Why do we not simply eradicate mosquitos? What would be the negative consequences?
In: 4690
My favorite example to talk about with this sort of stuff is the Chinese campaign under Mao, to eliminate pests which posed a risk to the country, one of these pests they were more successful in eliminating were sparrows. Sparrows ate the grain from their harvest, so they wanted to get rid of them, and they depleted their population to almost 0.
Now the issues with this, is that sparrows eat more then grain, they also eat… bugs! specifically locusts, and without the sparrows to keep them in check, the locusts in turn grew in population and destroyed the harvest themselves.
The moral of the story is to always be very careful when you are attempting to engineer the ecological balance. You’re almost always forgetting something, or simply not aware.
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