A review of existing and potential New World and Australasian vertebrate pesticides with a rationale for linking use patterns to registration requirements

Registration is a necessarily sophisticated evaluation process applied to vertebrate pesticide products. Although conducted to minimize any potential impacts upon public health, the environment and food production, the all-encompassing process of registration can stifle innovation. Vertebrate pesticides are rarely used to control pest animals in food crops. In contrast to agrochemicals, relatively small amounts of vertebrate pesticides are used (50.1%), usually in solid or paste baits, and generally by discrete application methods rather than by broad-scale spray applications. We present a hierarchy or sliding scale of typical data requirements relative to application techniques, to help clarify an evolving science-based approach which focuses on requiring data to address key scientific questions while allowing waivers where additional data have minor value. Such an approach will facilitate the development and delivery of increasingly humane, species-targeted, low residue pesticides in the New World, along with the phasing out of less desirable chemicals that continue to be used due to a lack of alternatives.

Book Review of Twilight of the Mammoths: Ice Age Extinctions and the Rewilding of America by Paul S. Martin

Applying ecological studies to the adaptations of prehistoric human hunter-gatherer groups has greatly increased our abilities to interpret effects of an ever-changing environment and our access to critical resources on these populations. The Pleistocene/Holocene transition, its climate and human genesis in the new world, draws intensive interest from a number of scientific communities. In Twilight of the Mammoths, Paul Martin adds his views, which are of no surprise, on the megafaunal extirpations during a cultural period referred to in North America as Clovis.