To a crowd of goat goats in a remote area of Saniple Island, Florida, perhaps the low plane flying over it was the only warning of what would have come. As it passed, the modified plane specially dropped dozens of new parasitic spiral worm through a stretched farm on the herd.
Then the plane gave the road to the noise of the swarm. It was in 1952, and the US Department of Agriculture was conducting a series of field tests with male screw flies that were sterilized by Gama. The aim of the experiment was to make them mate with their female counterparts, reduce the ability of species to reproduce, and gradually reduce the population-and their larvae in the form of screws to live mammals before killing their host quickly-to the end of forgetfulness.
It did not work completely, but the population did not say. So the team of scientists tried again; This time in a more distant location – Korasaw, is an island in the Dutch Caribbean Sea. This quickly proved that successfulA welcome development after a long battle by scientists, farmers and government officials against the fly, which cost the American economy millions annually and displays huge numbers of livestock, wildlife and even accidental human. Within months, the inhabitants of the spiral worm fell on Korasaw, and the tactic will be widely repeated.
The US Department of Agriculture took the annihilation campaign first in most of the south, then along the road to west to California. Since then, the planes loaded with billions of sterile insects have been transported routinely over Mexico and Central America. By the 1970s, most of the effects of the spiral worm disappeared from the United States, and by the early 1990s, all of them disappeared from all over the southern borders and throughout the southern region of North America.
Since 1994, the US Department of Agriculture has made a partnership with the Panamanian government to control the established population and wipe them all the way to the Southeast Daryin Province, where comisión panamá – estados unidos para larradicación y prevención y de Gusano Barrenador Del Ganado, or now. Every week, millions of sterile spiral worms are dropped in a production facility near the plane over the rainforest along the Banama Colombia– Colombia- The biological barrier of invisible spiral worm The area, complete with Inspection and inspection points around the clock. But the questions are now leaking about their effectiveness.
The lesion is attracted to open small wounds such as tick bites and mucous membranes, such as the nasal passages, where the female lay her eggs. One female can put up to 300 eggs at one time, and she has the ability to produce thousands during her short life. Then hatch these eggs to the larvae that dig into the host animals with sharp hooks in the mouth and feed on live meat.
To save the host, the larvae should be removed from the affected tissue. Otherwise, the injury can cause serious harm, and it can be fatal within days.
Female flies in general, companion Only once At their age, but they can constantly lay more than one batch of eggs Every few daysThis is the reason that the long -term insect technique is a safe tactic for failure, when it is accompanied by monitoring, host treatment and quarantine, to wipe the population. The best way to prevent infection, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is to avoid exposure.
About 20 years after the creation of the “worm wall”, the spiral worm was monitored in Florida Keys, the first vision in Sunshine in the 1960s. A group of endangered deer was discovered in the large pine key with intimate symptoms of gap wounds, irregular behavior and pain. The US Department of Agriculture responded quickly, and has published hordes of sterile flies, preparing flying traps in affected areas, and merciful deer with advanced infections. In its entirety, the parasite killed more than 130 major deer, estimated the population In less than 1000 before the outbreak. Although the threat contains By the following yearAn accident disturbed fears throughout the country.
Nobody really knows the reason for the failure of the “worm wall”. Some believe that human activitiesLike increasing livestock and agricultural expansion movements, it allowed flies to violate the septum, until recently, was very effective in curbing the scope of insects. Max Scott, a professor of insectology and genetics at North Carolina State University, is looking for the breeds of the livestock pests of genetic control programs, focusing on the spiral worm.
“Why did it collapse after her success for a long time? This is the question of one million dollars,” said Scott.
Bridget Baker, assistant professor of veterinarian and researcher at the Florida University Institute of Agricultural Sciences, believes that climate change may have a relationship with the sudden appearance of the spiral worm in the keys to Florida. Baker said: “There was a big storm immediately before its outbreak. So the question is,” the flies were detonated from, such as Cuba, for example, to the keys to Florida from that storm? “Despite the invading in the United States, the spiral worm is settlement in Cuba, South America, Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
“If there are more major storms, can this be more of these upward tracks of flying? With climate change, it is expected that all types of species will have transformations on a scale, so it will be reasonable to assume that flies can also face these range transformations. It is expected that the range transformations are higher in the latitude.”
In the past few years, we may have seen it happening. In 2023, the outbreak of an explosive screw in Panama – the cases recorded in the country rising from 25 cases annually on average. For more than 6500. Later that year, an infected cow was found in southern Mexico, not far from the borders of Guatemala. In response, last November, the US Department of Agriculture suspended livestock imports in Mexico from entering Texas and increasing the publishing operations of sterile spiral males south of the border. Early this year, the comment was raised, after the two countries agreed to strengthen inspection protocols.
