An editorial in today’s Times, under the headline, “Toxic Threats to Grassland Birds,” blames insecticides for a decline in “various sparrows, eastern and western meadowlarks, bobolinks, horned larks and at least two kinds of owl.”
The Times’ evidence, as often, is “a new study,” though, as often, the newspaper doesn’t provide a hyperlink to the study, doesn’t say where it was published, and doesn’t provide any information about its methodology or its funding. It doesn’t even name the authors, though it does describe them as Canadian. The editorial says:
“a new generation of nerve-agent insecticides called neonicotinoids could pose a further threat.”