Drone-fired peanut butter pellets: A government plan to save endangered ferrets • Hacker News Board

Re: Drone-fired peanut butter pellets: A government plan to save endangered ferrets

#31

Post by pvaldes » Sat, Jul 16, 2016, 10:01 AM UTC

Respect to the endangered american polecats, there are a few good ways to save it and a lot of bad ways to try it. Astrid Vargas and other scientists from the Wyoming university strike the right chord when start breeding it in captivity. Fortunately "the lets burn all zoos with pitchforks and torches" current fashion was not so developped then. Between 1987 and 1994, the wild population increased from 0 to a few hundreds and then 6000 ferrets. Since 1994, this woman moved to Doñana and tried to save the iberian linx breeding it for first time. Something that proved to be much more difficult. Both species could be extinct now without people like her (and much other).

This said, the access to the article seems restricted and the title didn't help too much to understand the idea. Trying to just "feed" the polecats with pellets looked like a really dumb idea to me, before to read that the real goal is to vaccine them (and to prairie dogs also) against sylvatic plague transmited by fleas. This is a totally different question. Similar things were done before to eliminate rats on NZ islands... Could work. Yersinia pestis was a formidable killer of humans also (is the creature that caused the black death in Europe), so would be a great success for all people living in the area.

Re: Drone-fired peanut butter pellets: A government plan to save endangered ferrets

#32

Post by DanBC » Sat, Jul 16, 2016, 10:23 AM UTC

pekk wrote: post #23

mnbcvx wrote: post #10

The idea of using drones to drop something helpful... What would the world look like now if for the past 15 years drones had been dropping computers, medicine, water purifiers, seeds, etc.? How many millions of parachute-fitted, protective boxes worth of these things could we have dropped for the same amount spent on war?

The cost of drones, including associated equipment and personnel, will be much higher than just paying locals to move goods in the normal ways (truck, boat, donkey, wheelbarrow, etc.) Less risk that you will squash houses and children or litter the landscape with containers. Even so, international operations are expensive. You'll probably have to grease some palms. Then there's the fact that this kind of major cash i…

> Less risk that you will squash houses and children or litter the landscape with containers.

Sadly, some drops of food aid used similar colours as cluster munitions. About 10% of cluster bomblets don't explode. This has, obviously, caused some death and maiming.

https://www.hrw.org/legacy/backgrounder/arms/cluster-bck1031...

> A key United Nations clearance expert has expressed concern about the similarity of the coloring of the yellow BLU-97/B cluster bomblets and the small yellow food aid parcels being airdropped in Afghanistan, noting that people are being encouraged to pick up the food parcels, but that picking up a bomblet would be lethal. He said, "Our experience in Kosovo showed us that children and youths were highly susceptible to the submunitions…. It is highly likely that many in Afghanistan will not know the difference between aerially delivered food aid and aerially delivered munitions." BBC Worldwide Monitoring reported that U.S. Psychological Operations units broadcast a radio message warning Afghan civilians of the similar yellow color of the cluster bomblets and the food packages, noting that cluster bombs will not be dropped in areas where food is air-dropped but stating, "[W]e do not wish to see an innocent civilian mistake the bombs for food bags and take it away believing that it might contain food."

Re: Drone-fired peanut butter pellets: A government plan to save endangered ferrets

#33

Post by DanBC » Sat, Jul 16, 2016, 10:25 AM UTC

mnbcvx wrote: post #27

DKnoll wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget a reliable power grid. The scope just grows and grows... there are no easy solutions to poverty.

Drop some generators then too! I live in Cambodia, and spend a lot of time out in the provinces where everyone meets up daily to charge their phones and other electronic devices around the single generator in a village. And need I mention that massive bombing campaigns don't exactly facilitate having a reliable power grid. Everything I'm saying would cost peanuts compared to what the US spends on weapons and war.

> I live in Cambodia, and spend a lot of time out in the provinces where everyone meets up daily to charge their phones and other electronic devices around the single generator in a village.

I would love to read a blog post about this. Do people charge, who maintains the generator, is there any solar, what else do people need, what else do people want?

Re: Drone-fired peanut butter pellets: A government plan to save endangered ferrets

#34

Post by berntb » Sat, Jul 16, 2016, 12:03 PM UTC

logicallee wrote: post #5

This is the only unexpectedly hilarious headline I've ever read here at HN. Every word just kept getting better and better.

Being severely allergic to peanuts, this headline give me more Terminator associations than anything else ("Couldn't they just use normal bullets, this must break some laws about cruel weapons?") :-)

Re: Drone-fired peanut butter pellets: A government plan to save endangered ferrets

#35

Post by kweinber » Sat, Jul 16, 2016, 12:36 PM UTC

As someone with multiple family members with severe peanut allergies, this sounded nightmarish.

Re: Drone-fired peanut butter pellets: A government plan to save endangered ferrets

#36

Post by failrate » Sat, Jul 16, 2016, 4:22 PM UTC

pekk wrote: post #24

failrate wrote: post #7

I wish they would do this for people in our flyover states.

What do you mean? Do you want to use peanut butter to save endangered Oklahomans, or persecute Kansans with an aerial food assault? Or do you want to increase the ferret population of Nebraska? Do you want to trick Michiganders into consuming vaccines?

I think I was just in a nasty mood think about anti-vaxxers. I wasn't being fair to flyover states.

Re: Drone-fired peanut butter pellets: A government plan to save endangered ferrets

#37

Post by specialist » Sat, Jul 16, 2016, 4:41 PM UTC

pvaldes wrote: post #31

Respect to the endangered american polecats, there are a few good ways to save it and a lot of bad ways to try it. Astrid Vargas and other scientists from the Wyoming university strike the right chord when start breeding it in captivity. Fortunately "the lets burn all zoos with pitchforks and torches" current fashion was not so developped then. Between 1987 and 1994, the wild population increased from 0 to a few hund…

..."the lets burn all zoos with pitchforks and torches" current fashion...

Ignore the fringes. We need more and bigger zoos, reserves, protected habitat. Any one who disagrees is a fruitcake.

I'm as left wing as they come and volunteered for a decade for a conservation group (trying to save wetlands, habitat for birds and fish). I'm a paying member of my local zoo. They have extensive conservation and preservation efforts. They earn my money.

Much as I dislike zoos (enclosures are too small for most critters), we need them to serve as gene-reservoirs (arks) and breeding mills.

Re: Drone-fired peanut butter pellets: A government plan to save endangered ferrets

#38

Post by TeMPOraL » Sat, Jul 16, 2016, 9:25 PM UTC

niccaluim wrote: post #15

mc32 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cropdusters, I believe, used to be able to broadcast either seed or other matter[1], if outfitted properly. So, I think it's possible, they'd just need the right attachment for the belly of the Ag Cat, Snow AT or similar. On the other hand a drone might be cheaper to rent a operate than a personned aircraft. [1] http://reveg-catalog.tamu.edu/09-Seeding.htm#Aircraft_Spread...

Way cheaper, and safer.

Cheaper? Not sure. I recall a thread here once about using drones for agriculture where someone pointed out that they can rent out an aerial op over their fields (not sure whether it was spraying crops or just photographing the field with IR cameras and stuff) for less than it would cost to get a single drone in the discussed project, that would likely require lots of those drones to make sense. Agricultural plane rental in the US seems to be cheap, like taking a cab every now and then is much cheaper than buying a scooter for every member of your family.