It’s the 2nd anniversary of the attempt by Trump and his dupes to overturn the election. Today Biden held a medal awards ceremony for some of the men and women who stepped forward to help to preserve our democracy. It was both fitting and moving.
Not to detract from that ceremony, but this year also marks the 50th anniversary of the banning of the insecticide DDT. Residue from DDT is “bio-accumulated,” which meets it builds up in fatty tissues. Animals higher in the food chain are especially affected. Thus robins began to die because their food was earthworms, which had ingested DDT residue.
When DDT was banned, Pennsylvania had three pairs of nesting bald eagles, our national bird. Prior to the introduction of DDT after World War II, the state had hundreds of pairs. Slowly the eagles recovered, and they were removed from the threatened list in Pennsylvania in 2014. Today there are more than three hundred pairs in the state.
(Info on the DDT ban is from Bob Frye, “The DDT Story,” Pennsylvania Game News, (Jan. 2023), pp. 16-18.)
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