Neonicotinoids are a class of neurotoxic chemicals that are structurally similar to nicotine, a powerful natural insecticide that is harmful to mammals. Neonicotinoids were designed to be more targeted to insects and less broadly destructive, but recent research suggests widespread impacts.
A new study out this week provides more evidence of harm caused by neonicotinoids, with researchers linking the use of the chemicals on a Japanese lake with impacts to an entire food web that resulted in the collapse of two fisheries.
LINK (via: Common Dreams)
“About time” I wrote in an email last week to someone in one of the many Save “Our” Fish Trusts here in Britain about the above report (the flylife of our rivers has been crucified over the past two decades, in many of them by a wealthy farming lobby, many of whose members own the same rivers and profit greatly by letting / selling their fishing rights to Anglers, whilst at the same time saying that any (in Britan’s case, European) ban on NeoNics will return us to some Cormac McCarthyite post-Apocalyptic national starvation, and that the death of a “few” bugs and (crop-pollinating – duh!) bees is a small price to pay for big easy crops and national food security … and anyone saying otherwise is a Save the Whale snowflake vegan bunnyhugger, I might have gone on to say, but didn’t need to, because the man I was writing to knows this just as well as I do but is “hogtied” by the fishy company that he keeps but I do not…).
Oh, give me strength….
A few days later….
I just hope that Britain’s Finest (Farmers and Heavy Political Friends) and Trout and Salmon-R-Us (and Exclusively Ours, please note) Official Fishy Folk are not only reading this but also looking to DO SOMETHING about it pretty damned quick and not merely blame it on their ever-dependable, long-hated, default-setting bleeding heart scientists and “so-called experts” or even dangerous, Old Frosty The Snowman as opposed to Young Snowflake, He’s Not One of Us “anarchists” like me…..
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/nov/13/insect-apocalypse-poses-risk-to-all-life-on-earth-conservationists-warn
Over to you, fellas.