New Orleans Wetlands Dying Off: Invasive Pest Populations Explode, Heading to Collapse

nytimes.com/interactive/2018/02/24/us/louisiana-wetlands-insects.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=b-lede-package-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

Yes, I know the New York Times, but the story itself is important. Government inaction on invasive species is just as much of an ecological problem exacerbated by global warming and industry irresponsibility, that nature is slowly getting replaced by unsustainable growth by alien populations to the area. Like the scale.

Other urls found in this thread:

youtube.com/watch?v=XuKjBIBBAL8
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayou_Corne_sinkhole
twitter.com/SFWRedditImages

Not like it matters. Louisiana is already being swallowed up by erosion and sea level rise

The pests already spread one state line, the issue is this is ground zero. It could spread far past that point. The things are behave like swarms of locusts, albeit not as dramatic and hardly as visible. They eat the very foundation of America's already dying wetlands and just sever the last standing leg, and after that it just disappears.

It all is reduced to mud and/or water.

...

Which my biggest concern, is that once they go more inland the local and state, let alone federal government, won't step in, because they've been looking hungrily at the real estate for fucking years.

If these invasive species just rip up natural wetlands and erase their existence so there's no longer a point in protecting them, what do you think they're going to do?

Oil and Gas is going to move in, set up shop, and do as they please. What is there to protect? "It's gone, it's a waste of money to protect mud!" I can already hear

They're going to wait until the last possible second to introduce legislation since they're bought and paid for, do absolutely fucking nothing and let this balloon out of control. Then they're going to point at people after the fact blaming them and say


When they very damn well know they engineered the situation themselves.

That's what I think is going to happen. They're going to look the other way like they always have until its gotten to this point.

It won't just be oil and gas, the future of inland wetlands probably has all sorts of hungry companies looking for their property rights, it'll be a claw and tooth battle over who can take the land they all paid to be decimated into ecological collapse by bribing politicians to do nothing, first.

Who can dig and pour pavement over the dead wild life. Will it be the shopping malls, the suburbs, the fucking apartments, or will it be the oil companies.

They're going to do jack shit until all of it is gone, then at the last moment roast anyone screaming at them for letting this happen as hysterical loonies who want to "stop economic growth". Growth they made possible by letting miles and miles of ecological growth implode in on itself, and give the rights to the people investing in it by giving a fortune to these fucking politicians who are paid to look the other way

For all I know the oil companies introduced the bastards themselves

Let the bugs do what money can't, it's free real estate

Land developers are a much bigger threat to wetlands than oil and gas. The best thing for wetlands in America would be for home ownership rates to continue to decline.

It depends on where you are. Inland absolutely yes, but the farther south it gets reduced you bet your ass oil is already lobbying for the rights to drill it all up. They already gave enough of it to them on a silver platter, they will never be satisfied. And they will absolutely buy everything they can touch closer to the gulf they can get.

It's not like they even care if it's even safely operated at a BP fucking level of incompetence, all the life is dead anyways. Who would complain about an oil spill if the life is gone

bump

Given the dilapidated state of most of Louisiana, I don't think it's the oil companies, it's the abandoned strip mall building companies.

Louisianafag here. Guess that no matter what we do we're fucked

I can't believe I live on the same Earth as the artificially imposed ceasing to care or act on anything to do with science, all because of the social relation of re-creating the cycle of capital.

Capitalism is the last Filter. And we failed.

God this world destroys me. It didn't have to be this way.

Better get some invasive predators for them.

In the article it says the only realistic solution at this point is introducing European Roseau they can't eat, which is also an invasive species. It will take its place at the cost of local wild life. But it will stop the destruction. The plan has few supporters.

The others have less than few. The Scale Pest has few natural predators, and even more few that can survive in Louisiana. All the predators are used to an Asian environment, where it's from. They die when introduced, or don't breed at a fast enough pace to keep up with the scale. It explodes in North American wetlands unseen anywhere else it's accidentally introduced. Whatever they could introduce, the Wasp that feeds on it, it just can't compete with the size of these swarms.

