
Sign up to save your podcasts
Or


Killer frogs! Forest-destroying moths! Bird-eating mongooses! These may sound like biblical plagues, but they’re the result of bad human decisions. All too often, after an invasive species shows up in an ecosystem and wreaks havoc, our response is to import another species that will eat the first one. Then, of course, the predator turns out to be even worse for the environment. Except now, maybe, we’ve figured out how to do biocontrol right. And as it turns out, some of those infamous mistakes weren’t so bad after all. In this story, our friends at New Hampshire Public Radio’s Outside/In reexamine the history of biocontrol to find out the truth behind the horror stories and understand why throwing hungry critters as a problem has enduring appeal.
By Outside4.3
20792,079 ratings
Killer frogs! Forest-destroying moths! Bird-eating mongooses! These may sound like biblical plagues, but they’re the result of bad human decisions. All too often, after an invasive species shows up in an ecosystem and wreaks havoc, our response is to import another species that will eat the first one. Then, of course, the predator turns out to be even worse for the environment. Except now, maybe, we’ve figured out how to do biocontrol right. And as it turns out, some of those infamous mistakes weren’t so bad after all. In this story, our friends at New Hampshire Public Radio’s Outside/In reexamine the history of biocontrol to find out the truth behind the horror stories and understand why throwing hungry critters as a problem has enduring appeal.

91,293 Listeners

43,830 Listeners

32,244 Listeners

38,491 Listeners

43,622 Listeners

26,245 Listeners

2,629 Listeners

1,485 Listeners

1,043 Listeners

2,245 Listeners

1,276 Listeners

1,700 Listeners

3,442 Listeners

1,745 Listeners

885 Listeners