Pesticides are killing off America’s birds | Grist
Pesticides are killing off America’s birds
By John Upton
Flickr: Len Blumin
This adorable burrowing owl could be killed by agricultural pesticides.
Q: How are burrowing owls like honeybees?
A: Both are being inadvertently slaughtered by massive applications of pesticides.
OK, so that wasn’t a funny joke, although it might have been nuanced enough to land me a job at The Onion. And truth be told, it wasn’t actually a joke.
A study published in the online journal PLOS ONE finds that the use of pesticides is the leading cause of a decline in grassland bird species in North America. From the Twin Cities Pioneer Press outdoors blog:
The loss of habitat is real in the corn belt, as are its potential effects on a host of grassland bird species, some hunted, some not.