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• 11 111 i • 4! <br />By Richard J. Dolesh <br />n emerging conservation threat is having a profoundly negative ef- <br />fect on the nation's most important pollinators, and by extension, the <br />birds, amphibians and other wildlife that live in their habitat areas. <br />This threat comes from the expanding use of the most widely used insecticides, <br />the neonicotinoids. <br />Despite the growing body of evidence confirming their toxicity to beneficial <br />bees and birds that are found in agricultural habitat areas, this group of pesti- <br />cides has rocketed to the top of the list for sales not just in the United States, but <br />globally as well. The neonicotinoid insecticides now account for more than one <br />quarter of the entire global market, and the prevalence of their use is growing. <br />"Neo- nics," as they are sometimes <br />called, have been around a relatively <br />short time — only since the 1990s. <br />However, they were the first new ma- <br />jor class of insecticides developed in <br />the past 50 years, and they replaced <br />classes of insecticides such as the or- <br />ganophosphates and carbamates that <br />were known to have serious human <br />and environmental health impacts <br />and which were implicated in the <br />killing of songbirds, the decline of <br />eagles, osprey and hawks, and the <br />prevalence of several neurological <br />disorders in humans. <br />Nicotine has long been known as <br />a substance possessing insecticidal <br />properties, and it has also been shown <br />to have less toxicity to mammals than <br />it does to insects. However, early for- <br />mulations of insecticides containing <br />nicotine compounds, or nicotinoids, <br />30 Parks &Recreation I JULY 2014 1 WWW.NRPA.ORG <br />were unsuccessful for a variety of rea- <br />sons. It was not until breakthroughs <br />in the 1980s that new formulations <br />known as the neonicotinoids were <br />developed and then widely produced <br />and marketed. They now account for <br />fully 80 percent of all seed treatments <br />as well as more than 25 percent of all <br />other insecticides. <br />A Cause for Concern <br />Despite the popularity and effective- <br />ness of neonicotinoid insecticides, <br />there are serious questions regarding <br />their impacts, particularly their long- <br />term persistence in the environment, <br />their impact on aquatic systems in <br />which effects are magnified by sur- <br />face runoff, and "their cumulative <br />and largely irreversible mode of ac- <br />tion in invertebrates," as noted in a <br />2013 report by the American Bird <br />