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Comment by zepto | Hacker News Reader

This seems like a phenomenally bad idea.

Many areas of rainforest are only protected against illegal logging operations because they are dense with malarial mosquitos.

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Stopping illegal logging is worth the death of hundreds of thousands of children every year? That is a low ball estimate of the death due to mosquito borne illnesses.

Yes, the rainforests are irreplaceable and a key part of the biosphere. Making them vulnerable to removal could easily be worse than the deaths due to mosquito borne illnesses.

So our only hope against humans doing illegal logging is malarial mosquitos?

At the moment, yes.

This seems like phenomenally bad logic.

We shouldn't work to eradicate a worldwide pest that causes hundreds of thousands (millions?) of annual deaths because it might encourage more logging?

The solution to every big problem humanity faces will inevitably create other smaller problems for us to solve. Two steps forward...

It’s guaranteed to cause more logging, and the problem caused is not smaller.

Don’t straw man. Steel man if you are serious about debating this.

Protecting the rainforest is fine, but relying on loggers being scared of mosquitoes isn’t an effective way to do it. What if they find good repellents? Or start spraying the forest before logging? We can kill the mosquitoes and work to save the forest, they’re not exclusive.

Yes - the mosquitos may one day not be effective in protecting the rainforest.

You are saying we should make that happen as soon as possible.

Killing the mosquitos is not exclusive with working to save the forest only if you have another way to save the forest.

Nothing has been able to prevent the illegal logging except mosquitoes. What is your suggestion?

Easy, use CRISPR to make trees immune to chainsaws.

That's a solved problem: landmines. \s

Actually not a bad suggestion, except that land mines are much easier to defeat than mosquitos.

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