In chapter 10, Carson deals with the attempts to control various insects using aerial spraying. Here in New England and New York the Gypsy Moth infestation during the 1950s and 1960s was tackled with spraying of DDT. Concerned citizens on Long Island mounted a legal campaign to stop the spraying arguing that about the dangers of DDT contamination in milk as a result of the treatments. The case made it all the way to the US Supreme Court which chose not to hear the dispute but by then the State of New York abandoned its spraying campaign. "The expensive spraying operation that had cost the Department dearly in public confidence and good will - the operation that was intended to wipe out the gypsy moth for ever - had in reality accomplished nothing at all." (p. 161) Here it is 2014 and we still have gypsy moths in our ecosystem however the infestations are no longer devastating trees with complete defoliation of the local forests. Scientists have been working on ways to limit the spread of this insect and you can read more at the US Forestry Site.
After learning about evolution and insecticide resistance is there ever any hope of eradicating insect populations?
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At least for now, I don't believe there is any solution to completely eradicate insect populations. With so much emphasis on keeping the environment clean, I don't think there is any safe insecticide that can wipe out various destructive insect populations, or even an alternative with enough potency. the methods by which these chemicals are distributed is also unsafe to the environment seeing they can seep into water supplies and kill other animals and plants that weren't intended to be harmed. If the current cycle continues, I don't think there is any hope to completely eradicate insect populations
While it is possible to rid an alien species from an ecosystem, I believe the smaller in size these individuals are; the harder it is to do this completely. The amount of time and money it would take to eradicate the Gypsy Moth from local forests would be outrageous and could very well be a waste of time. Since they aren’t devastating trees any longer, we should learn from the Gypsy Moths (and other organisms) that things can be very delicate in an ecosystem and should humans interfere too much, there will be consequences. And who knows, we may find that these Gypsy Moths could be the key to discovering new medicines or saving other endangered species’ lives.
At this point in time, I don't think that there is a solution to eradicate insect populations. If there were such solution, humans would need to think about any consequences in this process. If humans completely eradicated any certain insect species, long term consequences could arise. Insects are a key part in our ecosystem and if they are tampered with, it could eventually effect the human race and the world as a whole.
At this point, I do not believe there is a safe and effective way to eradicate populations of insects. Too much time and money has been put in to trying to eliminate them, though in reality, this only leads to a negative shift in the ecosystem. We need to realize that there is no harmless way to put mass amounts of chemicals into the environment, and expect nothing to come of it. Everything in the environment has its niche, so even a slight alteration to an insect population can greatly affect its surroundings.
There is not any hope of eradicating insect populations right now because there is no easy solution to the insect overpopulation. The sprays will destroy our ecosystems, then that will lead to problems for plants, animals and humans. The earth doesn't need any more unnecessary harmful chemicals to be released, the DDT is an extremely vicious treatment for insects. Hopefully we can find a cheaper and less harmful way to eradicate overpopulated insects.
From what we've learned about evolution, and mass populations I find it really hard to believe that we would be successful at destroying an entire species. I mean it's technically like essentially nuking an entire race. You can't do that. And with everything we've learned about pesticides and insecticides already in this book, they have so many harsh side effects and chemicals that will affect other species, thus being a waste of time and contradicting the goal. At the beginning of this chapter, the author spoke about how these "poisons" were affecting anything "human or inhuman", meaning they are a huge problem, and less of a help.
I believe with technology we will be able to eventually be able to eradicate insect populations because we will be able to advance in certain things which will help to stop or reduce the contamination people were finding and seeing in their food and other products. But for right now i dont believe there is any master solution to fixing the DDT contamination because the areas that are sprayed are suppose to kill off the insects which are near food products and bodies of water mainly. To satisfy both the citizens and the outcome of the spray i believe over a period of time technology will advance and come up with a solution.
I believe with technology we will be able to eventually be able to eradicate insect populations because we will be able to advance in certain things which will help to stop or reduce the contamination people were finding and seeing in their food and other products. But for right now i dont believe there is any master solution to fixing the DDT contamination because the areas that are sprayed are suppose to kill off the insects which are near food products and bodies of water mainly. To satisfy both the citizens and the outcome of the spray i believe over a period of time technology will advance and come up with a solution.
The infestation of the Gypsy Moth in the first place was more than likely due to something unintended by us humans, and then we struggle to come up with a good way to help decrease the effect of our mistakes. The spraying of DDT was ignorant of our society, and the fact that it did nothing to the Gypsy Moth population makes it even worse. While we don't have anything to rid of the extensive amount of insects on this earth I do think one day we will. However, I do not look forward to that day because I don't think its our place to decide what populations of what die and grow, we would be messing with nature and by now you'd think we learned from that.
I don't believe there will ever be any hope of eradicating an entire insect population (not to mention a safe way to do so), but I also don't believe that will ever be a necessary, or reasonable solution to their presence. As we saw in the recent “hare and lynx” packet from class, populations will naturally fluctuate. In this case, the infestation of Gypsy Moths was naturally restored overtime to a level that was no longer overwhelming to the community, despite being unaffected by the harmful DDT spraying. Unfortunately, as the trend is to destroy nuisances without considering the long-term consequences beforehand, the surrounding areas were left dangerously contaminated. We should think twice about disrupting nature’s species with human intervention, and instead remember that each insect, in its own way, plays some useful part within their environment. After all, the eradication of an entire species has disastrous effects on other species that depend upon it.
Personally, I am not a fan of the "immediate response" tactics of spraying insecticides and having pest control in nature. I feel that while there will be significant damage done to an environment by an alien species, we only worsen the total damage by reacting to the invasive species. While the Gypsy Moths may have reaped havoc upon a huge tree population, nature has always found a way to evolve itself to sort those kinds of things out. Our problem is, we aren't patient enough to let nature adjust to the foreign species, so we spray pesticides and do even more damage. So really, there isn't much of any NEED to eradicate a species from an environment when nature will sort itself out.
At this point and time, I don't think there's anything we can do to completely demolish insect populations. Unless we can find a suitable, safe and eco-friendly way to eliminate populations, I think we're going to have to live with little intrusions and disruptions. As long as it doesn't reach an alarming level, I think we're best off leaving nature as is.
As of now I believe there is no solution to the complete eradication of an insect population. From previous chapters, to wipe out an entire population, there will be risks and danger for other species. Humans interfere too much in nature with unnatural means. The price and dangers that come with these means are not worth it.
I do not think there is any solution to killing the insect populations. Even if there was a way and we did kill all of them then there would just be another speices that would involve over time and their population would spring up, then we would want to kill all of that speices. There is also no harmless way to kill the insects. The spray we use can travel its way to animals such as deer. If we were to spray our blue berry trees and then the birds eat the berries then the birds can get sick and maybe die, same with deer they might eat some plant that we sprayed and then they start to die off. It affects all animals most likely if we start to spray alot. I would just leave the bugs alone or keep doing what we are doing and to not over use the sprays to kill off the insects.
Here, Carson concentrates on two major air-spraying campaigns as a way of illustrating the effects of insecticide spraying. She details the insecticide campaign against the gypsy moth in the northeast and that against the fire ant in the southern states. In choosing the method of providing illustrative examples of the results of insecticide campaigns, Carson enables the reader to see the details of what she has so carefully built up as a general truth--that insecticide campaigns are ineffective and extraordinarily and globally damaging.
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