Elm bark beetles began spreading a fungus which was killing elm trees in America. Farmers rained down a hail of insecticides in 1954, unaware of what this spraying would mean to the bird life. After all, hadn’t the insecticide people assured them that their sprays were harmless to birds?

An awful shock lay in store, as dead and dying robins appeared everywhere. The robin which heralds spring in high latitude countries with its sweet and distinctive song, is greatly looked forward to after the cold, dreary winter.

But that year, it was a silent spring. The robins were dying, and soon, so were warblers,swallows, nuthatches, owls and hawks. In 1963, Rachel Carson, an environmentalist, wrote the landmark book, ‘Silent Spring’, on how increased pesticide use was wiping out bird populations in America, and even entire species.

Badly shaken, legislators in USA and Europe, banned the use of DDT, dieldrin and chlordane, but countries like ours still use them. Death lurks in our surface and ground water, in our rivers and in our skies.

What’s all this hullabaloo about ‘making connections’? You must wonder why Gobar Times harps on ‘making connections’. Another favourite mantra is — ‘be informed’. Such boring stuff, isn’t it? No tree-plantings, painting-competitions, ‘queeez’. No ‘Save the cuddly leopards’. Instead, we’re asking you to spare a thought for the bald, wrinkled, smelly vulture.

The vultures of Keoladeo National Park in Bharatpur, till recently, numbered 2000. Now there are just 4. Did I hear someone mutter, "Good riddance"? Good riddance it may seem, but chances of people following the vultures are pretty high. What can happen to vultures, can happen to us.

Experts have found traces of pesticides in the brain tissue of vultures and say that this may be the cause of their death. The food-chain holds the key. Vultures eat animal carcasses infected with pesticides from the grain that forms the cattle-feed. Other birds of prey, like fishing eagles, also become victims as pesticides enter into the plankton in water, which are then eaten by fish which eagles eat. See how the poison climbs steadily, a little higher at each level? Until it reaches the vultures. Or us. After all, we eat meat too. Vegetarian needn’t rejoice.

A government survey studied 108 samples of cereals, pulses, eggs, milk, meat and vegetables out of which 104 were found to contain pesticides, and 69 samples had pesticide levels above the allowable limit.

Vultures also clean up a carcass in two hours flat. No smell, just sparkling dry bones remain. Without the vultures, your next trip to a wildlife sanctuary will be highlighted by SMELL!!

Aldrin, DDT, dieldrin, chlordane — these fancy-named killers — have over the years led to the decline of the Californian condor, the American bald eagle, the grey partridge and song thrush in England, and the South African blue crane. Realising how deadly they are, USA and several European countries have banned the use of these pesticides but countries like ours haven’t learnt their lesson.

What happens when pesticides like these are eaten by birds (if they don’t die first) is really weird. They lay deformed eggs with thin egg shells, and many of the young birds die really soon. Sometimes, because these chemicals jigger up the parents’ endocrine systems, the male baby birds become very feminine.

So will this affect humans? Naturally, it will. Scientists in Canada, Sweden and the USA have found a very strong link between the use of pesticides and a certain type of cancer called Non Hodgkin’s Lymphomas.

And wouldn’t you think that, babies at least would be safe from the clutch of these chemicals? Well, they’ve found pesticides in mothers’ milk! Besides, 20 different brands of baby milk powder sold in the market were tested, and 90% of them showed that infants fed on them would absorb 90% more of the toxic chemical beta-HCH than was acceptable.