WHEN BIOLOGIST PIERRE MINEAU BEGAN evaluating the effects of pesticides on Canada's migratory birds in 1982, environmentalists had known for nearly a decade that the insecticide carbofuran was killing more than just insects. Late in the fall of 1975, for example, about a thousand green-winged teals died within hours of alighting in a harvested turnip field near Ladner, B.C. The crop had been planted six months earlier with a granular form of carbofuran so powerful that a single grain could kill small birds. Necropsies on five of the duck carcasses revealed their guts contained as few as two and as many as 125 granules.

It was not an isolated incident. Waterfowl were dying in British Columbia's fertile Fraser River valley, burrowing owls were disappearing on the prairies, and thousands of songbirds had been silenced across Canada. Indeed, wherever farmers used carbofuran, birds were perishing - indirectly from the liquid form, by eating the insects the chemical aims to kill, and directly from the granules, which they were mistaking for grit or food.

As the Canadian Wildlife Service's new pesticide evaluator, Mineau was then the only person reviewing for Agriculture Canada industry data on the effects of such products on wildlife. It was not long before he determined that carbofuran was, for birds, the most toxic insecticide registered in Canada and that granular formations were especially hazardous.

The Pennsylvania manufacturer of carbofuran, FMC Corporation, reported in 1986 that birds from at least 45 species and 17 different families had been killed - most from granules - during the company's supervised studies in cornfields. Two years later, Mineau conservatively estimated, on the basis of FMC's documented kill rates and on corn acreage planted with carbofuran, that between 1980 and 1985 in southern Ontario alone, 50,000 to 300,000 adult birds had been directly poisoned.

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Pierre Mineau photo: David Barbour

It was not until last December, however, that the federal government deregistered all granular forms of carbofuran, effectively banning its use once this year's supplies are depleted. As Mineau sits in his book- and document-crammed office in Hull, Que., looking back over the past 16 years, he says he finds it 'disheartening that it would take so long' to achieve a ban on a substance so clearly detrimental to the environment. And, he points out, carbofuran is only one of a number of chemical pesticides that pose threats to a wide range of organisms.

Mineau must have felt like David fighting a corporate Goliath over the past decade and a half. In the mid-1980s, for example, the principal investigator on an FMC study, who had agreed to fly to Ottawa to discuss his findings with Mineau, was intercepted at the airport by his company's own lawyers who persuaded him to cancel the trip. 'It has sometimes seemed like a bit of a detective story,' Mineau says.

For 'persistence in the face of toxic adversity,' Mineau has received an award from the assistant deputy minister of Environment Canada and high praise from such prominent environmentalists as Julia Langer of the World Wildlife Fund's toxicology program, who joined the crusade to have carbofuran banned. Mineau, in turn, credits his supervisors for being 'patient' and shielding him from 'bureaucratic nonsense.'

Liquid carbofuran is still registered for use on potato, corn and sugar beet crops in Canada - a fact that has environmentalists in P.E.I. preparing for round two of the battle over the neurotoxin, which kills by destroying its victims' nervous systems. Affected birds typically stumble, begin trembling or convulsing, then become paralyzed.

The Maritimes activists can count on Mineau's support. He believes a total ban is required because 'you can't find a rate of application that won't kill birds. There's no hope of making it acceptable.'

Before Mineau embarked on his current job, he earned a Ph.D. in animal behavioural toxicology at Queen's University and researched the effects of organochlorines in the Great Lakes for the CWS. While somewhat weary of environmental wrangling, he intends to carry on his quiet and persistent crusade. 'Maybe it is a bit unusual to be as stubborn and stupid as me, pushing on one chemical all these years,' he says. 'Some people say, let's not be greedy, we got 75 percent of what we wanted. But if someone hadn't been doing this work, we wouldn't even have gotten this far.'

- Moira Farr

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(This article first appeared in Canadian Geographic magazine, May/June 1999. It may not be reproduced without written permission from Canadian Geographic.)