4 ms·

As written, the title is wrong, though the article does contain the correct statement that "Guinea worm disease is on the brink of becoming the second ever huma

• stock_toaster 11y ago
  Smallpox, the other eradicated diseases, is apparently[1] still kept in storage by some countries -- while populations have ceased inoculation due to eradication in the wild. Frightening. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox_virus_retention_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox_virus_retention_contr...
• cstross 11y ago
  ISTR that when the last wild California Condors were taken in for captive breeding (the species was down to single-digit numbers) the conservationists, naturally intending to give their new charges the best care available, gave them an insecticide bath ... ... Not realizing that mites and lice are extremely fussy about their host species and frequently can't live on another organism. As a result of which, the conservation process inadvertently rendered two species extinct. (Moral of story: we tend to pay attention to charismatic megafauna and to horrible zoonoses that kill us, but in doing so our actions can have unforeseen side-effects. I don't think anyone's going to mourn the passing of the guinea worm but it has a life cycle that includes stages in non-human host species, and I don't think we're paying nearly enough attention to the implications. Oh, and the same goes for malaria, zika, and so on.)
  • taion 11y ago
    That's really fascinating – I looked up the reference, and your recollection is on point. C. californici was in fact driven extinct, possibly due to fumigation of the last few condors. Better to call this the nth intentional pest elimination, then.
  • dredmorbius 11y ago
    It'd be really interesting to see how long before that niche is re-filled.
  • devishard 11y ago
    I do think that there is good reason to make these decisions intentionally i.e. don't drive species extinct by accident. But I'm not sure that an intentional thought process should lead to different conclusions. It depends on what the goals of conservation are. Humans have, by our presence, drastically altered a variety of ecosystems in ways that can't be undone. In the case of the Condor parasites, it's unclear, but it's possible that if the mites and lice had been left alive that would have been the difference that drove the condors extinct. A non-intervention approach might have extincted all three species. A more extreme example: in the Galapagos, human-introduced flies have been killing the finches that inspired Darwin. A non-intervention approach is arguably the most natural, but this would likely cause the finches to go extinct. Intervening to kill the flies might save the finches, but it also involves ecosystem changes to kill the flies and interaction with the finches that demonstrably has already modified their behaviors. Ultimately, returning the finches to their original state is not an option, so any course conservation takes will result in an ecosystem that differs from what Darwin observed. Given we can't undo the changes we've already made, it makes sense to make these kinds of choices based on human factors. It makes sense to choose majestic condors over lice and mites, historically valuable finches survival over their unmodified behavior, human health over guinea worms, and human health over malaria and the mosquito populations that carry it. Extinction of mosquitoes in particular has far-reaching ecological effects which we should strive to understand and mitigate, but I doubt that any of those effects will be more compelling to me than the suffering caused by malaria. A pragmatic view of conservation realizes that change is inevitable, and the best we can do is push that change in positive directions, and further, that "positive" is subjective.