this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2026
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I agree that "a" billion isn't even gonna start to cover it.
Will it even EVER be controlled down to Panama again?
It will take many years.
It was pushed back down to panama before but it took half a century (1950-2000) to do it. All that effort undone by some kid named big balls.
and many breeding facilities as well. it takes a very long time to just suppress the invasion. 1bn likely wont do anything AT ALL. since likely south american isnt able to control the infestations.
IMO controlling it "down to Panama" is part of what went wrong, I think. Pushing further into South America would've been costlier, but if people managed to get those flies completely extinct, the problem wouldn't come back.
But that requires multiple governments working together with a "helping them out means less problems for me in the future" mindset, and that simply doesn't roll with USA; USA's external policy was always "I'm shitting my pants so others smell it". And working together with a bunch of dictatorships can be a bit hard, specially when those dictatorships were supported by USA so they can't trust the United-Statian government to die properly.
doubtful you can eradicate the species since the cows are still present, also screworms dont need to use cows, it can be almost any mammal it can get its eggs on.
The species actually got eradicated from both Mexico and USA, using sterile males, and almost eradicated from the southern tip of North America aka Central America.
So yes, it is possible. Regardless of presence or absence of cows. Because, like I already said and you repeated, they can infest any mammal.
The reason they stopped at Panama is simply because it's a chokepoint; in the short term it's cheaper to keep releasing sterile males in the Darién gap than to push further. It works until it doesn't, like another poster highlighted once they stopped doing it in COVID times the flies re-invaded NA.
I'm criticising governments in the Americas (including but not exclusively USA) for not co-ordinating and pushing further, to get it extinct.