One of the Sierra Club's real environmentalists, a now deceased professor of ornithology at San Jose State, Gordon Edwards, testified before congress, and pointed at the literature, now in the Congressional Record in which the sorry ‘protect-your-own-behind’ tradition held, and resulted in millions of deaths worldwide which faux-environmentalists like to forget. Hard to tell who are the uninformed since the environmental business makes billions by appealing to the ignorance of the public. Make no mistake; it is a business. Lawyers can specialize in in law school in environmental law.
Textbooks tell about the egg shell thinning of Peregrin Falcons, while Edwards cited many studies besides his own showing how shy falcons are, particularly when environmental inspectors insisted on flying to the nesting area in noisy helicopters once or twice each week, and tramping through the laying area on the Anacapa Island to count eggs. They counted abandoned eggs, abondoned by the parent falcons they scared away. DDT actually increases the thickness of eggshells as well as the fecundity of the parents birds, in a study published by the UC School of Public Health.
Of course, taking the mouse from the cat was not very smart. Remarkable that there aren't cats with plague? Are they immune? My cat is a first class mouser, and gets rabies shots; now I'll have to ask about plague shots.
I vaguely recall, having followed the damage caused by Rachel Carson, whose “Silent Spring” caused congress to take the safe path and ban DDT, in spite of the complete lack of evidence to support its claimed dangers, that within a few years of the ban in the early 70s bubonic plague reappeared in the US.
I recall a story about some scientist who took a spoonfull of DDT by mouth, every day, for several years as an attempt to prove it was safe.
Thank you for the post!