The U.S. wants to dump 1.5 tons of rat poison pellets on the Farallon Islands
latimes.com
latimes.com
The public response seems purely reactionary. The comments strengthen this argument with silly quips here and there like, 'we should just drop some cats', etc.. Very little rational discussion by the press and public. As opposed to Fish and Wildlife who is taking this very seriously.
Armchair experts.
It is always okay for citizens of this country to criticize the actions of our government. It is healthy to be skeptical of programs.
To be sure, he caught no end of flak and abuse from people who were over their quota, or fishing in the wrong place, or poaching, or whatever, but — at least according to his telling — the majority of citizens he interacted with exhibited many-to-most of the "good" traits we associate with "outdoorsman" and such.
Fishing is weird in some ways. My trout stamp directly funds the stocking and protection of trout waters in Georgia. The parking passes I use for fishing and kayaking locally directly fund those parks and rivers. The same in Florida, my saltwater license is funding the restocking of Redfish and other species that were wiped out by Red Tide and hurricanes last year.
For hunting and fishing you have a vested interest in the wildlife. I’ve seen hunters on TV call the DNR on themselves because they are that dedicated to the outdoors.
does not imply
> we should take ignorant reactionaries seriously
It is less plausible to me that a caution towards "healthy" skepticism is advocating some kind of utter credulity, than that it is doing exactly what it calls for: cautioning towards skepticism.
I mean, we all can agree with "healthy skepticism is good." So was their post just an in-passing reminder unrelated to this thread? I charitably interpreted their post to be a response to the comment they replied to rather than an independent platitude.
Do you have a plausible interpretation of his comments that is not consistent with my characterization?
> It is less plausible to me that a caution towards "healthy" skepticism is advocating some kind of utter credulity, than that it is doing exactly what it calls for: cautioning towards skepticism.
> The OP specifically was condemning ignorant reactionaries. Responding with "but skepticism is good" is a defense of ignorant reactionaries. Otherwise, it's the responder's responsibility to enlist further clarification instead of what can only be interpreted as dismissal + "/s" snark. I mean, we all can agree with "healthy skepticism is good." So was their post just an in-passing reminder unrelated to this thread? I charitably interpreted their post to be a response to the comment they replied to rather than an independent platitude.
If there's anything in the world that warrants some extra skepticism, it's the well-meaning-ness of government and its penchant for unintended consequences...
Would you care to explain why?
> If there's anything in the world that warrants some extra skepticism, it's the well-meaning-ness of government and its penchant for unintended consequences...
I agree in general, but the root comment made a specific argument about why certain skeptics are not compelling. I don’t see how these hand wavy proclamations about how skepticism is good is in any way relevant to that.
For one thing, the ur-comment never even allows for the possibility of non-"armchair expert" criticism of this approach. "Experts who make this their livelihood recommend this course of action." So? Experts have never been wrong, or made egregiously compromised choices, based on the facts and resources they had available?
More to the point, other "experts" were dissatisfied enough with the implications of this course of action that they asked the US Fish and Wildlife Service not to do the thing. [0]
There appears to have been on the order of zero planning for how to prevent the birds from ingesting the rat poison, or what to do if any birds who do eat the stuff then fly to the mainland, to name just a couple of the staggeringly obvious problems with this plan that, as far as I can tell, weren't even considered.
[0] https://www.latimes.com/style/pets/la-me-farallon-islands-ra...
I don't see how you could read the comment to suggest that. It is quite clearly criticizing the nature of the reaction using language such as "silly quips" and "very little rational discussion" instead of criticizing the fact that the reaction is happening at all. Anyone critical of the plan had ample opportunity to post a substantive complaint instead of a handwavy dismissal of the idea of root comment.
And, per my linked article, other experts did.
When an idea that obviously terrible gets promulgated (and, I'm sorry, but being unable to answer the question: "How will you prevent the birds you're trying to protect from also eating the poison?" ipso facto makes a plan "terrible"), it deserves little more than derision in the form of "silly quips."
