This project is an experiment. The southern house mosquito used in the Maui project is a species that has never been used before for Wolbachia IIT stand-alone field release. At 64,666 acres, the East Maui project area is the largest Wolbachia mosquito release of any kind globally to date. Peer-reviewed studies have shown Wolbachia bacter…
This project is an experiment. The southern house mosquito used in the Maui project is a species that has never been used before for Wolbachia IIT stand-alone field release. At 64,666 acres, the East Maui project area is the largest Wolbachia mosquito release of any kind globally to date. Peer-reviewed studies have shown Wolbachia bacteria to cause mosquitoes to become more capable of transmitting avian malaria https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4154766/ and West Nile virus (bird and human) https://journals.plos.org/plosntds/article?id=10.1371/journal.pntd.0002965.
Southern house mosquitoes transmit human diseases, including West Nile virus, elephantiasis, encephalitis, and potentially Zika virus. Pathogen screenings of these imported bacteria-infected mosquitoes are unknown, and our FOIA request to the EPA resulted in that information being withheld. EPA guidelines allow for the weekly release on Maui of over 3,100 female mosquitoes that bite, breed, and spread disease.
"Birds, Not Mosquitoes" is not a local coalition of conservationists, it is a multi-agency partnership and steering committee comprised of state, federal, and non-governmental organizations motivated by millions of dollars in federal funding and a biotech industry agenda that includes the build-out of an insectary on Oahu where lab-altered mosquitoes will be mass produced for release on the islands into perpetuity (per the agencies' own documents). Long-term goals include gene drives, synthetic biology control tools, and mass production in the Hawai'i lab of gene-edited precision-guided Sterile Insect Technique (pgSIT) CRISPR mosquitoes.
Two more species of mosquito are also planned for import into Hawai‘i – Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus. The State of Hawai'i Department of Health plans to release mosquitoes on the ground using cars, trucks, or ATVs to control mosquitoes of “public health concern.”
All of our research comes from peer-reviewed studies, scientific expert opinions, and the agencies' own documents.
Thanks for this. I thought Birds not Mosquitos might have been an industry front group (it had the appearance of one but I didn't research it in detail).
I just found this in one of the CHD articles on this:
"Birds, Not Mosquitoes states that the project is funded through a mix of public and private donors, including anonymous donors, including the American Bird Conservancy, Hawaiʻi Department of Land and Natural Resources, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Park Service, The Nature Conservancy, and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.
Previous funders included “the Hawaiʻi Invasive Species Council and anonymous private donors.”
Another organization that partners in the project, the Kauai Forest Bird Recovery Project, lists Corteva Agriscience as one of its partners. Corteva Agriscience is a conglomerate formed via the merger of Dow AgroSciences and DuPont/Pioneer and owns many patents for the CRISPR gene-editing technology."
Thank you for this very well-informed reply. You know far more about local Hawaiian politics than I do, so I will defer to your judgement about the makeup of Birds, Not Mosquitoes.
With regard to the proposed IIT, my understanding is that both avian malaria and the southern house mosquito are invasive species that were artificially introduced to the islands by colonists. It’s also my understanding that the only mosquitos that have been approved to be released by the EPA (and biologically the only species that would make sense, since by definition different species can’t really mate) are more southern house mosquitos taken from nearby Palmyra Atoll. So it wouldn’t be a situation where a novel mosquito is being introduced - it’s simply adding more of what is already there. And because of the QC standards for manufacturing mosquitos - my guess is that you would be thousands of times more likely to get some human pathogen from a regular wild mosquito than a lab-grown one.
I thought your reference to Wolbachia potentially enhancing pathogen transmission was interesting, but since all of these native species are about to go extinct anyway, I’m guessing hypothetical concerns about avian malaria infection being enhanced are not applicable here.
Mahalo for your response. The Application for Section 18 FIFRA Emergency Exemption for use of the lab-altered mosquitoes ("DQB Males") https://hawaiiunites.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/EPA-HQ-OPP-2022-0896-0002_content.pdf specifies that the "DQB line of mosquitoes was developed through transfection of Wolbachia pipientis wAlbB isolated from Ae. albopictus KLP strain mosquitoes originating from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia into Culex quinquefasciatus Palmyra strain mosquitoes originating from Palmyra Atoll." These are foreign organisms.
This mosquito release plan has not been sufficiently studied as required for a project of this scope and magnitude that has potential significant impacts to the health of our island's people, wildlife, and 'āina. We have taken state agencies to court to seek a ruling that an environmental impact statement be completed, per the Hawai'i Environmental Policy Act (HEPA).
In the words of tropical disease and vector expert Dr. Lorrin Pang (expert witness in our case), "It is not only what ‘might’ happen, but quantitatively how likely or unlikely might it happen – both the benefits and the side effects." There's no way of answering this question without doing the comprehensive studies needed.
