African Wildlife & Environment Issue 77 FINAL ISSUE

FAUNA, FLORA & WILDLIFE

Poison is POISON

The majority of birders are aware that insects are an essential food source for most garden birds and their fledglings, including the fruit- and nectar-eaters. If you don’t have a garden rich in insect life, your variety of bird species and other small wildlife will most likely remain low, unless there is a good insect food source nearby. There are many natural 'controllers' of pests in the garden in the form of predators such as spiders, mantids, centipedes and a host of other small creatures. However, when poison, even the misnamed 'eco-friendly' poison, is used, these predators are destroyed along with the pests. Because predators breed more slowly than their prey, the pests recover quickly and now have fewer predators to keep them in check, so a population explosion occurs. The horrified gardener resorts to even more insecticide and, quite predictably, through the same sequence, the last few predators in

Unfortunately, many gardening articles in various magazines at times create the impression that so-called 'environmentally-friendly' poisons are okay to use in the garden. Sucharticlesareoftenmotivatedby theadvertising revenue that poisons generate. But the authors usually seem to be totally ignorant of the fact that, whilst poisons may be needed in agriculture, 'pests' can most definitely be controlled without resorting to any kind of pesticides whatsoever in the average urban garden.

Charles & Julia Botha

Although assassin bugs are themselves eaten by birds, like true assassins they ambush other insects Photograph: C. Botha

19 | African Wildlife & Environment | Issue 77 (2020)