Killing invasive species is now a competitive sport • Hacker News Board

Re: Killing invasive species is now a competitive sport

#61

Post by w-ll » Tue, Sep 06, 2022, 3:37 AM UTC

rib3ye wrote: post #32

w-ll wrote: post #17

Can we do similar like we did wit regard to mosquitos where we capture a bunch, crisper the dna so offspring is infertile, and introduce a big batch back in to spread the gene?

This sounds like the origin story for Child of Men.

Such a great movie.

But i've thought and talked about this at the level of a genie with 3 wish's, and you know genies love to do un predictable things with your wish.

Im still saying, if i could make a wish snap my fingers, i'd make it so lion fish and/or mosquitos passed a generational mutation that makes them not able reproduce.

Re: Killing invasive species is now a competitive sport

#62

Post by nemo » Tue, Sep 06, 2022, 3:38 AM UTC

propagandist wrote: post #12

J3yjg52 wrote: post #8

you haven’t had fun on this planet until you've gone hunting for invasive hogs in florida or texas. stars, night observation devices, suppressed semiautomatic rifles. regardless of your stance on guns or killing things almost as smart as humans, you should give this fun and useful activity a try sometime. you’ll learn some skills and make solid friends along the way.

It sounds like a great way to earn the company of fellow psychopaths. The ecological need is easy to understand, but turning it into a "sport" tells you a lot about the caliber of people we're living with. The people engaging in this activity are worse than poachers; at least poachers kill to earn a living.

If you think about this in consequentialist terms poachers are far worse in every respect. I'm a pacifist, a vegetarian, and an ecologist. I am glad the hogs are getting culled, that's a valuable outcome. I don't care if the people who cull the hogs enjoy it. I wouldn't, I'm glad someone does, they're doing something with a good outcome, even if you think their motivations are unsavory.

Re: Killing invasive species is now a competitive sport

#63

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Sep 06, 2022, 3:41 AM UTC

spoonjim wrote: post #38

causality0 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worse how? Because they're enjoying something that needs to be done? These hogs would be more than happy to kill and eat you if they could. They regularly break into back yards and kill pets. If an animal is happy to pop slats off a fence and disembowel my cousin's dog I'm happy to put a bullet in it.

Yep. I’m not an opponent of capital punishment for example but wouldn’t want a government executioner to get a hardon while he does it.

[deleted]

Re: Killing invasive species is now a competitive sport

#64

Post by jasonjayr » Tue, Sep 06, 2022, 3:41 AM UTC

BurningFrog wrote: post #53

The whole concept of "invasive species" makes me a bit uncomfortable. For one thing, preserving the purity of a local ecosystem is not the same thing as preserving the purity of your local human race, but it's not entirely different either. Also, an the world becomes more and more connected, it's a battle doomed to be lost. And those battles, as much as we might wish otherwise, should not be fought. Also, the idea th…

I think it's more complicated than that.

Humans are a pretty apex species. Any ecosystem we move into, we have the tools and ability to dominate it with little effort.

Humans also, somewhat recently in our timeline, began to really understand and appreciate the effects we have on ecosystems. Additionally, there is some collective desire to try to preserve the state of these areas, so future generations can also admire + study them.

When we inadvertently (or deliberately) manipulate an ecosystem, and observe the damage it causes, we try to fix it. Maybe it's hubris to think that we can do so w/o damaging it another way, but we like to try. Especially when it could damage something else that directly impacts something we value, like a local economy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3oLeSPINOk

Re: Killing invasive species is now a competitive sport

#65

Post by chii » Tue, Sep 06, 2022, 3:41 AM UTC

BurningFrog wrote: post #53

The whole concept of "invasive species" makes me a bit uncomfortable. For one thing, preserving the purity of a local ecosystem is not the same thing as preserving the purity of your local human race, but it's not entirely different either. Also, an the world becomes more and more connected, it's a battle doomed to be lost. And those battles, as much as we might wish otherwise, should not be fought. Also, the idea th…

> the idea that new species "destroy" ecosystems is really flawed.

it's not. If a species were to naturally migrate, it takes decades, or even centuries, to cross continents. This gives the destination ecosystem time to adjust.

