[HN Gopher] WSDA, USDA announce eradication of northern giant ho...
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WSDA, USDA announce eradication of northern giant hornet from the
United States
Author : rguiscard
Score : 87 points
Date : 2024-12-23 05:16 UTC (17 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (agr.wa.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (agr.wa.gov)
| cbsks wrote:
| Invasive species (native to Asia) and 1.5-2" (40-50mm) long. I'm
| glad they are gone!
|
| https://www.aphis.usda.gov/plantsplant-healthplant-pests-and...
| heresie-dabord wrote:
| The richer oxygenation of the Earth's atmosphere in a previous
| geological era favoured the development of very large insects.
| Some wingspans attained 70cm! But the evolution of
| insectivorous birds likely favoured the smaller, nimbler insect
| variants.[1]
|
| And then there is historical climate change as factor, not to
| mention K-Pg Extinction. [2,3]
|
| [1] https://news.ucsc.edu/2012/06/giant-insects.html
|
| [2] https://www.sci.news/paleontology/ypresiosirex-orthosemos-
| gi...
|
| [3]
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous%E2%80%93Paleogene...
| searine wrote:
| yet another example of thankless work done by regular everyday
| government employees. Good job USDA/WSDA.
| LeFantome wrote:
| I live about a mile north of the border and I saw one of these
| on my deck last summer. I am not sure I believe their timeline.
| geor9e wrote:
| You saw one of these? Did you report it?
| https://d.newsweek.com/en/full/1870579/asian-giant-hornet-
| si...
| kleton wrote:
| This is the Asian giant hornet. Apparently they had to make a
| euphemism that would obfuscate the continent of origin, when
| being from the wrong continent is precisely the reason it needed
| to be eradicated.
| LeFantome wrote:
| They are absolutely devastating to bee hives.
| tptacek wrote:
| Honey bee hives, meanwhile, are destructive to native
| pollinators.
| lupusreal wrote:
| Water under the bridge. Nobody serious proposes the
| eradication of European honey bees in North America, nor
| cites them as a reason to not manage other invasive
| species.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| The eradication of honey bees would create a crisis on
| the level of climate change. The amount of tech and labor
| needed to sustain such an eco system that bees simply do
| as a built-in part of life would unironically cost into
| the trillions of dollars.
| ianburrell wrote:
| There are hundreds of kinds of native solitary bees that
| pollinate in the wild. They would do better without
| competition from honey bees. More important is to have
| native plants and wild places for them.
|
| Honey bees are livestock. They are important for
| pollinating crops and producing honey. But we shouldn't
| consider them important part of ecosystem.
|
| In my yard, I planted native plants and got more
| bumblebees and other native bees which are hard to tell
| from flies.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| If we really cared about this at all
|
| We'd look at one map of the deforestation of the North
| America / United States since the arrival of the European
| colonization.
|
| I think there'd be plenty of plants for all types of
| pollinators if we went back to such a a map.
| tptacek wrote:
| We're not going back to that map, and meanwhile invasive
| livestock honey bees are in fact outcompeting our native
| pollinators.
| tptacek wrote:
| Uh, not as I understand it. Feral honey bees have been
| functionally extinct in North America since the Varroa
| Destructor mite wiped them out in the 1980s and 1990s.
| The honey bees we see today are livestock, not wildlife.
|
| (Extensive husbandry has probably [unfortunately,
| unintentionally] reestablished feral colonies in some
| states, but a few years ago it was apparently the case
| that _any honey bee you saw in your yard probably had an
| owner_ , which is wild to think about.)
|
| https://www.vox.com/down-to-
| earth/2023/1/19/23552518/honey-b...
| wlesieutre wrote:
| It's in contrast to _vespa soror_ , the southern giant hornet,
| which inhabits more southern climates in Asia.
|
| Both of them are giant hornet species from Asia so "Asian giant
| hornet" isn't a unique descriptor.
| ungruntled wrote:
| It seems that the adoption of the southern/northern names was
| in part related to what GP is referring to.
|
| https://entsoc.org/news/press-releases/northern-giant-
| hornet...
| kleton wrote:
| They could have gone with northern asian hornet, to follow
| proper taxonomy of including general and specific.
| greggsy wrote:
| The only Asian country that is distinctly 'northern' is
| North Korea, and the media wouldn't have shied away from
| using it in fear of people making the connection.
