Feds Plan Insecticide Sprays Across 2.6 Million Acres of Montana Grasslands,

[StarryNite]

Feds Plan Insecticide Sprays Across 2.6 Million Acres of Montana Grasslands, Threatening Pollinators and Organic Farms


BILLINGS, Mont. – The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) is currently soliciting contract bids for insecticide sprays across Eastern Montana. More than 2.6 million acres of Montana grasslands are identified in the bids as potential areas for aerial sprays, to suppress native species of grasshoppers. The insecticides will be applied aerially starting in mid-June, with the drift putting at risk organic farms and a national wildlife refuge adjacent to the proposed spray areas, as well beneficial insects within the spray blocks.

Federal, tribal, and private land in at least sixteen counties of eastern Montana are included in the potential spray areas. The overall area of the planned spray blocks measures more than 4,000 square miles, larger than Delaware and Rhode Island combined, with some individual blocks measuring over 100,000 acres.

“Aerial application of insecticides on this scale will eliminate millions of insects that pollinate, recycle plant nutrients and perform natural pest control,” said Sharon Selvaggio, Pesticide Program Specialist with the Xerces Society. “Insecticide sprays on this scale across native ecosystems are short-sighted and unsustainable.”

~snip~

“It’s horrifying that the government sprays insecticides from aircraft across the public lands of the West,” said Jocelyn Leroux, Washington/Montana Director of Western Watersheds Project. “They are poisoning the food of grassland birds, including imperiled species like the sage-grouse, for the sake of public lands livestock grazing. It’s destructive to nature and it makes no sense.”

https://www.westernwatersheds.org/2021/06/feds-plan-insecticide-sprays-across-2-6-million-acres-of-montana-grasslands-threatening-pollinators-and-organic-farms/?fbclid=IwAR0i91Z_S46oVoLntPUA7ACGCtzSN1iv6xYP_QLYmko8Qn4VKdeO4o-RRDU

[Rorey]

1. This is sickening

[StarryNite]

2. Yes, it sure is.

[Budi]

3. Who's greasy palms get the lucrative contract?

What a horrific decision.

😟

[Faux pas]

4. Why why why

and is anybody paying attention?

[Hugh_Lebowski]

7. Why? Presumably cause money talks ... some insects eat the same food as the livestock

Like grasses.

And grass-fed beef in particular is popular ATM, and pricier.

I think it tastes kinda crap myself, and avoid it. Rather eat less, but better tasting, beef.

And if the grasses are being sprayed with pesticides ...

Anyways, this is a friggin travesty

[Faux pas]

16. I'm

soooooo effing tired of money being more important than living things and have been since the 60's! IMHO capitalism (AKA: GREED) is as deadly as any religion. As a country, we are an ass.

[Wingus Dingus]

5. What the fuckety-fuck

[live love laugh]

20. +++1

[liberalla]

6. There's got to be a better way! This makes me feel ill...

[sprinkleeninow]

8. That's very disturbing. There's gotta be a more eco-friendly solution.

We are $h**y stewards of our one and only planet.

[getagrip_already]

9. trump holdovers? has anyone asked the wh for their position?

Grasshoppers? Really?

[jalan48]

10. Are Republican's still running the The U.S. Department of Agriculture?

[StarryNite]

11. Welfare ranchers run the show.

Everything else pays the price.

[jalan48]

12. So it doesn't matter which party is in charge of the Executive branch?

[StarryNite]

15. America's billionaires among welfare ranchers

When it comes to this it doesn't seem to make a difference. They are extremely powerful.

America’s billionaires among welfare ranchers

America’s .01 percent like the Kochs and the Hiltons are collecting massive subsidies from the federal government.

By Vickery Eckhoff / AlterNet

March 24, 2015

Americans love ranchers: Gritty ranchers, mom-and-pop ranchers, renegade ranchers — especially those who raise livestock on the vast open prairies of the West through a mixture of hard work and rugged independence. But there’s another side to the ever-popular rancher mythology— a side the media doesn’t cover and the public never sees. The Koch brothers, Ted Turner, the Hilton family and nine other powerful ranchers share an uncommon privilege: giant public subsidies, unknown to U.S. taxpayers.

It’s the other side of the Cliven Bundy story, the other side of the Wright brothers saga—the bronc-riding, ranching family at the center of the New York Times photographic essay published this March.

That “other side” of those stories is the federal grazing program that enables the Wrights to run their livestock on public lands for cheap; allows ranchers to have thousands of protected wild horses removed from public lands at public expense. It’s also the program that earned Cliven Bundy the title of “welfare rancher.”

Bundy didn’t earn it by failing to pay his grazing fees. The welfare rancher label applies to all ranchers who hold permits to graze the vast public spaces of the West, both delinquent and not. It includes the Wright brothers; the ranchers in Iron and Beaver counties in Utah complaining that wild horses eat too much; and 21,000 others.

More at link:

https://www.thewildlifenews.com/2015/03/25/americas-billionaires-among-welfare-ranchers/

[jalan48]

17. Thanks for this info. I agree about the billionaires calling the shots.

[StarryNite]

18. The USDA's War on Wildlife

Thank you for your interest. There is so much to this topic of public lands ranchers aka welfare ranchers.
Here is another part of it...

The USDA's War on Wildlife
We're working to reform an utterly misnamed program within the USDA called "Wildlife Services." They have historically killed millions of wild animals each year using methods that endanger humans and kill countless pets. Their methods are also cruel, indiscriminate, ineffective, and funded by tax dollars.

Overview & Kill Data
Wildlife Services is a strategically misnamed federal program within the USDA that wastes millions of dollars each year killing wild animals with traps, snares, poisons, gas, and aerial gunning at the request of corporate agriculture and the hunting lobby. According to their official reports, they have slaughtered close to 30 million animals in just the last decade. Even worse, we've had whistleblowers tell us repeatedly that Wildlife Services' real kill numbers are significantly higher, just not reported.

In 2020 alone they claim to have killed 1.5 million animals, including 433,192 native wildlife species. These kills include the following vital native predators:

62,537 coyotes (plus unknown # of pups in 252 destroyed dens)
2,527 foxes
685 bobcats
434 black bears
381 gray wolves
276 mountain lions (cougars)
The officially released data on animals killed is available on the USDA website. The presentation is not exactly user-friendly, which is telling.

More at link:

https://www.predatordefense.org/USDA.htm

[MFM008]

13. Bees. Birds. Butterflys.

Pollinators.
All dead.

[roamer65]

14. So how many bumblebees are gonna die?

I miss them. They seem so rare now.

[GoCubsGo]

19. Madness.

Fucking madness.