment, although we did get enough earlier and I published the study eventually.
The chitin inhibitor was another story. I was sent up to Los Alamos to check on a study using the chitin inhibitor against the Spruce Budworm, another native pest that defoliated conifers. The study was unfortunately not set up properly and to be honest, I would never have arranged it the way it was- with only one rep per treatment! I knew no statistician worth a damn would touch it with a ten-foot pole. However, the same thing happened with this unanalysable data as with the Organophosphate study — the control had the least damage! Again I hypothesized that, while we needed a lot more data, it was likely that the native parasitoids had done their job. However, people who owned houses in forested areas noted the damage caused by the Budworm and panicked. They wanted their pesticide fix! They wanted the Budworm gone now! They worried about resale value!
That mentality got us where we are today with a crises in insect populations that threaten pollination of crops and wild plants and the natural control of insect pests. We should curse the day that German scientists, while researching the use of poison gasses in warfare, inadvertently discovered DDT! Not that DDT and other pesticides have been a total failure — they have been useful in the control of Yellow Fever and Malaria, among other arthropod-borne diseases — but that they have been often used without thought as a quick (and dirty) way to get rid of an immediate problem. Millions of acres of land in the United States have been bombarded with huge amounts of Chlorinated Hydrocarbons, Organophosphates, and others. They are not pesticides, they are biocides, and they should be handled very carefully. I won’t say that they never should be used, but we have overused them way beyond reason and have left a massive environmental disaster. Without insects we might well be listed among the extinct species, if anyone is keeping a list after our demise.
Because of my work I have had to mingle with some of the spray and count crowd now and then and one time I remember was in San Antonio, Texas, where I was finally hunted down and more or less dragged to a Cajun supper paid for by one of the company reps who also was a chapter president at the time. As luck would have it I wound up seated next to the benefactor and trying to make small talk I innocently asked “What is your company up to these days?” The reply “Why we’re up to nothing!” I said “I mean what are you researching these days?” The man then relaxed and said, “Oh, we are researching chitin inhibitors.” I thought his first statement most interesting.
While attending a meeting in Atlanta I returned to my motel after dark and overheard a conversation I’m sure was not at all intended for my ears. One company rep was talking to another “All this talk about biocontrol and other methods of pest control” said one “Do you think it will put us out of business?””Naw,” said his associate “People will always reach for the spray can before they try anything that might take more time.” Another time I was asked to review a manuscript that accidently included a legal document that I’m sure the company did not want to be generally known (they were being sued over a house treatment gone horribly wrong!) When I sent the manuscript back to the researcher I noted that he might want to avoid sending such documents along with manuscripts for review! I also heard rumors of spray plane flights that went wrong and dumped their load of pesticides accidently on some area they were not supposed to spray.
My part in all this was to write and administer an FFA test (also used early on for 4-H) on applying pesticides correctly. A lot of people don’t realize it, but a pesticide label is a binding legal document and to apply the chemical in a way not described on the label is a federal offense. How often the rules are followed, I can’t say, but I do know that many people reach for the spray can way too often. A friend told me that they once had lots of butterflies in his Santa Fe neighborhood, but now, despite masses of flowers, there were none to be seen in summer. This is also true in some other urban areas I have visited. A heavily treated orange grove near Orlando, Florida, was eerily silent and had no birds and was lacking in ants, but had thousands of earwigs! One woman asked me once how she could get more butterflies in her garden, but informed me that she sprayed all the caterpillars she found! Another, convinced that she was being bitten by mites, sprayed her whole house with a potent industrial miticide and even pest control operators were afraid to visit. Another asked me if her current health problems could be caused by the Chlordane she had scattered all through her house when she found out it was being banned!
I was taught biocontrol by one of the best in the business, Dr. Willard H. Whitcomb at the University of Florida, and also worked for a short time for a USDA scientist who was (as I found out later) a secret informant for Rachel Carson. Biocontrol is what I got paid for, but I also worked on publishable manuscripts on basic biology and so got a fairly balanced view of entomology. I never was sorry I went into the profession, but I was privately glad that I was not with the spray and count group. I hope that I did some good in that regard as I noted non-chemical ways to control fire ants in one paper, published on natural enemies of pest species, and on how to identify certain pests that are often overtreated because the average person could not tell pest species from non-pest and even beneficial species.
My final word. Be very careful if you use biocides and if you can do not spread them over large areas. The bees are counting on you!
Addendum: I in no way want to imply that pesticides are the only factor impacting insects. It is really a complicated world and other factors, including habitat destruction, Global Climate Change and local pollution are among these. Also more modern pesticides, especially including neonicotinoids, are real problems, especially for bees. I always should add “It’s more complicated than that!”