|
| At the end of the day, the whole argument is stupid.
| lobochrome wrote:
| What? Japan, China, Russia, Mongolia?
| woodruffw wrote:
| I think they meant in terms of American cultural
| understanding, not latitude. I suspect most Americans
| don't think of Russia as in Asia (despite the fact that
| it is) or Japan as being as far north as it actually is.
| lupusreal wrote:
| The premise that the USDA avoided calling this the
| Northern Asian Giant Hornet to avoid the implication that
| this came from North Korea seems quite absurd to me.
| woodruffw wrote:
| The premise was "Asian," not "Northern Asian." The latter
| appears to be speculation in this thread.
| lupusreal wrote:
| Huh? The North Korea confusion angle was raised to
| explain why they might not have called it the Northern
| Asian Giant Hornet to distinguish it from the Southern
| Asian variety. That's what I'm responding to, nested in
| the thread.
| bell-cot wrote:
| In a better world, it would be absurd. But America has
| quite a few no-excuse-is-too-weak xenophobes, who have a
| documented history of violence against random strangers,
| for the "crime" of looking "Asian".
| lupusreal wrote:
| That could explain why they don't want to call it Asian,
| but not why they would want to avoid an implication that
| it came from North Korea specifically.
| bell-cot wrote:
| I'm not paying close attention here, but the "because
| North Korea..." seems like a useful diversion, if your
| goals look like:
|
| 1 - Announce the seeming eradication of a dangerous
| invasive species
|
| 2 - While minimizing "any excuse" xenophobic human
| nastiness related to saying "Asian"
|
| 3 - And disguise your second goal, to minimize
| accusations of "pro-Asian Wokery" (or whatever phrase the
| nut jobs on that side of the culture wars are currently
| using) from your #2
|
| 4 - Also minimize left-wing backlash (I've no clue what
| phrases they'd use) to your #3 scheme
|
| 5 - ...
| greggsy wrote:
| That's not what I meant.
|
| I'm poking holes in the ridiculous theory that they were
| holding back on using the word 'Asian'.
| tzs wrote:
| Same for Europe. I'd guess that most Americans would be
| surprised to find out that Paris, France is farther north
| than Seattle. If you slide Paris over to Washington it
| would be somewhere just south of the border with Canada.
|
| If you slide it over to the east side of North America it
| would, appropriately, be in the Canadian province of
| Quebec.
|
| Madrid, Spain is farther north than San Francisco or
| Denver. It's just half a degree south of New York.
|
| It really shows how there is much more to climate than
| latitude. Most of Germany and all of the UK and Ireland
| are at latitudes that in North America put you well into
| "it is way too freaking cold here way too many days of
| the year!" territory, but thanks largely to the effects
| of currents in the Atlantic ocean they have much milder
| climates.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| It's like saying "Asian panda" or "South American giant
| anteater." There's no other place with giant hornets, so
| why would the name include it?
| redeux wrote:
| If anyone is wondering, the infamous "they" in this case is The
| Entomological Society of America, not the USDA or WSDA. You can
| read the press release here:
|
| https://entsoc.org/news/press-releases/northern-giant-hornet...
|
| Their guide to creating common names for insects is here:
| https://entsoc.org/publications/common-names/use-submission
| LeFantome wrote:
| I live about a mile north of the border and I saw one of these on
| my deck last summer. They are massive. I do not buy the official
| timeline.
|
| Not "confirmed" of course. Just like the report from 100 miles
| south of here 2 months ago. "Not confirmed".
|
| They do not believe the "eradication" announcement either clearly
| as they plan to continue search and trapping efforts throughout
| 2025 ( from the article ).
| freeqaz wrote:
| Dang, that is unfortunate. I come here to comment that I'm
| really happy this happened. It is something that legit worries
| me. Bee populations are already suffering enough!
|
| I hope the government is able to continue keeping the
| population from "stabilizing" to eventually get it eradicated.
| Crazy that you actually saw one!
| olyjohn wrote:
| We have huge-ass hornets here in the PNW. I've seen lots of
| them myself. They definitely weren't the northern giants. But
| they're pretty close in size. I can see though people taking
| more notice of the existing ones after all the media coverage
| of the invasive ones.
| toyg wrote:
| Which border would that be?
