Madison considers using DDT to fight Dutch elm disease
- Date Range
- 1962 – 1962
- Title
- Madison considers using DDT to fight Dutch elm disease
- What occurred
-
In 1954, Dutch elm disease was first identified in Madison, WI, after having been introduced to the United States in the 1930s. As the disease continued to spread, more elm trees began to die off, causing Madison to seek out a solution. At the time, most affected areas in the country had instated sanitation programs where DDT was sprayed on the affected acres. However, when this solution was being considered for Madison in 1962, professors at UW-Madison had found in their research that the spraying of DDT caused high levels of bird loss. Additionally, Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" had just been released. This sparked a lot of public discourse on the issue. On October 28, 1962, a newspaper article was published which highlighted different opinions on the spraying of DDT. One professor of entomology at UW-Madison said, "If elms are lost in our particular neighborhood, they would be more sorely missed than robins, I'm sorry to say." Another professor, one that had participated in the bird study, said "We don't necessarily have to treat between robins and elms." He went on to explain that there are alternatives to spraying and that he hopes will be thoroughly explored before resorting to DDT.
In 2018, the disease killed a 140-year-old tree on UW-Madison's campus which had been lovingly nicknamed "Elmer." The picture below is from around the 1950s and shows Elmer on the left. - Location
- 6210 S Highlands Ave, Madison, WI 53705
- Image Citation
- https://madison.newspapers.com/image/406397748/?terms=Rachel%20carson&match=1 — https://news.wisc.edu/dutch-elm-disease-claims-elmer-a-campus-tree-more-than-a-century-old/
- Student name(s)
- Hailey Stoltenberg