<story><title>Washington crews destroy first U.S. “murder hornet” nest</title><url>https://www.axios.com/washington-state-murder-hornets-nest-photos-39e04acb-50da-4c3d-8a8d-4993e1fe2780.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jameshart</author><text>‘All the resources’ make you nauseous? Seems like a weird reaction.&lt;p&gt;Washington State department of agriculture’s budget is public information; they spend about a quarter of a billion dollars a year on all their programs. I can’t imagine this particular operation is making much of a dent in that overall spend. According to the captions of those photographs, they have entomologists and pest control specialists on staff already. Salaries are also public. Sven Spichinger, shown in one of those pictures, Managing Entomologist, is on $87,000 a year - whether he’s hunting for murder hornets or not, presumably. There are three different levels of ‘Pest Biologist’ job in the department. It kind of looks like this is a project that is taking up the time of a few people who they already had on staff, to deal with exactly this kind of problem.&lt;p&gt;Does all government spending make you nauseous, or only when it’s visibly helping?</text></item><item><author>Exmoor</author><text>It makes me a little nauseous to think about all the resources going to tracking down these insects, but this is truly an area where an ounce of prevention is worth many pounds of cure.&lt;p&gt;The scope of North America&amp;#x27;s invasive species problem is enormous. For many folks in urban areas, it&amp;#x27;s possible that you might go your whole day only encountering one native bird species (American Crow), but a whole host of  invasive species (Rock Pigeon, House Sparrows, European Starlings).&lt;p&gt;History shows that early, active intervention can pay enormous dividends. For example, Alberta remains the only area in North America without non-native rats due to a major interventions: 
&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.alberta.ca&amp;#x2F;history-of-rat-control-in-alberta.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.alberta.ca&amp;#x2F;history-of-rat-control-in-alberta.asp...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dang</author><text>Please omit personal swipes from your HN posts. You sparked a flamewar with that last bit, and your comment would have been just fine without it. The first bit too. The middle of the sandwich was good.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;newsguidelines.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;newsguidelines.html&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Washington crews destroy first U.S. “murder hornet” nest</title><url>https://www.axios.com/washington-state-murder-hornets-nest-photos-39e04acb-50da-4c3d-8a8d-4993e1fe2780.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jameshart</author><text>‘All the resources’ make you nauseous? Seems like a weird reaction.&lt;p&gt;Washington State department of agriculture’s budget is public information; they spend about a quarter of a billion dollars a year on all their programs. I can’t imagine this particular operation is making much of a dent in that overall spend. According to the captions of those photographs, they have entomologists and pest control specialists on staff already. Salaries are also public. Sven Spichinger, shown in one of those pictures, Managing Entomologist, is on $87,000 a year - whether he’s hunting for murder hornets or not, presumably. There are three different levels of ‘Pest Biologist’ job in the department. It kind of looks like this is a project that is taking up the time of a few people who they already had on staff, to deal with exactly this kind of problem.&lt;p&gt;Does all government spending make you nauseous, or only when it’s visibly helping?</text></item><item><author>Exmoor</author><text>It makes me a little nauseous to think about all the resources going to tracking down these insects, but this is truly an area where an ounce of prevention is worth many pounds of cure.&lt;p&gt;The scope of North America&amp;#x27;s invasive species problem is enormous. For many folks in urban areas, it&amp;#x27;s possible that you might go your whole day only encountering one native bird species (American Crow), but a whole host of  invasive species (Rock Pigeon, House Sparrows, European Starlings).&lt;p&gt;History shows that early, active intervention can pay enormous dividends. For example, Alberta remains the only area in North America without non-native rats due to a major interventions: 
&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.alberta.ca&amp;#x2F;history-of-rat-control-in-alberta.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.alberta.ca&amp;#x2F;history-of-rat-control-in-alberta.asp...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>anm89</author><text>People are living, shitting, and dying en masse on the streets of LA who need food and basic sanitation but you really can&amp;#x27;t even imagine a non malicious interpretation of someone saying paying for teams of bubble suited wasp chasers seems like potentially a misallocation of resources?&lt;p&gt;Or do you just generally like to bully anyone who challenges any form of government spending by attacking strawmen?</text></comment>