Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani said that in response, the city would extend its pesticide spraying to northern Queens and Staten Island, where spraying began earlier this week, in spite of protests and a lawsuit brought by environmentalists.
But what happens in nature is not allowed to happen in the modern, chemical-drenched world, where spraying destroys not only the insects but their principal enemy, the birds.
Indeed, in Colombia, where spraying is widespread, the output of coca is multiplying, not falling.
The fishermen and packers fear that the Atlantic salmon in streams running through forests where spraying has taken place may be affected by the chemical.
More than 200 insect and rodent species, for example, have developed resistance to the pesticide DDT in parts of the world where spraying has been intense.
Supporters of spraying are also fending off assertions that glyphosate has caused a variety of serious maladies in areas where spraying has taken place.
UNODC has said the suspension of aerial spraying was unlikely to affect the cultivation area because the most growth in area was found in zones where spraying was already off limits, such as nature reserves and indigenous reservations.
According to the study, published in the journal PeerJ, these declines have largely occurred in England, where neonic usage is at its highest; in Scotland, where spraying of the pesticide is comparatively low, butterfly numbers are stable.
In areas where spraying is intense, any mutation that confers resistance, even if it's only partial, is hugely beneficial to mosquitoes, so it spreads quickly.
Additional sources of reinfestation include recrudescence (hatching of eggs laid prior to spraying) [10], [11], survivors of the insecticide treatment [2], [12] and migrants from peri-domestic structures where spraying is likely not as effective.
We are currently monitoring entomological transmission parameters of inland-riparian village pairs where spraying was conducted by the river and in other pairs where no spraying was carried out.