I have deadlines, which need my attention more than continuing to talk past one another here. Have a nice day.
Yes, and other experts responded to those issues and there was an interesting technically interesting back and forth. Meanwhile on hackernews, armchair critics posted condescending and meaningless dismissals. For some reason you are defending them instead of advocating your position reasonably.
> I'm sorry, but being unable to answer the question: "How will you prevent the birds you're trying to protect from also eating the poison?" ipso facto makes a plan "terrible"
It isn't in any way relevant, but you can not possibly justify the claim that they are unable to answer that question.
You know when I said we were talking past one another? This right here is why.
You're attributing a motive to me, which "you can not possibly justify". You aren't in my head. You're reading the position you want to find in my words, which is absolutely not the position I'm taking.
To be clear, then, my entire position is premised on "healthy" skepticism, which I found to be the operative word in the post that spawned this trawl through pedantry. I think suggestions like "throw cats at the problem" are patently ludicrous, and if you browsed that particular thread, you'd see my comments to that effect.
I'm done here. 'dang or 'sctb, please feel free to mark this entire sub-thread as off-topic. I'm sorry for having been party to raising the noise floor.
EDIT: Phrasing.
It's hard to get a sense of perspective, because everything is so politicized. But it is what it is, and I think questioning and skepticism is healthy, given the environment.
I don't think there's a right answer here, but differences in opinion on this topic might explain why people see this very differently. One group might see the failure of people to create compelling technical arguments that the experts did not consider to be sufficient reason to carry forward. Another group might see the government's failure to convince the public of the plan's validity to be sufficient reason to scrap it.
I also wouldn't extrapolate this to things that are inappropriate. For instance when major loss of life or other such issues are in play, there's little time or relevance to see what the public has to say. So I'm speaking only of cases such as this where the consequences for inaction are relatively low.
Cognitive dissonance much.
I don't care which side you pick, both have some merit, just pick one and stick to it.
And how many years ago would they have recommended dumping Roundup in places to fix a weed problem?
How many years ago did doctors actually recommend smoking cigarettes to help with breathing problems?
How many years ago did we intentionally spray ourselves with DDT?
All of those things were done on the advice of 'Experts who make this their livelihood'. But now we've learned better, and that advice is now seen to be utterly terrible.
The very name of the thing, 'rat poison' should give us a fairly good understanding of what we will learn in the coming decades about how short-sighted of a suggestion this is, just like all the others I have listed.
Saying, 'experts have been wrong therefore my opinion is just as valid' is a poor contribution to a rational discussion.
I'm not saying "experts have been wrong, therefore listen to me", I'm saying "Using toxic chemicals to fix a problem is often a very, very bad idea".
https://www.latimes.com/style/pets/la-me-farallon-islands-ra...
Jul 16, 1981 - Five helicopters sprayed the pesticide malathion over 10133 acres today... and,
Farewell, Promised Land https://www.ucpress.edu/op/9780520211230/farewell-promised-l...
It lists vinylcyclohexene diepoxide and triptolide as active ingredients.
https://senestech.com/wp-content/uploads/SDS-051517-Final-Ve...
I'm guessing that the vinylcyclohexene dioxide may be ovotoxic in other animals or perhaps there are concerns that it would get into the water? Granted, it seems like those are valid concerns for brodifacoum too.
Biologists think it's for the best
Running up against the threshold happens to me all the time, thanks to HN's strict size limit (which used to be 100 when I started, then dropped to 90, and is now 80) and the trend for news headlines to get longer for SEO and better conversions. Sometimes I can rephrase but oftentimes I have to cut out several words to make it fit.
Who is profoundly destructive are the rats who can eat the eggs - ie. hitting the bird population at the most vulnerable stage in the most destructive and non discriminating way. Cats do rats control too. As a result presence of feral cats provides for a very healthy bird population. Anecdotally observed that myself during my childhood at the grandmother's farm - there have always been gangs of feral cats at ours and other farms around and the bustling bird population happily living in the their nests all around the main house and the barns - unreachable for cats while would be easily worked on by rats if they were existing there.