Then, on May 11, the US Department of Agriculture hanging Live livestock, horse and Polson from Mexico again. The fly was monitored on remote farms in the Mexican states in Oaxaka and Ferkrose, just 700 miles from the southern American border. Experts fear that it may be about to appear in the United States
If the nail worm regains its stronghold in the United States, estimates indicate that they will lead to this Billions in Consorting, trade and environmental lossesAnd The costs of the judiciary It will be sharp. It may take years to survey again, and Contracts for sectors such as the livestock industry to recover. But with President Donald Trump’s rejection of the US Department of Agriculture publicly Acknowledgment of climate change or climate solution financingAnd federal discounts that lead to a skeleton agency to address this issue, any attempts to stop expanding the fly range at the end.
In a press release on the temporary ban, the US Department of Agriculture noted that it would be renewed “on the basis of every month, so that a large window of containment is achieved.”
“This is not related to politics or punishing Mexico, but rather a food safety and animal safety.” I mentioned Minister of Agriculture Brooke Rollins, who Previously criticized Mexico to impose restrictions on the American Ministry of Agriculture contractor, which manages “high -resolution air issues” of sterile flies in its southern region.
Senator New Mexico Bin Ray Logan, Democrat and member of the Senate Committee for Agriculture, Nutrition and Forests, participated in the care of the laws of the nail, a invoice It was submitted to the Senate on May 14, which will lead to $ 300 million to the US Department of Agriculture to start construction in a new fly production facility.
“It is very important for Congress to pass this legislation to protect our farmers and livestock and prevent the outbreak of the United States,” Logan told Grist. When asked about the absence of climate change in the US Department of Agriculture’s messages about the spiral worm, Logan said that he “has long fought to ensure that our agricultural societies have the tools that they need to counter climate change and their increasing impact on farmers and livestock breeders. Unfortunately, this administration does not share these priorities.”
The draft law has the support of the two parties, but there is another major concern that the US Department of Agriculture’s reluctance to contain the threat of the spiral worm. As part of an effort by the administration to spend the intestine through most federal agencies, the US Department of Agriculture has Lower more than 15,000 employees since JanuaryLeaving behind a working structure. Several hundreds of employees in the inspection service on animal and plant health They were working to prevent invasive pests and spread diseases. Budget settlement bill He is currently making his way through Congress Includes proposals for More reduction of spending on the US Department of Agriculture and the wires of the agency’s research.
A US Ministry of Agriculture spokesman declined to comment on this article, and he did not answer GRIST questions about the role of climate change in escalating the risk of expanding the spiral worm.
Andrew Paul Guterres, Fakhri Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, has been in the relationship between gas pests and weather since the 1970s. In 2014, it was found that the spiral worm is moving north to new areas On anti -scientists windOr high-pressure weather system, which scientists believe that warming may affect- This leads to long, more dense heat waves and changing wind patterns.
Before it was widely eliminated, the spiral worm was considered a fairly seasonal problem in more northern climates as it was not settlement, as it was routinely killed by frozen temperatures. Although the metal green blue fly flourishes at tropical temperatures, it does not tend to stay in circumstances less than 45 degrees FahrenheitAlthough livestock and wildlife have shown that more cold talismans are not a silver bullet. With the high temperature of the planet, it creates high temperatures More suitable conditions for an agricultural lesionLike a parasitic fly, For spread and prosperity.
The average temperature rises in average of thirty years almost everywhere in the United States, and it is a new climate centralization analysis He found. Future climatic modeling predicts that the average temperature will only continue to climb – which more affects the plants and insects that flourish and where all over the country.
“With climate change … if the atmosphere becomes warm enough, and you can get a permanent creation in those areas, we have faced a problem.”
By dividing the role of climate change and weather dynamics in the escalation of the threat, Guterres asks whether the US Department of Agriculture’s response and a long -term plan to combat the threat of screw flies is estimated. The agency’s response loses what Guterres helps a “really critical” vision on how the screws interact with the temperature conditions, and what are the transformations caused by the climate in those means for their survival and reproduction.
Guterres said that the US Department of Agriculture “spends a lot of money” on dealing with the issue of the spiral worm, but he argues that he hinders him not to understand the relationship of weather biology, or how the weather pays the dynamics of this type. He said: “And if you do not know that, you cannot, for example, design the interaction of gas species and their natural enemies, or the effects of the weather on the gases themselves.”
“Without this type of platform, you are a kind of blind flying.”