This project is an experiment. The southern house mosquito used in the Maui project is a species that has never been used before for Wolbachia IIT stand-alone field release. At 64,666 acres, the East Maui project area is the largest Wolbachia mosquito release of any kind globally to date. Peer-reviewed studies have shown Wolbachia bacteria to cause mosquitoes to become more capable of transmitting avian malaria https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4154766/ and West Nile virus (bird and human) https://journals.plos.org/plosntds/article?id=10.1371/journal.pntd.0002965.
Southern house mosquitoes transmit human diseases, including West Nile virus, elephantiasis, encephalitis, and potentially Zika virus. Pathogen screenings of these imported bacteria-infected mosquitoes are unknown, and our FOIA request to the EPA resulted in that information being withheld. EPA guidelines allow for the weekly release on Maui of over 3,100 female mosquitoes that bite, breed, and spread disease.
"Birds, Not Mosquitoes" is not a local coalition of conservationists, it is a multi-agency partnership and steering committee comprised of state, federal, and non-governmental organizations motivated by millions of dollars in federal funding and a biotech industry agenda that includes the build-out of an insectary on Oahu where lab-altered mosquitoes will be mass produced for release on the islands into perpetuity (per the agencies' own documents). Long-term goals include gene drives, synthetic biology control tools, and mass production in the Hawai'i lab of gene-edited precision-guided Sterile Insect Technique (pgSIT) CRISPR mosquitoes.
Two more species of mosquito are also planned for import into Hawai‘i – Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus. The State of Hawai'i Department of Health plans to release mosquitoes on the ground using cars, trucks, or ATVs to control mosquitoes of “public health concern.”
All of our research comes from peer-reviewed studies, scientific expert opinions, and the agencies' own documents.
More information can be found on our website HawaiiUnites.org.
Thanks for this. I thought Birds not Mosquitos might have been an industry front group (it had the appearance of one but I didn't research it in detail).
I just found this in one of the CHD articles on this:
"Birds, Not Mosquitoes states that the project is funded through a mix of public and private donors, including anonymous donors, including the American Bird Conservancy, Hawaiʻi Department of Land and Natural Resources, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Park Service, The Nature Conservancy, and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.
Previous funders included “the Hawaiʻi Invasive Species Council and anonymous private donors.”
Another organization that partners in the project, the Kauai Forest Bird Recovery Project, lists Corteva Agriscience as one of its partners. Corteva Agriscience is a conglomerate formed via the merger of Dow AgroSciences and DuPont/Pioneer and owns many patents for the CRISPR gene-editing technology."
Thank you for this very well-informed reply. You know far more about local Hawaiian politics than I do, so I will defer to your judgement about the makeup of Birds, Not Mosquitoes.
With regard to the proposed IIT, my understanding is that both avian malaria and the southern house mosquito are invasive species that were artificially introduced to the islands by colonists. It’s also my understanding that the only mosquitos that have been approved to be released by the EPA (and biologically the only species that would make sense, since by definition different species can’t really mate) are more southern house mosquitos taken from nearby Palmyra Atoll. So it wouldn’t be a situation where a novel mosquito is being introduced - it’s simply adding more of what is already there. And because of the QC standards for manufacturing mosquitos - my guess is that you would be thousands of times more likely to get some human pathogen from a regular wild mosquito than a lab-grown one.
I thought your reference to Wolbachia potentially enhancing pathogen transmission was interesting, but since all of these native species are about to go extinct anyway, I’m guessing hypothetical concerns about avian malaria infection being enhanced are not applicable here.
Mahalo for your response. The Application for Section 18 FIFRA Emergency Exemption for use of the lab-altered mosquitoes ("DQB Males") https://hawaiiunites.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/EPA-HQ-OPP-2022-0896-0002_content.pdf specifies that the "DQB line of mosquitoes was developed through transfection of Wolbachia pipientis wAlbB isolated from Ae. albopictus KLP strain mosquitoes originating from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia into Culex quinquefasciatus Palmyra strain mosquitoes originating from Palmyra Atoll." These are foreign organisms.
This mosquito release plan has not been sufficiently studied as required for a project of this scope and magnitude that has potential significant impacts to the health of our island's people, wildlife, and 'āina. We have taken state agencies to court to seek a ruling that an environmental impact statement be completed, per the Hawai'i Environmental Policy Act (HEPA).
In the words of tropical disease and vector expert Dr. Lorrin Pang (expert witness in our case), "It is not only what ‘might’ happen, but quantitatively how likely or unlikely might it happen – both the benefits and the side effects." There's no way of answering this question without doing the comprehensive studies needed.
Dr. Lorrin Pang's full response to the judge's decision: https://www.newsletter.hawaiiunites.org/p/we-can-do-this-13000-more-needed
Dr. Lorrin among my oldest heroes & favorites Biotech Mafia opponents! <3