Yeah, I'm talking about actual research, conducted on large colonies of ferals, not a couple cats at grandma's farm. Some links:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/feral-cats-kil...
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/moral-cost-of-...
https://www.audubon.org/news/feral-cat-predation-birds-costs...
https://www.thespruce.com/discourage-feral-cats-386479
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms2380
EDIT: And I say this as a cat owner. My current and prior cats were literal street rescues.
i'm talking about close to 10 years observation on 8 farms each usually having 5-10 ferals. I kind of doubt that all of the research you refer to can match that.
The links you point to is mostly fear mongering opinion pieces by the people with agenda (see the link below on animal cruelty criminal conviction) - "cats kill!" - we've been there with wolves killing caribou. And cats playing final shot for 33 species - well, among all those multitude of species disappearance and wildlife population decimation humans caused it is kind of surprising that it is only 33. I mean, statistically speaking any minor factor related to humans can be accounted for final shot for a hundreds and thousands of species disappearance.
And specifically about those cat hating Smithsonian "researchers" what you so eager to link to - https://opinion.latimes.com/opinionla/2011/11/a-dc-bird-rese...
"A postdoctoral researcher at the Smithsonian's Migratory Bird Center at the National Zoo was found guilty Monday of attempting to poison cats in her northwest Washington neighborhood.
...
A District of Columbia Superior Court judge convicted her of attempted animal cruelty, a misdemeanor. "
It is like a convicted murderer coming out with a research showing that the homicide of the kind he committed is good for society. Would you trust to and post links to such a "research"?
So, to a Fermi approximation, what's that, a hundred total animals, tops?
Some of the research I'm talking about involves individual colonies that are easily an order of magnitude larger in number.
EDIT: Re: that researcher's behavior and your shadow-edit about murderers: one person's bad behavior doesn't change the facts. That anecdote is irrelevant here, and bringing it up is a form of ad hominem.
Interesting article here, which I think I originally saw on HN: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/25/magazine/australia-cat-ki... Some of the pictures are a bit unpleasant, but part of the article is about the visceral backlash to killing cats even when it is almost universally agreed to be for the greater good
Well, it's not.
>Outdoor cats kill between 1.4 billion and 3.7 billion birds a year, study says
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/outdo...
those numbers are meaningless to say the least. I never said cats don't kill the birds. What i said is that that killing is beneficial for the bird population. What do you think happens in nature to the billions of ill and old dying birds? Do you think they happily end their days in hospitals and nursing facilities? Or you'd prefer those billions of naturally dying birds just slowly die on their own (from decease and hunger, etc. not being able to fly and feed themselves anymore) and just lie around as a feed for rats?
If it were undeveloped land untouched by humans the role of the cats would be spread around among the multitude of predators, and even more birds would be killed as the total bird population undecimated by humans would be bigger, and thus the same percentage of ill and old birds from the bigger population would mean even higher number to be killed by predators.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/outdo...
Frankly that's a terrible idea. If they were going to introduce a new predator species they'd likely be better off with a limited number of terriers trained at ratting (at least for a first generation), but that could have a significant impact on other wildlife on the island even if they were less inclined than cats to hunting birds.
Overall the original plan sounds like it had a lot of thought behind it. They're talking about grain pellets (most sea mammals and seabirds aren't likely eating a lot of grain), at a time when most birds and sea mammals are away from the islands anyway, with crews retrieving as many mouse corpses as possible so other animals won't eat them and be exposed. They acknowledge that some non-targeted birds and animals will be affected, but in small enough numbers to not pose a serious risk to the population - and likely in smaller numbers than would be impacted by failing to address the mouse problems.
More details at a non-firewalled article: https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/07/11/like-dropping-a-nucle...
"the only battle-tested and proven method to ensure the mice do not return. Nearly 50 other methods that were explored such as using contraceptives, individual traps, pathogens and others were deemed infeasible or unable to end the mouse problem for good."