Posted on

More on Mosquitoes (New Data)

I’ve returned to the question of mosquito eradication several times over the last year. My first post (Eradication’s Good Intentions) led to a TechCrunch article (What Would It Mean to Eradicate the Mosquito?) and you would think that I’d be done with the topic, especially in light of the long list of other topics that I have.

But that’s not the case. Mosquitoes are a story of second-order effects that keep coming up. As major carriers of disease, causing hundreds of thousands of deaths each year, mosquito eradication will be a topic that remains as long as the diseases remain. But unlike some other high-risk actions, the mosquito question draws a wide mix of people on both sides of the eradication argument. I return to the mosquito eradication question today because of new published data. Continue reading “More on Mosquitoes (New Data)”

Posted on

Importing Risk and Risky Regulations

After last week’s post I became interested in the way acclimatization societies created unintended consequences from non-native species introduction around the world. Those societies sometimes introduced species without thought to impact on the local environment. More recently, governments developed environmental protection regulations to protect endangered species. These regulations have had Cobra Effect type second-order effects as well. Let’s look at why and what we could do instead. Continue reading “Importing Risk and Risky Regulations”

Posted on

Don’t Touch Anything (Species Introductions)

So far I’ve only written about human systems and the unintended consequences that arise from them. But the “natural world” is complex also. We are just beginning to understand the interconnections of living and non-living things. Environmental ecosystems can also be pushed in one direction or another by human intervention and other activity. That means plenty of second-order effects. 

Ecosystems are often complex beyond our ability to appreciate them, but on the surface they can seem simple. Maybe this is why there have been so many attempts to alter ecosystems by adding to them or subtracting from them. The impact of those additions or subtractions can tough to know in advance, but the impact can be estimated and controlled. Beyond intentionally changing an ecosystem, there are also all of the non-human changes that occur.

Continue reading “Don’t Touch Anything (Species Introductions)”