It’s unusual for a left-leaning paper to propose wiping out an entire species. Normally they’re proposing doing the exact opposite – reintroducing species that haven’t been seen there for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. But in a recent column in the Observer, Eva Wiseman decided that wiping out all mosquitoes is the best solution for humankind.
Very few people like mosquitoes, that’s true enough, and there are serious and sensible reasons behind that dislike. As well as their blood-sucking tendencies, they also transmit some of the deadliest diseases on this planet – most famously malaria, but also a whole host of others, including dengue fever and the one that’s making the headlines at the moment, the Zika virus.
But is simply killing them all – and thereby removing them from the ecosystem entirely – the answer? Humans have already wreaked havoc across the world by fiddling around with natural ecosystems – introducing animals here, eradicating them there – with a whole host of disastrous and unforeseen results. What about all the creatures that depend on mosquitoes to exist – the fish, birds, other insects and so on that live off them and their larva? The plants that would be left without pollinators? Losing mosquitoes could affect the entire food chain, from the bottom (or very near the bottom), upwards. It could, equally, be that other animals will fill the spaces that a world without mosquitoes would leave empty. We simply don’t know.
There is, however a bit of a double standard going on. Mosquitos aren’t the only creatures in the world that spread diseases. What about the badgers spreading bTB to thousands of cattle across the UK? Guardianistas are up in arms every time anyone suggests culling them. And that’s not even a case of eradicating the creature entirely – merely reducing numbers. The idea of controlling the populations of invasive species to the benefit of indigenous ones – such as grey squirrels and mink – also goes down like a lead balloon. So why these strange double standards when it comes to mosquitoes? Could it be that it’s ok to cull when we in the west are doing ‘a good deed’ for third-world people – but not when it’s about helping people who they see as relatively rich, mainly white and mainly male farmers?
Yes, mosquitoes are the deadliest animal on the planet, contributing to the deaths of over a million humans each year. And of course we desperately need to find a cure to the Zika virus and to stop it spreading – as we do with malaria. Genetically modified versions of the specific mosquito – Aedes aegypti – that carries the Zika virus, are a potential solution, and one that’s being looked into. But although it sounds like a nice idea, wiping out the world’s population of mosquitoes isn’t as simple a solution as it sounds.
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