Apolonio Flores, an environmental science sophomore and Environmental Awareness Club event coordinator, presents during a meeting Wednesday in the Student Union’s Palmetto Room on the Edinburg campus. PHOTO COURTESY MACKENZIE FELDMAN
The Environmental Awareness Club created a Re:wild UTRGV petition to end the use of pesticides on campus to protect groundskeepers, native plants, pollinators and waterways.
Re:wild UTRGV is an initiative of the Environmental Awareness Club.
Apolonio Flores, an environmental science sophomore and event coordinator for the Environmental Awareness Club, participates in farmers markets on campus, service events and workshops.
“We organize within and outside of campus to help out any environmental issues,” Flores said. “… Just recently we’re doing the Re:wild stuff.”
Mackenzie Feldman is the founder and director of Re:wild Your Campus, a nationwide movement that seeks environmental justice to end the use of pesticides on college campuses. Feldman is an agricultural, environmental, and sustainability sciences graduate student and a member of Re:wild UTRGV.
“Re:wild Your Campus is a national organization, and we work with students, staff, faculty across the country to eliminate synthetic pesticides from schools,” she said.
Feldman said seeing toxic pesticides being sprayed initiated the petition.
“When we saw someone spraying, that’s really when the momentum for this initiative started here because it was like, OK they’re spraying 2,4-D and dicamba, those are really toxic pesticides, let’s get this going on our campus,” she said. “That really spurred us into action.”
The petition calls for UTRGV President Guy Bailey to “prioritize the health and wellbeing of the UTRGV community: commit to organic management of campus grounds and play a role in the restoration of our native habitat,” according to its website.
Francisco Espinoza, a mechanical engineering sophomore, said there are pros and cons to using pesticides.
Ali Ramos (from left), an environmental science junior and Environmental Awareness Club member; Apolonio Flores, an environmental science sophomore and EAC event coordinator; Olivia Starkweather, a sustainable agriculture and food systems senior and EAC member; and Sofia Martinez, an environmental science junior and EAC vice president; hold signature forms April 3 for students in support of the Re:wild UTRGV petition. The Environmental Awareness Club at UTRGV advocates to find solutions and alternatives to using harmful pesticides to have sustainable and safe natural environments. PHOTO COURTESY MACKENZIE FELDMAN
“Personally, I think if there’s alternatives to pesticides they should be looked into because I do know that some of them are dangerous, to at least people, and the environment, too,” Espinoza said.
He said pesticides can also interfere with wildlife on campus.
“I also see the benefit of using pesticides because I do imagine there would be a lot of pests considering all the plants here,” Espinoza said. “There’s already a lot of wildlife here as it is and it can also hurt the wildlife that’s here too like the squirrels, birds and stuff.”
Pesticides impact local ecosystems and biodiversity by eliminating plant life and insects.
“Most commercially used pesticides are not species specific, meaning that they target everything so, both like the things that are considered pests are the weeds, also all the beneficial insects and plant life that is native to our ecosystem,” Flores said. “So it’ll just remove everything, not just what they want to get rid of.”
The Environmental Awareness Club held a movie screening of “Into the Weeds” April 3. The film is a documentary following the court case of Dewayne “Lee” Johnson v. Monsanto Company.
“We had a movie screening … [Feldman] was actually [at the trial], just about this person who sued this pesticide company [Bayer] because they got sick,” Flores said. “They got cancer from that.”
Feldman’s goal is to achieve a cultural shift by spreading awareness about pesticides.
“We know that schools are one place that they are using pesticides, and when we think about agriculture, they’re used at such a high rate and farm workers are exposed,” she said. “Making this cultural shift to change not only schools but public spaces and eventually, agriculture.”
General meetings for the Environmental Awareness Club are held at 1:30 p.m. every Wednesday in the Student Union’s Palmetto Room on the Edinburg campus. Students can sign the petition at actionnetwork.org/petitions/lets-rewild-utrgv/. As of press time, the petition has collected 325 signatures and is striving for 1,000.
Apolonio Flores (left), an environmental science sophomore and Environmental Awareness Club event coordinator, and Mackenzie Feldman, an agricultural, environmental, and sustainability sciences graduate student and founder and director of Re:wild Your Campus, talk about the Re:wild UTRGV petition Wednesday during an interview with The Rider. The petition aims to stop the use of synthetic herbicides, pesticides and other dangerous chemicals across college campuses. Jose Medina/THE RIDER
