The Spring of Our Discontent

The scene is increasingly common in Southern California. Flowers stand not full and robust but drooped over and shriveled. The roses for display on the dining table are so distorted from their natural shape that they look more like doilies for the place settings. Outside dead bees line the patio; crickets aren’t chirping. If it is not quite a silent spring around here right now, it is certainly a disquieted one.

The problem now is aphids, those parasitic insects that huddle together on new shoots, buds and leaves. They are invading local gardens in distressingly high numbers. The natural predators that usually keep aphids under control--ladybugs, lacewings and tiny wasps--have been destroyed in some 400 square miles of Southern California. So have wild honeybees, which pollinate fruit trees. All this, plus the lack of chirping crickets, have been attributed to aerial malathion spraying that has descended upon many local areas during the last nine months.

The state has sprayed the pesticide in a campaign to rid the region of the crop-destroying Mediterranean fruit fly. That pest continues to pop up in unexpected places, giving farmers fits, local residents sleepless nights and state officials heartburn. But one of the certain unfortunate side effects of malathion spraying is that it is extraordinarily efficient in eliminating some “good” bugs.

Without them, the natural controls crucial to a linked ecosystem begin to break down. And so, we are all robbed of one of the great joys of spring--a lovely and healthy garden. The negative effects were expected, say entomologists, and the bad news in the back yard is nothing compared to the damage the Medfly could cause to the food supply.

Maybe. We can only hope that Rachel Carson’s words from 1962 don’t return to ring in our ears: “It is ironic to think that man might determine his own future by something so seemingly trivial as the choice of an insect spray.

“All this has been risked--for what? Future historians may well be amazed by our distorted sense of proportion. How could intelligent beings seek to control a few unwanted species by a method that contaminated the entire environment and brought the threat of disease and death even to their own kind? Yet this is precisely what we have done. All this is not to say there is no insect problem and no need of control. I am saying, rather, that control must be geared to realities, not to mythical situations, and that the methods employed must be such that they do not destroy us along with the insects.”