Brief Summary National Parks pesticide use.

Brief Summary, timeline so far.

I have recently discovered that our national parks are using significantly more pesticides than I had assumed and I am deeply concerned about this impact on our native creatures. The use of pesticides in our national parks could have impacts on endangered animals across the board; frogs, newts, their eggs and young, bats (have you thought about bat mother's milk?), and many, many others -- sticklebacks, birds? Many biocides have an impact on animals far more than just the adults.

In my opinion it is _critical_ that this important data is made much more available to researchers and concerned citizens who are knowledgeable about specific pesticide properties, endangered species, or habitat challenges. I am not convinced that the wonderful, hard-working people in the Parks Service can always be fully up on current research on the latest greatest neurotoxin or DNA regulatory system poison, and the impact these poisons will have on our endangered wildlife. Getting specific chemical names, the amounts used, and locations is vital for any intelligent analysis of pesticide use.

I initially assumed that pesticide use was a fairly reasonable amount - a couple of pounds here and there. I mean, after all they are protecting our natural lands right?.
But the longer time has gone on and the vigorous resistance I have received to acquiring any information at _all_, the more concerned I have become. Our National Parks should not be Monsanto's, DuPont's, and Dow chemical's testing grounds or personal playpens.

This is a summary as of November 20th. Much more detailed information than you would probably like is at..... www.puravidaaquatic.com/wordpress/summary-our-national-toxic-parks-project-as-of-november-15th/ And even worse; mind numbingly more details at.... www.puravidaaquatic.com/wordpress/our-national-toxic-parks/

_____________________________________________ Current attempts at contacting Park officials and getting pesticide data....

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Googling world wide Web for "Integrated Pest Management" "National parks (NPS IPM)",mid-october, NPS integrated Pest Management IPM required by federal law., YES! Hmmmmmmm Why didn't Yosemite superintendent mention this? And why when I asked specifically for it did she ignore it.

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Attempt to search the National Park service PUPS database link that the Superintendent of Yosemite sent me in response to my question about pesticide use in Yosemite National park. irma.nps.gov/Portal, Link gives Error message....small link at the bottom to irma.nps.gov/DataStore/Search/Quick,This error message link is _not_ PUPS. It is to a large database on Park publications, some going back to 1914. Searched this database for "PUPS pesticide" in all national parks 4 integrated Pest Management articles oops :-) but they don't really say anything other than that they're using pesticides according to Monsanto and Dow chemical and Dupont's PR departments. Now think about four results in a database that contains tens of thousands of records and includes dates from 1914; where the Integrated Pest Management offices are _supposed" to be doing monthly reports to counties, and annual reports federally. And there are only four (accidental?) entries. Oh my.

Searched for "Pesticide applied" in _all_ national parks., 34 results, Most were meaningless for our purposes. There were some published "effectiveness of ...." reports that were obviously funded by pesticide manufacturing companies. But there were two "pesticide use log(s)" one for Pea Ridge National Military Park. 1991. Pesticide Use Log. Pea Ridge, AR and the other Pea Ridge National Military Park. 1994. Pesticide Use Logs. Pea Ridge, AR.... WOW but I had trouble getting anything other than a summary. In both cases looking under "Permissions" led to the description "Permission to Download Files": "NPS Staff" other links are "public" . The reports are supposed to be public, and are on a public database, but the permission to download any usable files are restricted to NPS staff. How awesome for our public records in our National Parks.
The following searches were done on the IRMA database for Yosemite specifically. "pesticide", "pesticide application", "application pesticide", "glyphosate", "Roundup", "Round_up", "Round-up", "Rodeo, "Biocide, "IPM coordinator", "Integrated Pest Management", "integrated pest Managements", "Federal Pesticide Management", "insecticides" Nothing on _applying_ pesticides

Take home point: Most governmental agencies have not bothered to contact me back. Yosemite the only Park to contact me back has simply given me the runaround. Links that don't work, information that is not valid, and then a complete change in what they told me at first. The massive IRMA Park database which has tens of thousands of publications and supposedly includes all "science" being done in the parks includes only four references to the PUPS database, none of which have any data that the public can download. Neither does it have a single word about pesticide _application_ in most of our national parks, again they seem to be only worried about blaming pesticide drift from outside the park. Not what they've been applying since almost certainly the '50s. And lastly when Yosemite Park specifically is searched on IRMA there is no public record of _any_ publication dealing with pesticide application, the Integrated Pest Management office, or Federal Pesticide Management.