But because humans travel so fast, and so far, migration of species piggybacking reach previously unreachable ecosystems without letting the natural balance to actually happen - therefore, destroying an ecosystem in the process (or, in your words, the ecosystem is changed so much as to be unrecognizable, since existing species cannot compete at all).

> preserving the purity of a local ecosystem is not the same thing as preserving the purity of your local human race, but it's not entirely different either.

it's definitely different. Purity of human race is social - the genetic differences are barely noticeable. "purity" of an ecosystem is not about race, nor purity, but about biodiversity, and keeping balance. An invasive species that naturally reach a destination would not be considered an invasive species.

Re: Killing invasive species is now a competitive sport

#66

Post by Cupertino95014 » Tue, Sep 06, 2022, 3:46 AM UTC

The question is: do all these sport "hunters" make any difference at all in the lionfish population? My guess is No.

We could pay a bounty for killing mosquitos, but it wouldn't be nearly as effective as draining all the standing water, or introducing birth control of some sort.

If I'm right that they're having no effect, then either a CRISPR solution, or introducing a natural predator is the answer (assuming that the predator doesn't introduce its own problems).

Re: Killing invasive species is now a competitive sport

#67

Post by echelon » Tue, Sep 06, 2022, 3:47 AM UTC

mod wrote: post #58

echelon wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's incredible, and honestly looks quite fun. The fact that they're venomous might keep me from trying, though. This got me thinking - as drone tech continues to improve and drop in price, I wonder if we could deploy a fleet of cheap autonomous fish-killing submersibles. The failure modes or evolutionary pressures might be problematic, but imagine the lionfish we could kill at volume.

The article happened to talk about this.

I'm frequently guilty of reading the comments first, getting sucked into links, and never reading the original article.

Thanks for the FYI.

Re: Killing invasive species is now a competitive sport

#68

Post by Ozzie_osman » Tue, Sep 06, 2022, 3:47 AM UTC

chasil wrote: post #57

yawnxyz wrote: post #13

This makes me immediately think about the Cobra effect anecdote (or fable?). Basically, the Indian gov't tried to control the snake population by offering a bounty, and people started breeding snakes and killing them for bounty money. Better writeup here: https://ourworld.unu.edu/en/systems-thinking-and-the-cobra-e...

From the article: "A female lionfish lays an average of twenty-seven thousand eggs every two and a half days." This reproduction looks to be so prolific that cheating isn't required. The ultimate solution to all of these problems is going to be a gene drive. Especially for the lionfish, edits that leave only male offspring will wipe out the problem in the Atlantic. The United States may condemn and punish such action…

How would you make sure the gene edits don't also wipe out the problem in their original habitat too?

Re: Killing invasive species is now a competitive sport

#69

Post by bacon_waffle » Tue, Sep 06, 2022, 3:50 AM UTC

mlyle wrote: post #16

propagandist wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like a great way to earn the company of fellow psychopaths. The ecological need is easy to understand, but turning it into a "sport" tells you a lot about the caliber of people we're living with. The people engaging in this activity are worse than poachers; at least poachers kill to earn a living.

> The people engaging in this activity are worse than poachers Sausage is yummy, and pigs do ecological damage.

If poisoning pigs were known to be more effective than shooting, would that change the calculus?

Re: Killing invasive species is now a competitive sport

#70

Post by shlant » Tue, Sep 06, 2022, 3:51 AM UTC

BurningFrog wrote: post #53

The whole concept of "invasive species" makes me a bit uncomfortable. For one thing, preserving the purity of a local ecosystem is not the same thing as preserving the purity of your local human race, but it's not entirely different either. Also, an the world becomes more and more connected, it's a battle doomed to be lost. And those battles, as much as we might wish otherwise, should not be fought. Also, the idea th…

I agree with your arguments when it comes to "preserving the purity of your local human race" or culture - it's essentially impossible to stop those shifts. However I don't think it applies the same way to invasive species - people and their ideas are very hard to filter for in terms of immigration but stopping people from bringing in animals or plants is much easier and we have systems for that already in place.