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Dead starlings rain on pollution bill's day
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Starlings in happier times.
As U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-New Jersey) was finalizing a bill he introduced last week requiring companies to inform communities about toxic waste, dead starlings began raining from the sky in his rural district.
The starlings pelted roads, automobiles, homes and yards around Griggstown, in eastern New Jersey, days after U.S. Dept. of Agriculture officials lured them to poison bait on a nearby farm.
Residents complained they had not been warned about the culling and fretted about pets and children picking up the dead birds.
"It was raining birds," Brian Levine, the mayor of nearby Franklin Township, told the Associated Press. "It got people a little anxious."
The USDA poisoned the flock Jan. 23 because up to 5,000 birds had been eating livestock feed on a small cattle and poultry farm, said Carol A. Bannerman, a spokeswoman for the United States Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.
The farmer had tried non-lethal methods to no avail, Bannerman told The New York Times. The USDA used a pesticide called DRC-1339, which is believed to be lethal only to birds. It causes heart and kidney failure. Native to Europe, starlings have become one of the most common species in North America since their 19th Century introduction here.
Although up to 5,000 starlings may have lost their lives, official outrage has focused on the USDA's failure to notify the local humans.
"Due to a lack of communication from the USDA, local residents, including children playing outside, found themselves suddenly surrounded by hundreds of dead birds," U.S. Rep Rush Holt (D), whose district borders Pallone's, wrote in a letter to USDA officials Jan. 29.
That was the same day Pallone introduced the Toxic Right-to-Know Protection Act, which will undo Bush Administration rule changes that weakened the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI), an online database that describes toxic chemicals released from plants and refineries.
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