Local News | Bellingham woman is a warrior against pesticides, an advocate for nature | Seattle Times Newspaper

• To Lorrie Otto, the manicured expanse of green surrounding most homes is the root of environmental evil she’s spent decades trying to stamp out.

   

• She founded Wild Ones, a natural-landscaping advocacy group in Wisconsin, of which she’s still a board member. And she continues to be an advocate for natural landscaping and protecting the Earth.

   

• When Rachel Carson’s book “Silent Spring” came out in 1962, documenting the damage chemical pesticides did to birds’ eggs and criticizing government officials for unquestioningly accepting chemical-company propaganda, Otto’s campaign against DDT got a boost.

   

• “When my husband came home with a New Yorker under his arm and said they were serializing ‘Silent Spring,’ I remember dancing around the house thinking: Now everyone will know about DDT,” Otto said.

   

• “I was just one person,” she says. “Yet, I was the catalyst.”