Revenge of the Fire Ants?
In honor of Rachel Carson’s 100th birthday today, I’m setting aside the three very interesting books I’m reading right now (more about them another day) to reread Silent Spring.
It’s apt that Carson’s centennial is happening on a Memorial Day weekend in the midst of a failed war. As the New Yorker reports this week, Carson was motivated to write Silent Spring by a failed war, the 1958 war on fire ants. Like GWB’s Iraqi adventure, the war on fire ants left environmental toxins (then, heptachlor and dieldrin, now depleted uranium) and uncounted dead non-combatants in its wake. In short, the government wanted to do something about the red imported fire ants, who had spread throughout the U.S. South after arriving via cargo ship in Mobile back in the 1930s. Their answer was to spray a million acres with heptachlor and dieldrin. Woodcocks, wild turkeys, and opposums — all of which live around here, by the way — along with armadillos, quail, and meadowlarks started dying. The USDA continued to spray.
Like the war planners of today, the USDA had failed to learn even the most basic information about its self-designated enemies. As it turns out, imported red fire ants are impervious to heptachlor and dieldrin and thus continued to spread even as the toxic chemicals used to bomb them were killing other animals and working their way into human bloodstreams.
Already a popular nature writer, Carson broke out with the best-selling Silent Spring, blowing the lid off the pesticide industry and helping to spark the environmental movement in the USA. Unfortunately, even those who celebrate Carson as a whistle-blower often fail to note her deeper messages about the interconnectedness of all life and the dangers of human hubris.
I hear that we’re about to hit the 1,000 mark for dead US soldiers since last Memorial Day. Meantime, red imported fire ants have spread all the way to California. I hope they’re meeting somewhere with all of those bees who have fled captivity.