| derektank wrote:
| USA-Canada / Washington-British Columbia
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| you seem to be embellishing that line a bit:
|
| >Although unable to obtain the specimen, WSDA did place traps
| in the area and conduct outreach to encourage reports of
| additional suspected sightings. Neither trapping nor outreach
| yielded additional evidence of hornets in the area. WSDA will
| conduct trapping in the area in 2025 as a precautionary
| measure.
|
| That's just responsible book keeping. No different from making
| a proper test suite even though there is no unexpected behavior
| in the software product.
|
| But if you really did find one of these in Canada, I'd
| definitely report that. You may unironically save Canada months
| of labor searching for a potential hive of migrated hornets.
|
| >Not "confirmed" of course. Just like the report from 100 miles
| south of here 2 months ago. "Not confirmed".
|
| who's doing the confirming, or lack thereof? There may be
| difficulties with investigations if they crossed country lines.
| the WSDA, if reported to, may not have the authority to
| properly search in Canada. I'm not sure what the equivalent
| organization in Canada would be.
| ChoGGi wrote:
| I think I seen one of these last summer as well? It was a big
| sucker, we were trying to figure out what it was. I'm in
| Southern Alberta.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Why can agricultural interests get their shit together on
| eradicating a harmful species while when it comes to human
| health, eradicating disease-carrying mosquitoes leads to endless
| hand wringing about playing god and whatnot?
| geor9e wrote:
| By attaching trackers to a few captured hornets they were able
| to find all of the nests. If only eradicating mosquitoes was
| that easy.
| zahlman wrote:
| > eradicating disease-carrying mosquitoes leads to endless hand
| wringing about playing god and whatnot?
|
| The burden of proof is on you.
| trilbyglens wrote:
| Probably because eradicating hornets can be done by finding and
| destroying nests. Mosquitoes on the other hand are far harder
| to get rid of. The most successful mosquito eradication
| campaign in history was the use of DDT in the 50s. We could
| always just use DDT again right?
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Releasing artificially sterilized singe-sex pests at scale is
| pretty effective. [0]
|
| Tl;dr: Some species only mate once in individuals' lifetimes.
| Consequently, if that mating is with a sterile partner, no
| offspring will be produced. Thus severely limiting the size
| of the next generation.
|
| [0] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2946175/
| praptak wrote:
| Related paper on automating the process:
|
| https://www.researchgate.net/publication/340467372_Efficien
| t...
| wongarsu wrote:
| They only eradicated it in the US, where it is an invasive
| species.
|
| Countless local and regional efforts to eradicate mosquitoes
| exist. Opposition seems rare until you propose exterminating a
| species globally
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _until you propose exterminating a species globally_
|
| The proposals are _all_ very local. Sterile mates, for
| example. Even _e.g._ gene drives work regionally.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| With gene drive you can only hope it works locally only,
| that's the thing.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| is there any proposition whatosever that would meet zero
| opposition globally? It's hard enough getting provinces to
| agree on stuff. I can't imagine getting hundreds of countries
| to all unanimously agree on anything.
|
| We'd need some hostile alien species to even consider that.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| They weren't eradicated through biotechnology use that could
| get out of control (people don't complain when there are
| mosquitoes eradication campaign based on suppression of
| stagnant water either, but some people are legitimately scared
| by the prospect of using gene drive at scale).
| lupusreal wrote:
| Eradication of mosquitoes was a very popular cause in the 20th
| century, but the means by which that was being done caused a
| lot of incidental environmental damage (draining wetlands,
| thinning bird shells, gassing other bugs, etc) so the brakes
| were pulled. Since then new techniques have been developed but
| they need to overcome the caution people now have for the whole
| idea.
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| For everyone else confused (I didn't hear of the Northern Giant
| Hornet before and thought of a new species):
|
| "July 2022, the Entomological Society of America stated that they
| will adopt the common name northern giant hornet for the species
| to avoid potentially discriminatory language" -Wikipedia
|
| [Edit] This is not meant judgemental
| zahlman wrote:
| > It is native to temperate and tropical East Asia, South Asia,
| Mainland Southeast Asia, and parts of the Russian Far East. It
| was also found in the Pacific Northwest of North America
|
| ... in what sense is this hornet "northern"?
|
| And in what sense is it "discriminatory" to point out the
| regional origin of a phenomenon?
| tjohns wrote:
| It's "northern" when you compare its range with the other
| giant hornet, _vespa soror_ or the "southern giant hornet".
|
| You can compare the ranges here:
| https://entsoc.org/sites/default/files/2022-07/vespa-
| mandari...
