A remote island's battle against seabird-killing ants (2015)
audubon.org
audubon.org
Edit: changed back since people made reasonable objections.
Besides that in the same way they initially can to the island they might come there again so it's not over, just paused ;=)
http://www.californiaislands.net/argentine-ants
The page was last updated in 2016. I'm not sure of the current status of the project.
I also sense a desperate Hollywood clinging to this as a "reboot" to 'Them!'.
By trying to save these seabirds, they are actually messing with nature and the evolutionary process of the island.
It’s ok to pick winners when you’ve already broken everything past the point where it’s a healthy planet.
This is a vanity project. If they were serious about the global ecosystem they wouldn't be considering insecticides.
Oh, you don't feel that way huh? Never mind little details like
>"Today more than 5,700 tropicbird pairs nest on the island, or nearly half the estimated global population."
Half the global population left! But what is that in the face of your feelings? 6 months of intense brutal lonely activity, volunteered in a hazardous zone with little hope of any outside support, that has been extremely successful, and it's a "vanity project"!? If they were serious!?!? Really :(? I've volunteered for hurricane clean up in terrible totaled mobile parks that were some of the most unpleasant conditions I've ever faced in my life but they were a lot less harsh than this sounds. I got to go home at the end of the day for one. Perhaps if humans hadn't introduced rats and destroyed/taken over habitats for birds worldwide ants sometimes drifting onto an island would be a different thing, but as other comments have said we have. Your comment is upsetting and horribly uncharitable.
Aggressively spraying poisons into the environment has decimated insect populations across the globe and, consequently is also thought to threaten bird populations which eat these insects. It is a short-sighted solution.
The harshness of the conditions for the humans choosing to do this task really has no bearing whatsoever on the task's impact on the global ecosystem. For someone so critical of feelings, that's quite an emotional appeal you have going there.
[1] https://www-nature-com.mines.idm.oclc.org/articles/d41586-01...
All you seem to be doing is nitpicking a specific small action despite its clearly defined goal and success, when you can’t even be bothered to propose a concrete alternative action that would do better with the same resources. Just vagaries and platitudes like “insecticide bad in general”.
So you can say, with absolute confidence, that no other conceivable solution could ever have been effective? I don't know if I'm that confident about anything.
I don't agree with the defined goal or the method; it's more than just a nitpick. My concrete alternative would probably be to do nothing. Or try to mitigate climate change. And insecticides ~are~ bad in general.
You have a point. I hate the feel good videos of people rescuing individual koalas from the Australian bush fires and putting ointment on their burns. We've fucked up their entire ecosystem and now we pick one of them and treat it to assuage the sad feelings of millions of humans? Give me a break.
False dichotomy.
We need grass-roots intervention and macro political intervention. One does not detract from the other.
> But what is that in the face of your feelings?
You know damn well that was a idiomatic way of saying "according to my not-necessarily-infalliable estimation of the relevant information".
> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize.
It doesn't seem to mention which is the culprit in this case, but it may be an unnatural cause after all - especially given the distance to this island.
This is the current evolutionary force. Over time, all life on Earth will evolve to be cute.