Sometimes a headline on a news item just makes you stop, take a second look, and feel your eyebrows toboggan off the top of your skull. This is one such item; it seems that the United States government is hatching a scheme to breed billions of flies and drop them out of airplanes over Mexico and southern Texas. Why? Biological warfare? No. Some new scheme to combat climate change? No. The goal behind the fly paratroopers is to eliminate nefarious flesh-eating maggots.
The U.S. government is preparing to breed billions of flies and dump them out of airplanes over Mexico and southern Texas to fight a flesh-eating maggot.
That sounds like the plot of a horror movie, but it is part of the government's plans for protecting the U.S. from a bug that could devastate its beef industry, decimate wildlife and even kill household pets. This weird science has worked well before.
"It's an exceptionally good technology," said Edwin Burgess, an assistant professor at the University of Florida who studies parasites in animals, particularly livestock. "It's an all-time great in terms of translating science to solve some kind of large problem."
The interesting thing is that, yes, from a biology standpoint, this actually makes good sense. This is an act of biological warfare after all, but it's against an insect pest, the larval form of the New World Screwworm Fly, which can do a lot of livestock damage in that part of the country. These screwworms burrow into warm-blooded animals and can cause serious damage not only to cattle and other large mammals but also to pets, birds, and, yes, people.
But what about the flies? Will they settle in and start raising families? Someone thought of that possibility, and that turns out to be the key to the whole thing. You see, the paratrooper flies that are to be dropped are sterilized male New World Screwworm Flies.
The targeted pest is the flesh-eating larva of the New World Screwworm fly. The U.S. Department of Agriculture plans to ramp up the breeding and distribution of adult male flies — sterilizing them with radiation before releasing them. They mate with females in the wild, and the eggs laid by the female aren't fertilized and don't hatch. There are fewer larvae, and over time, the fly population dies out.
It is more effective and environmentally friendly than spraying the pest into oblivion, and it is how the U.S. and other nations north of Panama eradicated the same pest decades ago. Sterile flies from a factory in Panama kept the flies contained there for years, but the pest appeared in southern Mexico late last year.
My colleague Jennifer Oliver O'Connell brought us the dangerous tidings of the dangerous maggots last April.
See Also: Ag Sec. Brooke Rollins Threatens Mexico Cattle Imports, Puts Screws on Them to Combat Deadly Worm
Jennifer wrote at that time:
The United States' and Mexico's joint effort to combat the NWS outbreak involves aerial distribution of the insecticide that will kill the deadly insect and remediate its spread. However, Mexican aviation authorities have been restricting the ability of the Dynamic Aviation aircraft tasked with this job from full control of the airspace. Rollins purports that the authorities have limited times and days that Dynamic can fly, and therefore has restricted them to 60-day permits. On top of this, Mexico customs has been pulling shenanigans, blocking the importation of necessary parts and equipment that Dynamic requires to get the job done.
But that solution involved chemical warfare. Just this once, the biological warfare may be cleaner and more effective.
Then again, insects of all kinds are extremely persistent.
See Also: Amazing Facts: It's the Ants' World, We Just Live in It.
Insects were here long before humans. They'll likely be around long after we're gone. They have survived mass extinctions, asteroid strikes, volcanoes that buried continents, and Chuck Schumer's political speeches. They'll survive anything we can throw at them, which means are best efforts are holding actions.
Still, if this works, maybe we could try something of this sort on Alaska's mosquito population?
Editor's Note: The mainstream media continues to deflect, gaslight, spin, and lie.
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