October, 03 2013, 04:03pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Jonathan Evans, Center for Biological Diversity, (415) 436-9682 x 318
Medha Chandra, Pesticide Action Network, (415) 728-0177; (650) 861 2569 (cell)
Gary Graham Hughes, Environmental Protection Information Center, (707) 822-7711
70 Groups Urge California to Ban Super-toxic Rat Poison
Over 11,000 Comments Warn of Risks to Wildlife, Pets and People
SAN FRANCISCO
A coalition of 70 conservation, environmental justice, public health, worker's rights and sustainable farming groups joined more than 11,000 Californians in submitting comments today urging the California Department of Pesticide Regulation to ban super-toxic rat and mouse poisons. These highly toxic rodenticides -- known as "second-generation anticoagulants" -- have been linked to the poisonings of wildlife, pets and children. The California Department of Pesticide Regulation has proposed reducing consumer use of super-toxic rodenticides while simultaneously increasing their use by certified pest-control specialists.
"Iconic wildlife like the golden eagle, endangered San Joaquin kit fox and many others are literally bleeding to death from the 'worst of the worst' poisons on the market," said Jonathan Evans, toxics and endangered species campaign director at the Center for Biological Diversity. "There are safe, cost-effective options readily available that don't threaten the health of our children and indiscriminately kill wildlife."
The harm to wildlife is widespread. Researchers at the University of California found second-generation anticoagulants in 70 percent of the mammals and 68 percent of the birds they examined. Wildlife officials have documented poisonings in numerous animals, including raptors (eagles, hawks, falcons and owls), bobcats, mountain lions and endangered wildlife such as the San Joaquin kit fox and Pacific fisher.
"These super-toxic rat poisons are a completely unnecessary hazard for children and families when better, safer alternatives for rodent control exist to address current and future infestations," said Medha Chandra, campaign coordinator for Pesticide Action Network. "The best fix for rodent problems is to address the underlying environmental and deficient housing conditions that give them access to food, water and shelter -- the things that attracts them in the first place."
Data from state pesticide regulators and the federal Environmental Protection Agency document that approximately 15,000 children under age six are accidentally exposed to rat poisons each year across the country. The EPA says children in low-income families are disproportionately exposed to the poisons. Thousands of incidents of pets being poisoned by rodenticides have been reported, many resulting in serious injury or death.
But the powerful poisons have their greatest impact on wildlife.
"The most remote corners of our public wildlands are being contaminated with super-toxic poisons due to their use in egregious trespass marijuana grow operations," said Gary Graham Hughes of the Environmental Protection Information Center. "It is imperative for our endangered wildlife that these dangerous materials are removed from the market as soon as possible."
"California's proposal to limit retail sales is a good starting point," said Cynthia Palmer, pesticides program manager at American Bird Conservancy. "But unless stronger action is taken, owls, eagles and household pets will continue to die when they prey on sickened and disoriented rats and mice -- a sad and tragic fate for wildlife and pets alike."
A separate coalition of nonprofit organizations, municipalities, businesses and scientists formed the Safe Rodent Control Coalition earlier this year to promote effective, affordable rodent-control strategies that protect children, pets and wildlife. Effective alternatives include rodent-proofing of homes and farms by sealing cracks and crevices and eliminating food sources; providing owl boxes in rural areas to encourage natural predation; and utilizing traps that don't involve these highly toxic chemicals.
Background
Anticoagulant rodenticides interfere with blood clotting, resulting in uncontrollable bleeding that leads to death. Second-generation anticoagulants -- including brodifacoum, bromadiolone, difethialone and difenacoum -- are especially hazardous and persist for a long time in body tissues. These slow-acting poisons are often eaten for several days by rats and mice, causing the toxins to accumulate at many times the lethal dose in their tissues, which subsequently results in the poisoning of animals that feed on their carcasses.
