Thus one cannot claim that DDT in and of itself DECREASED raptor population.
Following this, it would be just as dangerous to maintain that the post-1960 DECREASE in raptor population was caused by DDT usage.
I am perfectly willing to admit that abuse of any substance will have serious effects--even the abuse of accounting has had serious effects.Perhaps not (if the poster's info is correct), but keep in mind that DDT wasn't banned until the early 1970s. Also, the explanation was given that DDT was moving up the food chain to strike at the top, where the raptors are. How long would that process take? I don't know.
Here's where I'm coming from... a few of the einvironmental measures undertaken in the early 70s seem to have borne fruit... unleaded gas and catalytic converters, the DDT ban, etc. I say "seem to" because after the measures were taken, the desired results materialized.
I'm highly critical of much of "Big Green" and "Deep Ecology," but I want to be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I've got no fetish for the ban on DDT, if it turns out to have been baseless.
At the same time, the loss of lives (and in the USA the expense of replacement chemicals along with the still-unknown effects of some of them) is worth consideration.
Agreed on both points.
