Please welcome Gary of Kingsley to the site. He will be writing a new monthly blog called
”Gary’s Tip of the Month“.
Gary brings many skills to the job, not the least of which is his exceptional photography, and also his extensive knowledge of frogs and fish.
Here is his first installment:
Secondary poisoning:
Unintentional poisoning of native fish and frogs often ocurrs when we try to eradicate ants, spiders, termites and the other creepy crawlies which we do not like to share our homes with.
Even the greatest care on our own property can not control “outside” factors, such as neighbors using chemicals on fence lines and capping to control spiders. High spraying over trees for fruit fly seems to always drift over the dividing fence to your pond and those chemicals are quite lethal to pond life and toxic to humans too!
It is reasonable to “educate” your neighbors or the pest control contractors, in a friendly way, of the serious consequences that this would have on your pond life and to ask them to limit or only spray when the wind is calm or blowing away from your pond.
But, probably the most serious of continuous poisoning occurs with rat baits. The metro area has experienced a plague in the past few years and baiting the vermin is encouraged by local shires. A bait placed out at night will be slowly consumed not only by rats but by cockroaches too, which then fly or move off more than 100m. Frogs find this lethargic, dying meal easy prey, but the chemicals ingested by the roaches will kill your frogs.
There is no easy answer to preventing this happening but you could ask your neighbors to place baits on the far side of your adjoining fence or only spray on the other side when the winds are right. Better still provide them with some simple fly and rat traps to discourage them using chemicals at all.
Who knows, after seeing your pond and the interesting life it supports they might be inspired to build their own pond!
Thanks Gary! Looking forward to your next instalment
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