Pesticides are blowing into California’s mountains, poisoning frogs

[xchrom]

http://grist.org/news/pesticides-are-blowing-into-californias-mountains-poisoning-frogs/

?w=250&h=166
Not all of the pesticide stays where it is sprayed.

Pesticides sprayed over farms in California’s Central Valley appear to be blowing up into the Sierra Nevada mountain range, where they’ve been found in the flesh of frogs in national parks.

Such farm chemicals are thought to be contributing to the ongoing decline of frogs and other amphibians in the Sierra. Mountain hikers used to need to take care to not step on frogs, but now the animals are difficult to find. Sierra amphibians help control insect numbers and provide food for birds and other wildlife, but their numbers are plummeting as they succumb to disease, habitat loss, and other environmental problems.

Researchers collected Pacific chorus frogs from Yosemite National Park, Lassen Volcanic National Park, Giant Sequoia National Monument, Stanislaus National Forest, and Lake Tahoe in 2009 and 2010. They reported in the journal Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry that chemical cocktails of fungicides, herbicides, and insecticides were found accumulating in frogs from each of the sites. None of the pesticides found by the scientists were sprayed close to where the frogs were captured, but all of the pesticides were used in the Central Valley.


“This is the first time we’ve detected many of these compounds, including fungicides, in the Sierra Nevada,” lead researcher Kelly Smalling said. “The data generated by this study support past research on the potential of pesticides to be transported by wind or rain from the Central Valley to the Sierras.”