A half century after the National Park Service dumped
DDT on the northern part of Yellowstone National Park, traces of
the deadly pesticide remain in the ecosystem. Scientists studying
cutthroat trout last summer tested fatty tissues of the fish and
found DDT – even though it has been banned in this country since
1972, a decade after Rachel Carson documented its dangerous effects
in Silent Spring.
Park records revealed that in
the mid-1950s, biologists mixed DDT powder with diesel fuel and
unloaded the combination from airplanes. Their target was the
spruce budworm moth, a species whose larvae feed on spruce needles
and kill the trees. Operating out of the Gardiner, Mont., airport,
biologists sprayed 140,000 acres in 1953, 55,000 acres in 1955, and
80,000 acres in 1957, says park biologist Roy
Renkin.
In 1957, tracer cards left out during the
spraying showed that only .18 pounds per acre hit the ground,
Renkin says, while .82 pounds of the chemical blew out of the area
or into the Yellowstone River, where hundreds of dead fish drifted
downstream following a 1955 spraying.
Scientists
say the small amount of DDT detected in fish today is no longer
dangerous, but they’re also not surprised to find
it.
“DDT is phenomenal,” says Renkin. “Had
foresters realized at the time how dangerous it was, I think they
would have looked a little further into what they were doing.”
*Rachel Odell
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline DDT doesn’t just fade away.
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