The exposure and harm to wildlife from rodenticides is widespread. Poisonings have been documented in at least 25 wildlife species in California alone, including: San Joaquin kit foxes, Pacific fishers, golden eagles, bobcats, mountain lions, black bears, coyotes, gray foxes, red foxes, Cooper's hawks, red-shouldered hawks, red-tailed hawks, kestrels, barn owls, great horned owls, long-eared owls, western screech owls, spotted owls, Swainson's hawks, raccoons, skunks, squirrels, opossums, turkey vultures and crows.
California's action follows steps at the national and local level. The Environmental Protection Agency is taking action to ban hazardous d-CON rat and mouse poisons nationwide after d-CON refused to remove super-toxic rodenticides from the residential market. Sixteen California jurisdictions have also passed resolutions urging the public and pest control operators to avoid the most harmful rodent poisons. Those jurisdictions include San Francisco, Marin County, Berkeley, Richmond, Albany, Emeryville, El Cerrito, Belmont, San Anselmo, Brisbane, Foster City, Malibu, Whittier, Fairfax, Calabasas and Humboldt County.
At the Center for Biological Diversity, we believe that the welfare of human beings is deeply linked to nature — to the existence in our world of a vast diversity of wild animals and plants. Because diversity has intrinsic value, and because its loss impoverishes society, we work to secure a future for all species, great and small, hovering on the brink of extinction. We do so through science, law and creative media, with a focus on protecting the lands, waters and climate that species need to survive.
(520) 623-5252LATEST NEWS
Warren Says Trump Will 'Try to Ban Abortion Nationwide' If He Regains Power
"Donald Trump is proud that he overturned Roe v. Wade, he's proud he ripped away a fundamental freedom from millions of women," said Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
Mar 18, 2024
Sen. Elizabeth Warren warned Sunday that Donald Trump will aggressively pursue a national abortion ban if elected to another term after the former president and presumptive 2024 GOP nominee boasted about the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade—a move that opened the floodgates for draconian attacks on reproductive rights across the country.
Trump nominated three of the five Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe in 2022, and he stacked lower federal courts with far-right extremists.
In a Fox News interview that aired Sunday, Trump said the justices "did something that from a lot of standpoints is extremely good" and repeated commonplace right-wing lies that Democrats support infanticide—claims that are frequently used to justify further rollbacks of reproductive freedoms. Next week, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a case brought by right-wing groups that could dramatically weaken access to medication abortion.
The former president said he will be deciding "pretty soon" on a specific abortion policy for his 2024 campaign for the White House. The New York Timesreported last month that Trump has told advisers and allies that he "likes the idea of a 16-week national abortion ban with three exceptions, in cases of rape or incest, or to save the life of the mother."
Asked during the Fox News interview whether he thinks a 16-week abortion ban would be "politically acceptable," Trump responded, "We're gonna find out."
Trump's campaign previously dismissed the Times reporting as "fake news."
Trump on if a national 16 week abortion ban would be politically acceptable: "We're gonna find out."
He then lies about Democrats supporting the murder of born babies. pic.twitter.com/B5e41m9ftm
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 17, 2024
Warren (D-Mass.) said in response that "Donald Trump is proud that he overturned Roe v. Wade, he's proud he ripped away a fundamental freedom from millions of women, and if he regains power, he will go even further and try to ban abortion nationwide."
"By overturning Roe, Trump put judges and politicians in the driver's seat of women and their families' most personal healthcare decisions," said Warren. "He opened the door to even more extreme restrictions on our freedoms: criminalizing doctors, passing bans with no exceptions, and restricting access to IVF—and he brags about it."
"Trump said we're going to find out if the country will accept his plans for a national abortion ban, and he's right," the senator added. "He's going to find out this November when the majority of Americans who support reproductive freedom turn out to send President Biden and Vice President Harris back to the White House and remind Donald Trump that we will not go back—not now, not ever."
"As Project 2025 makes clear, opponents will not stop until abortion is banned and out of reach in all 50 states."
Right-wing groups, including the coalition known as Project 2025, have been working for months on a range of proposals that would further curtail reproductive freedoms at the federal level and undercut people's ability to receive basic medical care.