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| Which I now learned, is "invading" Europe (The southern
| giant hornet), thanks.
|
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11549532/
| tzs wrote:
| > ... in what sense is this hornet "northern"?
|
| All hornets are native or common to Asia (the North American
| native insects commonly referred to as hornets are actually
| yellowjackets), so calling something an "Asian hornet" or
| even "Asian giant hornet" doesn't really tell you much. It
| thus makes sense when coming up with a common name for a
| hornet species to pick something that distinguishes it from
| the other hornets, such as where its range is relative to
| others.
|
| As to why they avoid regional origins in common names, the
| the Entomological Society of America says [1]:
|
| > "Common names are an important tool for entomologists to
| communicate with the public about insects and insect
| science," says ESA President Jessica Ware, Ph.D. "Northern
| giant hornet is both scientifically accurate and easy to
| understand, and it avoids evoking fear or discrimination."
|
| [...]
|
| > In 2021, ESA adopted new guidelines for acceptable insect
| common names, which bar names referring to ethnic or racial
| groups and names that might stoke fear; the policies also
| discourage geographic references, particularly for invasive
| species. The Society also launched the Better Common Names
| Project, an effort to review and replace insect common names
| that may be inappropriate or offensive. No common name for
| Vespa mandarinia has been previously adopted by ESA, and
| neither name used in popular discourse meets ESA's
| guidelines.
|
| [...]
|
| > Amid a rise in hate crimes and discrimination against
| people of Asian descent, usage of "Asian" in the name of a
| pest insect can unintentionally bolster anti-Asian sentiment.
| And, from a taxonomic perspective, all hornets--22 species of
| wasps in the genus Vespa--are native or common to Asia,
| meaning "Asian giant hornet" does not convey unique
| information about the biology or behavior of the species
| Vespa mandarinia.
|
| They cite a news report on the rise in anti-Asian violence in
| the US.
|
| They probably want to avoid things like this, one of the
| examples from that news report:
|
| > In March 2020, Bawi Cung and his 6-year-old son were
| attacked by a man armed with a knife at a Sam's Club in
| Midland, Texas. The man, who later pleaded guilty to hate-
| crime charges, thought the Burmese American family was
| Chinese and blamed them for COVID-19.
|
| There are a _lot_ of complete morons who if something bad in
| the news is labeled as the "X something" where X is a
| country, region, religion, or probably anything else that is
| associated with an identifiable group will think any random
| individual they encounter from that group personally bears
| significant responsibility for that bad thing.
|
| Wikipedia's got a long article of examples where the
| something was COVID [2].
|
| [1] https://entsoc.org/news/press-releases/northern-giant-
| hornet...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenophobia_and_racism_relat
| ed_...
| water-data-dude wrote:
| I always just referred to them as "murder hornets" anyway (see
| the bee massacre video below)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_8B4bcrSs8
| zabzonk wrote:
| Apparently they are being controlled quite well in the UK at the
| moment.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/dec/13/rapid-sp...
| HeckFeck wrote:
| I did my part.
|
| Five years ago, while I was driving one of the blighters landed
| on my windscreen. I pushed the wiper lever to rinse, expecting
| it to swipe him away.
|
| Instead it beat him down to my air intake vent, and he was
| sucked into the AC system.
|
| I made sure to warn the mechanic of what lurked down there when
| I brought the car for her annual service.
| snickmy wrote:
| What's the expected longevity of the solutions put in place? I
| mean, doesn't just take a swarm migration outside state border to
| reverse the trend?
| jmclnx wrote:
| Very nice and a bit of a surprise to me. I hope they are correct.
|
| But unless some form of full inspections or spraying N/S America
| wide for containers coming from overseas, we will probably have
| more of these.
|
| With the direction/trend of the "US Gov." being run as a business
| for the past 40 years, I believe we could very well see these
| hornets arrive in other areas.
|
| IIRC, there is a insect in the East that is killing millions of
| trees which arrived 10 or 20 years ago. I forgot the details but
| eradicating them is now impossible.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| You're probably thinking of the Spotted Lanternfly, which
| people of all ages take great satisfaction in trying to stomp
| whenever we see them.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotted_lanternfly
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