California: Largest landowner says 770,000 of poison a year in forest is miniscule
The report said SPI, which owns about 1.7 million acres in the state,
has used more than 770,000 pounds of pesticides from 1995 to 2007 on
its land — which SPI doesn’t deny. Those chemicals are affecting
wildlife adversely, like the sexual development and immune systems of
male frogs, said Tyrone Hayes, a professor in the department of
integrative biology at the University of California, Berkeley. “It’s
causing male frogs to grow ovaries,” said Josh Buswell, the Sierra
campaigner with ForestEthics. “That seems a little questionable.”
One
of the chemicals used by SPI is atrazine, which is the second most
detected pesticide in drinking water wells, according to an U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency national survey. Another is imazapyr,
which has been shown to increase brain and thyroid cancers in male
rats. “Scientific work has shown that even trace amounts of common
herbicides such as atrazine have harmful effects when present in
streams and lakes,” said Don Erman, professor emeritus at the
University of California, Davis. SPI’s director of government affairs,
Mark Pawlicki, said the company’s pesticide use is strictly regulated
by the EPA. He added that the amount of chemicals used by SPI is
minuscule compared with the amount used in the state’s agriculture
fields. In 2007, the amount of pesticide use on forested land ranked
54th in the state with 234,833 pounds of chemicals used on 187,855
acres of land, according to statistics compiled by the California
Department of Pesticide Regulation.
In comparison, the number of
pesticides used by the state’s wine industry was almost 24 million
pounds on nearly 11 million acres. In Tuolumne County, about 12,000
pounds of pesticides were used for reforesting land. Of those, about
110 pounds were atrazine, and about three pounds were imazapyr. In
Calaveras County, about 3,800 pounds of pesticides were applied on
logging land. Atrazine was not used in the county, but about seven
pounds of imazapyr were applied. Pawlicki said that SPI uses chemicals
when replanting trees on 17- to 20-acre clearcuts, allowing those
trees to grow above surrounding weeds for sunlight. Over the 80-year
cycle of these tree-farm plots, chemicals are applied one or two
times, Pawlicki said.
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