"In emerging plans that involve everything from the EPA to the Federal Trade Commission to the Postal Service, nearly 100 anti-abortion and conservative groups are mapping out ways the next president can use the sprawling federal bureaucracy to curb abortion access," Politicoreported last month. "Many of the policies they advocate are ones Trump implemented in his first term and President Joe Biden rescinded—rules that would have a far greater impact in a post-Roe landscape. Other items on the wish list are new, ranging from efforts to undo state and federal programs promoting access to abortion to a de facto national ban. But all have one thing in common: They don't require congressional approval."
Project 2025, a coalition of dozens of right-wing groups—including Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America and other anti-abortion organizations—is "drafting executive orders to roll back Biden-era policies that have expanded abortion access, such as making abortions available in some circumstances at VA hospitals," and "collecting resumes from conservative activists interested in becoming political appointees or career civil servants and training them to use overlooked levers of agency power to curb abortion access," according to Politico.
"Donald Trump is to blame for the ongoing abortion access crisis," Planned Parenthood Votes said in a statement earlier this month. "Because of his first-term actions, 21 states—and counting—now ban some or all abortion; and one in three women are blocked from access in their home states. As Project 2025 makes clear, opponents will not stop until abortion is banned and out of reach in all 50 states."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Russia's Putin Secures Another Term
The controversial leader won a record number of votes for a post-Soviet candidate even as opponents organized a protest at noon on the election's third and last day.
Mar 17, 2024
Despite protests on Sunday, Russian President Vladimir Putin won reelection with more votes than any candidate since the fall of the Soviet Union.
Exit poll the Public Opinion Foundation (POF) put the final tally after three days of voting at 87.8%, the Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VCIOM) at 87%, and Russia's Central Election Commission (CEC) at 87.3%. Putin will now serve another six-year term, meaning he will have been at the helm of the Russian state for longer than any leader since Catherine the Great, surpassing Josef Stalin.
The election comes less than a month after the second anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and is likely to lead to more tensions between the Russian and U.S. governments.
"It gives me some hope to see how many people are not happy with the dictatorship, the war, with what's happening in Russia."
"For a U.S. administration that hoped Putin's Ukraine adventure would be wrapped up by now with a decisive setback to Moscow's interests, the election is a reminder that Putin expects that there will be many more rounds in the geopolitical boxing ring," Nikolas Gvosdev, director of the National Security Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, told the Russia Matters project.
With most of Putin's prominent opponents either dead, imprisoned, or in exile, the elections results were considered a foregone conclusion by both friends and foes of his administration.
A Putin spokesperson said in 2023 that the election was "not really democracy" but instead "costly bureaucracy," according to CNN. Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the White House National Security Council said the election was "obviously not free nor fair."
However, Russian opponents of Putin did find a way to demonstrate their position with a protest called "Noon Against Putin." The protest was called for by St. Petersburg politician Maxim Reznik, according to The Guardian. Participants were instructed to head to a polling place at noon and cast a paper ballot for one of the candidates running against Putin, or to write-in another candidate or spoil their ballot.
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny had endorsed the protest before his death last month in a Russian prison, leading the Independent Novaya Gazeta newspaper to dub it "Navalny's political testament."
The action drew crowds to polling places both in Russian cities like Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Yekaterinburg and at Russian embassies around the world.
"This is the first time in my life I have ever seen a queue for elections," one woman waiting in line in Moscow told
CNN. Russian journalists reported that the lines at some stations within the country reached the thousands, according to Reuters.
Navalny's widow, Yulia Navalnaya, who had also endorsed the protest, voted at the embassy in Berlin, while several protesters gathered outside the embassy in London.
"I expected there to be a lot of people, but not this many," London-based participant Maria Dorofeyeva told The Guardian, adding, "It gives me some hope to see how many people are not happy with the dictatorship, the war, with what's happening in Russia. And we want to stop it."
