The Long Game

Greg Martin

Liberty Wildlife Contributor

California Condors are dying today from a pesticide banned by the Environmental Protection Agency in 1972.

Think about that.

DDT, first deployed during World War II to shield G.I.s from disease-carrying hostile insects, is still causing unintended destruction nearly 50 years after scientists correctly identified its devasting collateral effect on exposed environments.[1]DDT has long been one of the poster cases for detrimental environmental toxins; its prohibition and the subsequent recovery of impacted species, most famously the Peregrine Falcon, stand out amidst the great conservation success stories of the twentieth century.

So why is it reemerging as an issue in 2019?

DDT travels through the veins of the local food web from the bottom up, eventually impacting the entire ecosystem like one composite body. The pesticide affects insects; other animals eat the insects; even larger animals eat those animals, and so forth: before long, every creature along the path consumes it, with the damage it causes varying based on size and species. In large birds, DDT is an indirect killer; rather than proving fatal in and of itself, high enough levels accumulated within females cause defects in the egg laying process, leading to thin shells that too often collapse under the weight of their own mother’s warmth. Broken eggs mean no new young, which can quickly lead to extinction. This nearly happened to both the Peregrine Falcon and the Bald Eagle. But that was a long time ago, and the lesson was very well learned.

The problem for the California Condors who live in coastal regions of their namesake state is that Mother Nature often plays the long game. DDT was prohibited as a pesticide in 1972, but a great deal of it found its way into the Pacific Ocean before its true dangers were known.[2] DDT became entrenched throughout all levels of the local underwater world as small animals devoured bigger ones. And since the very biggest (think sea lions and whales) enjoy substantial lifespans, there was ample opportunity for toxin levels in individuals to build up higher and higher.

Condors, being the titanic scavengers they are, quite naturally flock to carrion wherever it presents itself. And a beached whale is an epic feast for a score of winged leviathans living nearby. While performing their natural role of cleansing beaches of their dead, they inadvertently consume flesh saturated with DDT; little by little, it builds up in them as well, and before long, the effects make themselves known.[3]Thin shells. Broken eggs. Lost opportunities to breed. And such opportunities are both rare and crucial for a critically endangered species that only reaches breeding maturity between six and eight years old, and only produces a single offspring per year, if that.[4]Condors already face the threat of poison through their accidental consumption of lead bullet fragments discarded in the remains of hunters’ kills. The ghost of an 80-year-old horror is one problem too many for a majestic animal already fighting for its very life.

While efforts to save the condor from lead poisoning through copper bullet programs and other outreach initiatives remain ongoing, not much can be done about poisons released 50 years ago or more. As DDT was long ago recognized as a threat, all that remains is to confront its aftershocks; beaches can be diligently monitored for dead sea life, then cleaned before the birds arrive to do their job as nature intended. As only a certain segment of the remaining condor population dwells in coastal regions, DDT is not the species killer it once was, although fractured eggs weigh heavily on a species where every new member is crucial.

If there is a danger in DDT’s modern reemergence, there remains also a lesson: every action, big and small, that each of us takes on this planet Earth has consequences, and it is worth considering them in full. No one can plan for every eventuality – and certainly, even the most well thought out actions can have consequences later in life – but that only means that vigilance is key to combatting unforeseen developments as they occur.

After all, it can take a long time for the next domino to fall.