DEAR DR. FOX: Your article about neonicotinoid insecticides is much appreciated. I want to inform you and your readers that the American Bird Conservancy is disappointed in the EPA's decision to deny a 2017 petition to reclassify pesticide-coated seeds. The announced rulemaking does not go far enough.

Pesticide-coated seeds are a major threat to birds, but are currently exempt from regulatory safeguards. Sadly, the EPA has announced it does not plan for that to change anytime soon. Pesticide-coated seeds fall through a loophole in the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act called the Treated Articles Exemption. The exemption allows dangerous chemicals to be used without any protections for wildlife or water quality.

Nearly 100% of corn and roughly 50% of soybeans grown in the United States are the products of pesticide-coated seeds. This issue has received attention from agencies and congresspeople, namely Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, who has asked for better regulation of this use of pesticides.

Concerningly, seed coatings are the main use of neurotoxic, bird-killing neonicotinoid insecticides ("neonics"). Birds that ingest coated seeds may die, and when the pesticide sloughs off and infects soil and water, it indiscriminately kills non-target invertebrates. ABC found that a single seed coated with neonicotinoid insecticide is enough to kill a songbird. Even more troublingly, most of the pesticide (as much as 97%) leaves the seed, blanketing surrounding lands as bee-killing dust or leaching into the local ecosystem. Once in soil and water, it indiscriminately kills insects and aquatic invertebrates, depriving birds of important food sources. Barn swallows are among the species most heavily impacted by insect loss; 40% have disappeared in the last five decades.

Soybeans and corn grown with coated seeds show negligible benefit to crop yield, but farmers who do not want to use these seeds are given little choice; most corn and soybean seeds come pretreated, and farmers have to special-order untreated seeds. The coatings come at a huge markup, making them lucrative profit opportunities for seed distributors and pesticide manufacturers.

Changing the special status of coated seeds is a long overdue step for wildlife conservation. We are facing a catastrophic loss of birds in North America: There are nearly 3 billion fewer than in 1970, with prey loss and poisoning as major contributors.

ABC urges the EPA to close this loophole. Moving treated seeds within the grasp of scientific regulation would benefit birds and humans for decades to come. Exempting them puts us all in danger. -- Hardy Kern, Director of Government Relations, American Bird Conservancy; Washington, D.C.

DEAR H.K.: I applaud what your organization is doing to help save the birds and the ecosystems upon which they -- and we -- depend. These substances are widely used in the U.S. agriculture industry and are given to companion animals to control fleas and ticks. But they are rarely, to my knowledge, questioned by veterinarians while being constantly advertised to pet owners on TV.

The great irony is that in Europe, these pesticides are condemned for agricultural use (with emergency exceptions), but not for use on companion animals! Concerns are now being voiced by some of my veterinary colleagues in the U.K.

Studies show that chemicals in topical flea treatments pollute water and can cause seizures and other health issues in companion animals, as I document on my website (drfoxonehealth.com/post/companion-animal-risks-of-flea-and-tick-insecticides). The American Veterinary Medical Association needs to step forward on this animal and environmental health issue. The political and economic power of the pesticide manufacturers must be confronted by responsible legislators and regulatory agencies. The use of these chemicals in the court of science-informed public opinion should be judged as a crime against nature -- and therefore, from a One Health perspective, a crime against humanity.

(Send all mail to animaldocfox@gmail.com or to Dr. Michael Fox in care of Andrews McMeel Syndication, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106. The volume of mail received prohibits personal replies, but questions and comments of general interest will be discussed in future columns.

Visit Dr. Fox’s website at DrFoxOneHealth.com.)

DEAR READERS: Wolves lived in nature for many generations before us. When the indigenous Anishinaabe peoples arrived in North America, they came to regard the wolf as a kindred spirit -- one that shared many human traits of kinship, cooperation and survival skills.

Now, the descendants of these wolves are being killed for sport, prized as trophies, trapped for their fur and poisoned for killing livestock. Their hunting ranges are depleted and fragmented, always shrinking with human encroachment -- especially under the impetus of the timber and commodity crop industries. The recent open season on wolf-killing in Wisconsin, Montana and Idaho -- as a purported "management" policy -- is reminiscent of the genocide of Indigenous peoples in America's recent past.

The Star Tribune's Outdoors reporter Dennis Anderson so downplayed the wolf hunt in Wisconsin ("Wolves weren't butchered after all," Star Tribune, Oct. 13) that one must wonder: What is at the root of his borderline-rabid antipathy toward this species? Anthropologically, one does not need to dig deeper than the European occupation of these wildlands, once rich in biodiversity, and the concerted extermination of wolves and other perceived threats to settlement and expansion. Anderson's outdated, though still widely shared, view of wolf management through the setting of annual kill-quotas is not science-based. Rather, it is born of cultish tradition and economy-driven support of the recreational hunting, commercial trapping and livestock industries.

Without human interference, wolf numbers are self-regulating through pack structure and prey availability in their territories. Wolves may well prey on livestock when their main food source, white-tailed deer, is reduced by some 15% annually by Minnesota hunters.

Those who call for an end to all forms of animal exploitation, and for wolf protection in particular, are variously ridiculed by those who deny justice for all. In 1920, Aldo Leopold, called the "father of wildlife management," called for the extermination of wolves and mountain lions throughout the West. He later wrote in his 1949 book, "A Sand County Almanac," about how wrong he had been: "We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes. I realized then and have known ever since that there was something new to me in those eyes, something known only to her and to the mountain. I was young then and full of trigger-itch; I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean a hunter's paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view."

