Hampshire & Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust is concerned the Government’s recent decision to allow the use of a banned, bee-killing pesticide on English sugar beet crops in 2022 will put wildlife at risk.
For the second year running, and just weeks after passing the new Environment Act, the Government has given sugar beet farmers the green light to use the neonicotinoid thiamethoxam in response to a virus caused by aphids – despite the Government's own scientific advisors explicitly advising against its approval.
The deadly thiamethoxam was banned EU-wide in 2018 because of the widespread harm it causes to wildlife; killing bees and other pollinators and polluting rivers. Generally, just one teaspoon of neonicotinoids is enough to kill 1.25 billion honeybees, while a recent study showed a single exposure to a neonicotinoid had significant impacts on bees' ability to produce offspring. The Government's own advisors recommended against allowing the use of the pesticide due to its impacts on pollinators and the serious harm to river life when the pesticide inevitably makes its way into our waterways.
Debbie Tann, Chief Executive of Hampshire & Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust, says: ‘’The government is once again allowing the use of a dangerous, banned chemical that has been proven to poison our precious pollinators and pollute our internationally important chalk streams.
We are at a breaking point: Just this week, researchers have shown that we are exceeding the planetary boundary for pollutants and chemicals which are flooding into our environment and overwhelming our ecosystems.
“To reintroduce this deadly chemical is a step backwards, it would be like re-approving asbestos use in buildings, or lead paint in children’s toys. It is outrageous that our leaders have even considered polluting our fields and rivers in this way. We demand that these silent killers should never be used again.”
Last year, over 100,000 people signed The Wildlife Trusts’ petition in opposition to the Government's decision to authorise pesticides and every MP across Hampshire and the Isle of Wight was contacted about this issue. It’s clear that the Government should be going much further to ensure that farmers have alternatives to harmful pesticides and increase the protection for bees and other wildlife from the harm caused by them.
Fortunately, although thiamethoxam was authorised for use last year, a cold winter meant large numbers of virus-carrying aphids were killed off, so the threshold for the pesticide’s use was not met and bees were protected. However, climate change is set to increase the frequency of warmer and wetter winters in the UK, limiting the opportunity for natural die-off of the aphids that spread the sugar beet virus.
This latest announcement raises real concerns that the emergency authorisation granted by the Government for the use of thiamethoxam could become a common, if not annual, occurrence and Hampshire and the Isle of Wight could see the return of routine application of neonicotinoid pesticides.
The Trust is asking members of the public to Tweet or write to their MP and demand the Government reverses this decision and instead support farmers to find alternatives to these poisonous pesticides.
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