Ginny Lovett: Pesticides are killing all pollinators and food for birds

To The Daily Sun,

We’ve had our silent spring this year. When I moved here in the mid-'80s, the cacophony of spring peepers and amphibians was wonderful. If readers woke up at 4 in the morning, the sound of singing birds brought joy. I hardly heard either this spring. We’ve killed them off.

Please, if readers are using pesticides of any kind, it’s time to rethink. When you spray for ticks and mosquitoes, they are killing off all the insects. We are killing the good bugs that enrich the soil, the pollinators that grow our food, the insects the frogs and birds eat. When one exterminates with pesticides for mice or critters, who eats the mice? Some other animal poisoned?

In 2024, my grape vines did not get pollinated and I did not get one grape. This year I looked at the wild grapes that line our byways and one can no longer find grapes, just vines.

We have other choices. Line a property with bug zappers. (May be less expensive.) Use citronella. Use safe sprays personally. Clean up standing, puddled water. Plant marigolds and plants that encourage pollinators. Maybe other solutions.

We each have a say in this. Think before killing.

Ginny Lovett

Meredith