In the words of former Wild Ones Journal Editor Maryann Whitman, “I’m gobsmacked.” Ortho, a division of Scotts Miracle-Gro Company says it will stop using neonicotinoids in their lawn care products. Neonicotinoids often called just neonics are a class of chemicals that harm bees and other insects and other invertebrate-life that live in our soils and ponds.
Maryann wrote in Vol 28, No 4 issue of the Wild Ones Journal: “Like many pesticides the neonics kill arthropods by disrupting their nervous systems. They cause confusion, seizures and ultimately death.”
This is great news, of course, but now others like Bayer, Dow, DuPont, Monsanto, BASF and Syngenta have to stop using neonics in their lawn care products as well. Please feel free to share your thoughts with them.
A variety of good initiatives on bees is being conducted by the Pollinator Partnership whose mission is to promote the health of pollinators, which are so critical to food and ecosystems, through conservation, education and research.
Thanks also to Ilse Gebhard for reporting this “one bright spot on the horizon.”
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