ORFORD

when DDT'S became common to use, the The U.S. Department of

Agriculture with the responsibility for regulating pesticides realized

 that a whole lot of birds have been missing not

just in the u.s but in lots of places which almost lead to the extinction OFthe

bald eagle here is how.what had happened was that When the farmers prayed DDT's

on its crops the ddts killed all the bugs and it did that well but when it would

rain the ddts would get washed away and some how end up in a open water source

such as a ocean a lake a river a wetland and more so in the river the ddt level is

0.000003 ppm or 0.003ppm and then some zoo planon come along and take in

some of the water with the ddt in it and now the ddt level is 0.04ppm then

some minnows come alng and eaat the zooplanton and now the water has a ddt level of 0.5 ppm then some large fish come along and eaat the minnows and now the ddt level in the large fish is 2 ppm finally a eagle or fish eating bird comes along and eats the large fish and ow the ddt level in the eagle is a woping 25 p

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

Think of it this way there is this little bug that has been infected by DDTs right but there is not only one there is lots of them I mean a lot. In order to have balance in an ecosystem you need to have balance in who is prey and predators, so if there is lot of bugs there has to be lots of birds that eat the bugs to help prevent overpopulation.Now a bird comes over and eats a bug that has DDT's in in it but not only does it eat one it eats more then one bug to able to thrive in its environment. Now the exact same thing happened with the eagle it eats a bird but eats multiple birds that ate multiple bugs. Now you know what DDT's are and how they spread but what is the problem with Birds getting DDT?  

​

​

When the eagle eats the bird the DDT's get into the eagle if the eagle that ate the bird is a female what would happen is that when the female goes to lay its eggs the egg shell would to thin so that when the female goes to sit on its eggs the eggs would break making it impossible to reproduce leading to the almost extinction of the bald eagle. The best way to tell if an ecosystem is doing well is to check if the biggest predator is doing well.

So that there is balance, In this case the eagle is the top predator in the Eco-system and the eagle is not doing well then every thing under it in the food web will start to fall and start to become unsucsess full

​

-be good to your ecosystem don't use ddt

​

​