THE AUDUBON BULLETIN 
Published Quarterly by the 
ILLINOIS AUDUBON SOCIETY 
Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, Ill., 60605 
Number 148 December 1968 
THE PRESIDENT'S PAGE 
by RAYMOND MOSTEK 
Conservationists who have become alarmed about the widespread, in- 
discriminate spraying of pesticides in the United States have now turned 
some of their attention and criticism to the heavy use of herbicides used 
in Vietnam by the U.S. Army Air Force. There has been a strong escalation 
of chemical warfare in that S.E. Asian country as reported in several 
journals, despite suggestions by scientists that we do not know enough 
about them to judge their effect upon the country and its wildlife. Thomas 
O. Perry of the Harvard University Forest has pointed out “that a land 
without green foliage will quickly become a land without insects, without 
birds, without animal life of any kind.” Perry has exclaimed that the 
Department of Defense has sprayed a sufficient amount of herbicides in 
Vietnam to kill 97% of the above-ground vegetation on over 10 million 
acres of land, about the size of four states. 
The U.S. Air Force is now destroying Asian rice crops by the use of 
arsenic-containing herbicides, which are sprayed over the south Vietnamese 
rice paddies. Curiously, the area was once known as the great rice-bowl 
center of S.E. Asia, and it exported millions of tons of rice to other nations. 
Due to the war, the U.S.A. is now sending about 600,000 tons of rice to the 
people of South Vietnam. It is coming from such states as Texas, Missouri, 
Mississippi, Arkansas and Louisiana. This had Professor A. W. Galston of 
the department of botany at Yale wondering about the harm to the Vietna- 
mese people, to the soil and to agriculture, when the land is subject to 
intense spraying of herbicides. 
The war is costing U.S. taxpayers about $2 billion a month, according 
to some experts, though others declare nobody really knows. However, 
the Pentagon admits that it spent $12,000,000 for chemical sprays in 1965-66; 
$38,800,000 in 1966-67; and $45,900,000 in 1967-68. Recently, the Department 
of Defense announced that it planned to spend $70,800,000 in herbicides 
in the Vietnamese war during the 1968-69 period. The military now gets 
uver 69% of the federal budget. 
The Pentagon has claimed the spraying is necessary to destroy food 
crops, the intense jungle, and to prevent further growth of trees to enable 
the army to fight more effectively. At a recent time in this nation’s history, 
some segments of American society felt it was unfashionable to question 
those in high political or military positions: for some unfathomable reason, 
it was considered that these decisions were infallible, and that they po- 
sessed information and knowledge and wisdom beyond the reach of other 
mortals. Their halos have now become tarnished as their blunders have 
become more and more obvious. 