Ruslan Shaveddinov of Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation told Reuters:
"We showed ourselves, all of Russia and the whole world that Putin is not Russia (and) that Putin has seized power in Russia."
"Our victory is that we, the people, defeated fear, we defeated solitude—many people saw they were not alone," Shaveddinov said
Keep ReadingShow Less
Van Hollen Says Netanyahu Spreading 'Flat Out Lies' About UNRWA
The Maryland senator defended the organization on CBS and said there was no evidence that it was a "proxy for Hamas."
Mar 17, 2024
U.S. Senator for Maryland Chris Van Hollen continued his defense of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East and its work in Gaza in an appearance on CBS News' "Face the Nation" on Sunday.
"The claim that Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu and others are making that somehow UNRWA is a proxy for Hamas are just flat out lies, that's a flat out lie," he told journalist Margaret Brennan.
The U.S. was one of many Western countries that paused funding for UNRWA after the agency announced in January that it had fired 12 staffers over Israeli allegations that they had been involved in Hamas' October 7 attack on Israel. However, some countries including Canada, Sweden, the European Union, and Australia have since restored funding. A report has also emerged that Israel tortured UNRWA staffers into falsely confessing to involvement in the Hamas attack.
"Netanyahu has wanted to get rid of UNRWA because he had seen them as a means to continue the hopes of the Palestinian people for a homeland of their own."
Van Hollen's remarks on Sunday come days after he argued for the restoration of UNRWA funds on the floor of the U.S. Senate and criticized Republican legislators who wanted to permanently end funds for the organization that supports some 6 million Palestinian refugees in countries across the Middle East, including around 2 million in Gaza.
During his speech, he pointed out that the Netanyahu government had not shared the underlying evidence that UNRWA staffers participated in October 7 with either UNRWA itself or the U.S. government. He also urged his colleagues to read a classified Director of National Intelligence report on Netanyahu's claims of UNRWA complicity with Hamas.
On "Face the Nation," Van Hollen said that the person in charge of operations on the ground in UNRWA was a 20-year U.S. Army veteran.
"You can be sure he is not in cahoots with Hamas," the senator told Brennan.
He also repeated claims that Netanyahu has wanted to eliminate UNRWA entirely since at least 2017.
"Netanyahu has wanted to get rid of UNRWA because he had seen them as a means to continue the hopes of the Palestinian people for a homeland of their own," Van Hollen said, adding that the right-wing Israeli leader's "primary objective" was preventing the formation of a Palestinian state.
However, the dismantling of UNRWA would be especially catastrophic amid Israel's ongoing bombardment and invasion of Gaza, which has killed more than 31,000 people and put the survivors at risk of famine. No other organization has the infrastructure in place to distribute the necessary aid.
"If you cut off funding for UNRWA in Gaza entirely, it means more people will starve, more people won't get the medial assistance they need, and so it would be a huge mistake," Van Hollen said.
He also said that only 14 of the agency's 13,000-strong staff in Gaza had been accused of participating in the October 7 attack.
"We should investigate it, we should hold all those people accountable, but for goodness' sake, let's not hold 2 million innocent Palestinian civilians who are dying of starvation... accountable for the bad acts of 14 people."
Van Hollen also repeated his call for President Joe Biden to condition the sale of offensive military weapons to Israel on the country obeying international law and allowing aid into Gaza. While Israel sent the U.S. a letter saying it was in compliance with the law, "the day it was signed, clearly the Netanyahu government is not in compliance, because we see that they're continuing to restrict humanitarian assistance," he told Brennan.
Also on "Face the Nation" Sunday, United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) Chief Executive Catherine Russell described the impact that a lack of aid was having on the children of Gaza.
"We know now that children are dying of malnutrition in Gaza," she told Brennan.
Russell said that not enough aid was reaching those who needed it, calling both air drops and sea deliveries "a drop in the bucket."
She also called for greater transparency into what was actually happening in Gaza and the difficulties of delivering aid.
"The world should be able to see what's happening and make their own judgments about what's going on," Russell said.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular