You can fight City Hall and
win. It takes time and patience, but
sometimes the results are spectacular.
Years ago we lived across the
street from the city park in Grand Haven, Michigan where the elm trees were
sprayed with DDT to fight Dutch elm disease.
Long after the spraying we would see robins trembling in their death
throes. DDT is a long lasting pesticide
that magnifies through food chains and the robin that had fed upon earthworms
died before our eyes.
The fish in nearby Lake
Michigan were affected even more since food chains in water are long. DDT builds up in plankton and then magnifies
with each step up the food chain. Small
fish and then larger fish and then the American bald eagle that feeds upon fish
began to show the effects of DDT. The
young of eagles, peregrine falcons and ospreys did not hatch because DDT caused
the shells of the eggs to break before the birds could hatch.
At that time, I was reading
Rachel Carson’s book, Silent Spring, and showed it to my husband, Norm Spring. His reaction was visceral. He had to do something about it. He marched down to city hall and asked that
the DDT program stop in our city park.
When it was not stopped, he brought experts to explain why it should be
stopped.
City hall countered by bringing
agriculture department people. This went
on for three years before he convinced city hall to stop the DDT program.
Then people from a
neighboring city, Holland, Michigan came and together with others Norm Spring
formed the Michigan Pesticides Council.
It met at M.S.U. with Dr. Ted Black, Dr. George Wallace, Dr. Howard
Tanner, Dr. John Kitchel, Joan Wolfe and others. Together they marshaled citizen support and
by 1969 DDT was banned in Michigan and by 1972 was banned nationally.
It took years for DDT to
purge from Lake Michigan food chains, but today we often see bald eagles along
the beaches and the Grand River that flows through Michigan. On January 4, 2003, the Grand Haven Tribune
reported 46 bald eagles on the ice and in the trees not far from U.S. 31. About a third of these were mature eagles.
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June 1, 2013 Today a young peregrine falcon chick was banded in Grand Haven. A pair of peregrines have produced a lot of young on top of the stack of the Grand Haven Municipal Power Plant.
Grand Haven was the first city to ban the use of DDT. Now we also see the American bald eagle has made a come back and this is wonderful. DDT nearly wiped out all the eagles, peregrines and ospreys around the Great Lakes and other places as well.
This environmental victory inspired me to write The Dynamic Great Lakes so that people could see they have the power to change what is going wrong in the environment.
Click on the link below for images of the peregrine falcon. It is the swiftest bird.
https://www.google.com/search?q=peregrine+falcon+in+michigan&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=AHaqUfKEI6qMyAGfloHwBA&ved=0CEMQsAQ&biw=1241&bih=593
