Well-intentioned ecological interventions can backfire through unforeseen food chains.
Evidence
For this reason, sometimes even the best-intentioned curative efforts go tragically awry. Such was the result of the classic intervention in Borneo in the 1960s when public health workers sought to control mosquito-borne malaria by spraying village huts with the insecticide DDT. The resulting chain of events unwittingly caused even worse consequences for all. The local lizard population was decimated after eating DDT-contaminated food, leading to decreases in the local cat population that was dependent on lizards as a dietary mainstay. The scarcity of cats led to a population explosion of caterpillars and rats that the cats had previously kept in check, with the caterpillars destroying the thatched roofs and the rats causing increases in disease within the village. — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 73
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to the Law & Economics literature on unintended consequences and to the ‘noise/signal’ listening-as-method thread shared across the polyad courses. — connects to: Ecological systems flip catastrophically once crossed thresholds are reached. — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 86; High stakes and good intentions do not overcome commons coordination failures; Disturbance frameworks must treat all trophic cascades as disturbances — S. T. A. Pickett and P. S. White, eds., The Ecology of Natural Disturbance and…, 1031
- CANDY: The DDT-lizard-cat-caterpillar-rat chain is an instantly shareable, darkly funny ecological anecdote.
Broader Connections
- Disturbance frameworks must treat all trophic cascades as disturbances
#expands(0.82) — S. T. A. Pickett and P. S. White, eds., The Ecology of Natural Disturbance and…, 1031 - High stakes and good intentions do not overcome commons coordination failures
#qualifies(0.78)