That's a good point. What about wetlands? My property has a terrible mosquito problem and I just found out there is a pond/swamp hidden in the brush. Since it's my property, I'll take steps to reduce the mosquito problem next year but if it was public land, that'd probably wouldn't be acceptable.

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jaggederest an hour ago | parent | next [-]

If you throw some mosquito dunks with BT into any given water body small enough it doesn't have a name, nobody is going to come after you. I think it's probably a pretty prosocial thing to do, unless I'm missing something

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verelo an hour ago | parent [-]

My internal dialog can imagine my biologist wife yelling at you already.

Honestly i do not know the full scope of this one, but if there's one thing I've learnt from observing her work over the last decade...it's humans need to stop adding chemicals to water bodies with the goal of thinking they're helping something.

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jephs an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Note it's not a chemical agent; its bacterial spores that infect and kill mosquito larvae! I'm pretty sure they're not harmful to anything that isn't a mosquito, blackfly, gnat, or midge. Though midges are important to pond ecosystems as a source of food for fish and dragonflies and stuff? Idunno, ask this guy's wife.

	▲	verelo an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I will ask her and report back... I can imagine her having some long explanation about the unknown risks of man spreading this substance, even if its not a chemical agent. I lean on the edge of listening to Grandpa Simpson on these kind of things: https://i.imgur.com/MdjduDH.png

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ses1984 an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Mosquito dunk is some kind of microbial culture that’s supposed to be safe.

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verelo an hour ago | parent | next [-]

The path to hell is paved with good intentions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cane_toads_in_Australia

It might well be safe, but the question is what are the downstream affects of reducing the population of mosquitos (or other bugs in the water that this substance impacts). Maybe they've exclusively positive, but I assure you determining that is no walk in the park.

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smaudet an hour ago | parent [-]

I can see the headline now:

"Mosquito dunks linked to declining bear population - farmers struggling with deer populations"

	▲	verelo an hour ago \| parent [-]
		ha yeah, that's exactly where my brain goes too.

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james_marks an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

The mosquitoes don't exist in isolation though. Isn't this exactly how food chains / ecosystems work? You can't remove a tier without consequences.

	▲	amanaplanacanal 40 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		It depends. In North America our worst mosquitos (the disease carrying ones) aren't native, they are from the old world. I think everybody would be fine if they were no more.

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otherwatersflow 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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