2021年10月 / 马哥(Marlin)整理

09. Rivers of Death / 死亡之河

(部分节选 - 可能不完整)

Carson begins with a nostalgic description of the idyllic salmon breeding grounds of the Miramichi, a river in New Brunswick, Canada. She describes their journey from the Atlantic upstream to their spawning grounds in rich detail, before revealing that pesticides have had a destructive impact here, too. Spraying to prevent the spread of budworm populations in Canada’s balsam forests doused millions of acres with DDT in 1954, including the Miramichi.

Active themes: The errant spray killed trout and young salmon, but also wiped out the caddis fly larvae that they depended on for survival, so that returning salmon to the stream would not be easy. In the meantime, even repeated sprayings had failed to halt the budworm, and caused fundamental changes in stream life. Although a strange series of events surrounding heavy rainfall connected to Hurricane Edna led to an unusually good year for salmon in the northwest in 1955, overall destruction across the region was massive, threatening the fishing industry’s survival.

The destruction of young fish, unintentional but foreseeable, had an effect on the local fishing industry as well. The changes wrought by spraying have upset the balance of this system, so that it is not simply a question of re-introducing salmon to the stream. Even if nature managed, by a random event, to recover in one section of the stream, the damage overall is unsustainable.

Continuing her chronicle of death in river systems, Carson mentions reduced salmon runs in Maine that are also associated with budworm spraying, and describes fish blinded by DDT who are so disoriented that they can be plucked from the stream by hand. She goes on to discuss contamination of the Yellowstone River from 1955 - 57, when dead fish lined the riverbanks and an oily film covered the water. Agencies studied the destruction caused by spraying 900,000 acres in that area and concluded by taking a pledge to cooperate to minimize losses in future control attempts.

The image of a blinded fish, plucked easily from the stream, is a disturbing, unnatural one that contributes to the sense of a present and future apocalypse brought on by pesticide use. This destruction can reach even those areas that men have decided to protect, as Carson shows by citing the example of Yellowstone, one of the country’s most popular national parks. Here, even sprayers seem to have acknowledged that all is not well.

In British Columbia, though, even after those engaging in spraying...

Carson describes the effect of pesticides on river life, specifically the loss of salmon in the Miramichi River in New Brunswick in 1953. Young salmon feed on a river's insect life. Spraying to save the forests from the budworm resulted in the death of many salmon, as well as other fish and birds. As a result of the DDT spraying, no insects remained for the fish to eat. Because good records were kept of pre-spraying conditions, the effects of the DDT could be documented. Not only were fish lost, but "repeated sprayings have now completely altered the stream environment" by reducing the numbers of insects. This food supply would take years to rebuild. While the younger salmon could feed on smaller insects that build their population more quickly, the larger insects needed by the more mature salmon took longer. Despite such devastating effects on the river life, the budworm population was not eradicated.

Carson argues pesticide-spraying campaigns are not the only solution to insect problems and should not be passively accepted as such. She argues the present and future impact of chemical spraying is long lasting and not easily remedied once it is in the environment. She cites the example of the fish kill in Austin, Texas, which resulted from industrial waste that polluted waters for 200 miles. Carson states such devastating examples are merely the known effects. She questions what invisible effects are occurring, as well as those that will occur in the future. She closes the chapter asking, "When will the public become sufficiently aware of the facts to demand such action?"