China, and most of Asia, deals with their problem with controlled burns once it gets out of hand, but throwing dangerous chemicals, and combine that with residual oil, you make the problem worse.

There are virtually no options, this problem is virtually impossible to stop.

Even if they could do something, they wouldn't as

Has pointed out. The money was never, and has never, been in protecting the wetlands. It's been about looking the other way until it gets to this point, taking in bribes, and then pouring over the residual muck that's left over with concrete or industry. Anyone who opposes this will be ridiculed, as all of it will be but mud or open water. And the state is red.

In our lifetimes, we will see the decaying ecology we were born into stop decaying, and start dying. Maybe by the end when we're 60 or 70 in god knows, 2040-2050, whenever that may be. It will just be apocalyptic. Not Good. Extremely bad.

The environment will be so totally beaten into submission that it will all be unrecognizable.

Good. If we can't get to socialism at least then humanity deserves to unironically be wiped from the earth.

This isn't about humanity alone.

For example, this is what most of the wetlands look like as of 2018. Compared to the 70's shown. It's unrecognizable even now. Due to these pests, chemical spills, oil spills, lack of investment in care, it's become dead. It all used to be green and lush once. Or filled with reeds as far as the eye could see, with a living ecosystem and an equilibrium.

All of it is dead. The equilibrium is gone and it has catastrophic consequences already. Every bit of it has died. Nothing remains besides that colossal wreck but mud, dead wood, and rotting leaves, damp earth.

Louisiana is a harsh window into what our collective ecological future holds.

Jesus, that's a powerful crayfish.

What about a fungus which can kill the swarms?
youtube.com/watch?v=XuKjBIBBAL8

and all because some fat fuck wanted to see a bigger number in his offahore bank account. Humanity is fucking disgusting. I'd say we deserve extinction but sad reality we'd bring all other life on earth (and as far as we know, all life in the entire fucking universe) down with us.

Not really. Barring massive nuclear war humans don't really have the ability to kill all life, just themselves and a lot of other species. Still in the grand scheme of things humans are far less important to life than bacteria.

Well theres only one solution to this. Dont let your land be lost to the sea.

Probably not even that, unless we start dumping nuclear waste into oceanic trenches which is fortunately illegal yet.

forgot to take off the shitposting flag.

It looks like a desert

The images you posted are very misleading and paint a very sensationalist view of coastal erosion. Not denying this is a huge fucking problem especially for the people living here but making sensationalist claims detracts from the issues and solutions themselves in a very material way.
The first image was taken during the winter, and while coastal erosion is indeed happening the way you are portraying it as a desert is misleading when wetlands are on of the richest and diverse Eco-systems. In the winter everything turns brown, no snow, no red leaves or pretty trees, fuck you this is Louisiana and for winter you get brown. The oil and fishing companies that cut boating canals through the marshes allows for salt water to leak in killing off wetland and turning it into open water.
The second image is of an inland swamp, not a wetland and they are being effected by similar but unique set of problems. If the marshlands go, then the swamps are next. Though, some swamps are super far inland like the ones around Baton Rouge (which is what this map is really portraying its the water and swamp coverage in Louisiana proper)
The oil company's drilling and boating operations are the biggest threat to this biome. Read this if you want to scare yourself and to see their biggest fuck up
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayou_Corne_sinkhole
The third picture is Hazen bay, which is in the Northeast and not the Gulf Coast, look at the mountains and hills in the background. There is no elevation in Louisiana, its all a flat delta flood plain. The elevation is Driskill Mountain and that's 2 hours away from anywhere close to the wetlands. Protecting all wetlands are important but each wetland has its own unique set of problems, with Louisiana having the most problems due to exploitation by capitalist oil companies in the name of profits.
t. Louisianianon who has live here my entire life and has studied these issues extensively

You don't know much about wetlands do you? They look like shit most of the time. This is why they are often prime targets for land development. Also as long as their soil is protected they can take all sorts of damage and still come back.

This isn't Earth's first extinction event.

And why would you bar it? Since when has it been off the table?