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Comment by ledauphin | Hacker News Reader

honest question: does public awareness of their invasiveness have any chance of making a difference? does the salt-and-vinegar thing at all meaningfully reduce their population? i have trouble imagining it but would love to hear of evidence to the contrary.

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The province of Alberta in Canada is famously rat free. They stopped the spreading westward wave of rats in the 1950s and have maintained this status.

https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/alberta-rat-free

https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/15/alberta-rat-ca...

https://www.alberta.ca/albertas-rat-control-program.aspx

this is really interesting. i would have assumed poison would be a major factor in control, but at least on the government website that is not suggested to be the case.

The salt and vinegar thing annoyed me. If you're putting the worm in a sealed zip lock bag, isn't it going to die anyway, eventually? Salt and vinegar just seems to be gilding the lily.

I think it's assumed you throw the bag away as trash. The bag might break and the worm escape. I'm willing to bet the worm can live for some time in the bag.

Maybe the worm could tear through?

No and no. It is possible to stop invasive species, but it requires catching them before they have spread widely, or that they are restricted to a small area (like rats on Midway Atoll). Once an invasive species has spread widely, there is very little that can be done. You can extirpate them in a small area, but due to the characteristics that make them invasive, it’s virtually impossible to completely get rid of them.

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