Leopold helped establish what today is called the Land Ethic, asserting, "We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect. ... All ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts. The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants and animals -- or collectively, the land."

In sharp contrast, Anderson of the Star Tribune writes, "Knowledgeable wolf researchers weren't surprised by the Wisconsin wolves' resiliency, especially in the light of what occurred last year with wolves in Montana and Idaho." He elaborates, reporting that wolf-kills in these states were liberalized in the extended 2020-2021 season to reduce livestock depredation. Montana gave multiple permits to hunters and trappers and allowed baiting, night hunting and snaring, noting the wolf-kill total was "generally unchanged" in 2021-2022.

Clearly, from his perspective and others of like mind, wolves are a natural resource to be sustainably managed by killing/harvesting. There is no risk in reducing their numbers, the thinking goes, because the wolves will eventually "recover." But their "recovery" is all but impossible due to hunting quotas, illegal poaching, pack disruption, dispersal, starvation and injury, especially gut-shots.

But perhaps times are changing and Leopold's legacy of establishing a Land Ethic and respect for wildlife is becoming part of the democratic spirit of a more advanced and empathic U.S. civilization. Six endangered gray wolves found dead in northwest Washington were poisoned, according to the state Fish and Wildlife Department, and advocacy groups are offering a $51,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the parties responsible. (Full story: Associated Press, Oct. 10)

Compensating livestock owners who use nonlethal methods of predator control, as with guard dogs, for veterinary-verified wolf-kills would be preferable to wolf extermination, and a welcome step toward coexistence.

An amendment to the U.S. Constitution incorporating the essence of a bill of rights for animals, as codified in my 2011 book "Animals and Nature First," could establish the U.S. as a leader in this area. Ideally, we would then see the formation of a United Environmental Nations, working together to achieve the One Health imperatives of planetary conservation, protection and restoration.

We are surely not powerless to stop the wanton destruction, needless killing and endless suffering. In a restored ecological democracy, there would be justice for all.

(Send all mail to animaldocfox@gmail.com or to Dr. Michael Fox in care of Andrews McMeel Syndication, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106. The volume of mail received prohibits personal replies, but questions and comments of general interest will be discussed in future columns.

Visit Dr. Fox’s website at DrFoxOneHealth.com.)

DEAR DR. FOX: I read your column weekly, and continue to learn about animal care from you. One recent article brought to mind the true story of Greyfriars Bobby, a Skye terrier born near Edinburgh, Scotland.

This wee dog was a faithful companion to his buddy, Auld Jock, a shepherd in the 1800s. They were together day and night, and when Jock eventually died, Bobby slept on his grave for the rest of his life. For 14 years after the death of his master in 1858, the dog guarded the grave in a cemetery, leaving only for an hour or two to visit the tavern keeper who fed him and the sexton who built him a shelter.

There is a memorial to Bobby outside Greyfriars churchyard, and Walt Disney made a film of Bobby's life 1961. I have a novel about Bobby, originally written by Eleanor Atkinson in 1912. The story is full of twists, turns and tears, but is a must-read for animal lovers. I've just talked myself into reading it again. -- I.L., West Palm Beach, Florida

DEAR I.L.: I appreciate you bringing up the story of this remarkable dog and how the local community respected and cared for this grieving animal. I included a photograph of his monument in my book "Dog Body, Dog Mind" in the chapter discussing grief in our canine companions.

There is a monument to a dog named Hachiko in Tokyo, which I visited while lecturing there some years ago on animal care and behavior.

From japantravel.com:

"Professor Eizaburo Ueno of Tokyo University adopted Hachiko in Akita prefecture in the early 1920s. The two were inseparable, with Hachiko accompanying his master to Shibuya Station each day when the professor would head off to work at Tokyo's Imperial University. The faithful dog would come back to the station each afternoon at 3 p.m. to greet Ueno upon his return. The professor died in 1925 while at the university and never returned for a final goodbye with his dog. But the loyal Hachiko continued to visit the station daily until his own death nearly 10 years later. His own death made headlines, and he was cremated and buried next to his beloved owner."

I find it appalling that there is not yet a memorial monument, along with all the memorials to soldiers killed in various wars, on the National Mall in Washington D.C. We should honor the dogs -- some of whom I helped in a military program to improve their stress-resistance and performance in combat during the Vietnam War -- along with the many equines, pigeons, trained dolphins and other animals who have served with us in times of conflict.

Many of us hold animals close to our hearts who have comforted, protected and stayed by us unflinchingly in times of crisis. And the wild ones, from soaring eagles to howling wolves, have inspired our spirits for millennia with what some experience as a sense of the sacred. Yet there are some who shoot wild animals for sport and treat companion animals in ways child protection agencies would call criminal.

I often wonder how much better this world would be if we all had the kind of loyalty, love and devotion so many dogs have given us over the centuries.

(Send all mail to animaldocfox@gmail.com or to Dr. Michael Fox in care of Andrews McMeel Syndication, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106. The volume of mail received prohibits personal replies, but questions and comments of general interest will be discussed in future columns.

Visit Dr. Fox’s website at DrFoxOneHealth.com.)