To the Editor:
A “Bee Safe Neighborhood” is one in which a substantial number of homeowners have committed to never use neonicotinoid pesticides, thus creating a sanctuary for honeybees and all the other creatures that co-exist with us on our properties. The “environment” is not somewhere else – the environment is right here in Northern Virginia, and we all have the ability to make this a healthy local habitat for ourselves as well as for our non-human neighbors.
Is your yard full of life, with butterflies fluttering everywhere, and frogs and insects serenading you night and day? It used to be, and it can be again. But people all over the area are reporting an alarming decrease in the numbers of butterflies, bees, crickets, cicadas, and others. The hard winter may have had an effect, but we have seen hard winters before that were not followed by a silent summer. Our windows at night used to be covered with moths that were attracted to the lights, but those disappeared years ago. Approximately a third of the honeybees in Virginia have been dying every year, creating a very big threat to our food production.
Harmful chemicals that we spread and spray are a major contributor to this wholesale slaughter. Insecticides that are intended for one type of “pest” cannot discriminate – they kill many other species as well. Nesting birds require hundreds of caterpillars per day for their babies, so if we try to protect our tomato plants with chemicals, we will be killing the birds indirectly. Spraying for mosquitoes – an unnecessary and futile exercise when all that was needed was to eliminate stagnant water – results in the wholesale death of important elements of the food chain. The worst of these chemicals are the neonicotinoids, systemic pesticides that permeate plants and turn their nectar and pollen into poison.
So please do not use neonicotinoids. Ask your garden center whether they were used on the plants you plan to bring home. Better yet, don’t use any type of poison outside, whether insecticide or herbicide, and plant native plants to provide food sources for invertebrates. You can read about Bee Safe Neighborhoods at http://livingsystemsinst.org. If you happen to live on the mid-section of Chapel Road or any of the roads that feed into it, contact takeouradvice@takeouradvice.org to indicate your commitment to avoiding neonicotinoids in the first official Bee Safe Neighborhood that is forming in Virginia.
Margaret Fisher
Clifton