By Judy Hoy, Stevensville
This letter is to businesses that depend on sales of products for livestock and pets and/or of hunting and fishing supplies and related items.
If you also sell pesticides, especially those that have been shown to kill and maim domestic animals, beneficial insects and other wildlife species and to harm humans, aren’t you doing severe damage to your primary business, not to mention, being an accomplice in damaging the health of your customers?
Neonicotinoids are one of the most egregious insecticides ever developed and unfortunately, the most used. According to multiple studies, exposure to even miniscule amounts of Imidacloprid kills vertebrates (fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals) and many invertebrates that millions of species, including people, need for survival. On mammals, it kills the young and the mothers, and/or causes birth defects, resulting in severe population declines in wildlife and significant livestock losses.
If you are selling Imidacloprid, you are complicit in killing the honeybees and other pollinators. Our food supply and that of many other Montana species depend on pollinators.
See the article in the Bitterroot Star on April 9, 2019, by Michael Howell concerning the new study of Imidacloprid’s effects on white-tailed deer does and fawns, and the article by Perry Backus on the same study in the Ravalli Republic on May 19 and in the Missoulian on May 25.
In the best interest of your customers and that of most other animals, please stop selling Neonicotinoids immediately.