Environmental Protection Agency and Bayer

The New York Times

Bees like blue, yellow and white flowers best. Coincidentally, I'm obsessed with chicory, dandelions and Dutch clover.

A few weeks ago, I dug up chicory and dandelions from the side of the road and planted them in my nursery bed. The chicory plants had gone to seed and almost immediately I found myriad baby chicories growing! I will transfer them to their own bed in the spring and I'm hoping that the bees will like them. And I will force myself to enjoy dandelion and chicory greens, even if I have to boil them two or three times to reduce the bitter taste.

I seeded my garden with Dutch clover this autumn. My community garden neighbors think it is a cover crop. It is not. It is a CROP! Bees like the little white Dutch clover better than the huge purple clover, which is too deep for their little "tongues" (do they actually use their tongues to gather nectar?)

OK-so I'm starting to hate The New York Times. Considering the fact that so many people still take this newspaper's word as gospel, I think they should be a little more careful about checking their sources. I am talking about their recent proclamation on October 6, 2010 that honey bee hive collapse is due to a combination of a virus and a fungus. The title of the article proudly proclaims, "Scientists and Soldiers Solve a Bee Mystery." No mention of PESTICIDES as a contributing factor, even though the bee scientists, led by Jerry Bromenshenk of the University of Montana in Missoula, state that more research is needed to determine "how much environmental factors like heat, cold or drought might play a role."

HUH? This seemed weird to me. Aren't pesticides now an "environmental factor"? Given the fact that our bodies seem to have been so infiltrated by pesticides that scientists are now studying the correlation between learning disabilities in children and the amount of pesticide residue found in their urine, why wouldn't pesticides be on any agricultural scientist's list of "environmental factors"?

Two days later, a rebuttal article, "What a scientist didn't tell the New York Times about his study on bee deaths" was published on the Fortune magazine page over at CNN. It turns out that the study's lead author, Montana bee researcher Dr. Jerry Bromenshenk has a cozy FINANCIAL RELATIONSHIP with Bayer Crop Science, a subsidiary of the German pharmaceutical giant Bayer AG and the LEADING MANUFACTURER of pesticides, particularly so-called neonicotinoids, a class of neurotoxins that kills insects by attacking their nervous systems.

Kudos to journalist Katherine Eban for her fast work and fine article which reveals: "In recent years Bromenshenk has received a significant research grant from Bayer to study bee pollination. Indeed, before receiving the Bayer funding, Bromenshenk was lined up on the opposite side: He had signed on to serve as an expert witness for beekeepers who brought a class-action lawsuit against Bayer in 2003. He then dropped out and received the grant."

Specific details follow later in the article, complete with names, dates and citations. Pow!

As for Kirk Johnson who wrote the original New York Times article, I pee pee on you. And many, many thanks to my friend Karen for alerting me to both of these articles.

Totems

In the 1970's, when bald eagles were endangered in the USA, the United States Government devoted a lot of effort toward saving our national symbol. Laws were passed to outlaw the pesticide DDT, which was identified as the major detriment to the health of this "totem animal." Time was devoted to educating the public about the dangers of putting poisons into the food chain. The population of bald eagles gradually rebounded enough so that in the 1990's, the species was reclassified from "endangered" to merely "threatened", and in 2007 was taken off the endangered list altogether. It's a wonderful success story.

Just like many countries, sports teams commonly ally themselves with the images and characteristics of certain animals: Tigers, Lions, Bears, Cardinals, Falcons - I'll bet you can think of even more. I actually like this practice because I like animals to be front and center as often as possible. I think that animals have been totally sidelined in our modern society. People have forgotten how to live alongside our fellow creatures of the earth (when was the last time you slept in a log cabin with your livestock? - no off-color jokes please...)

SO HERE'S MY BIG IDEA:

I think that sports teams named after animals, especially endangered animals, should contribute a significant amount of money and publicity toward the health and preservation of those species. This should include major contributions toward preserving the natural habitats of these animals.

We can take this idea even further if we expand it to include team mascots. Notice how many of these major league baseball mascots are animals. There are some interesting essays about the relationships between birds and sports teams in the Sports Archive over at 10,000 Birds.com.

Here is a fascinating article (with equally fascinating links) about live animal mascots used by college sports teams. Don't expect much reference to animal rights or animal conservation in these pages. Particularly disturbing to me is the plight of Louisiana State University's live mascot Mike the Tiger.

So - for instance - do the Chicago Bears do anything to help the plight of bears in this world? Maybe even just a little public education? I couldn't find any such thing on their website, but I did find out that Staley Da Bear is interested in helping human children live healthier lives through exercise. Laudable but perhaps short sighted in terms of global health.

Finally, I think that media images of animals have the capacity to lull us into a false feeling that everything is ok. Maybe it's hard to believe that the Siberian tigers are truly in danger when TV, etc. pummels us on a daily basis with pictures of cartoon tigers alive and well. Hey - I just ate some breakfast cereal sold to me by Tony the Tiger and then I went down to the gas station and put a tiger in my tank (come to think of it, does the Kellog Company or - perish the thought - Exxon give any money or time in support of the survival of tigers? Think of all the money they've made using tigers in their advertising. I think it's payback time!!!)

I actually had this idea on the back burner for years when I started to write this post months ago. Last week I was standing in front of a class of eighth graders, killing some time by making conversation with them before introducing a speaker, when I heard myself say, "Have I ever told you guys my great idea?" I spilled it out in one or two sentences before moving on. But as we turned our attention to the business at hand, I heard a young woman in the front row say (almost to herself), "That's actually a good idea." Inspiration.