Yes, they did because various countries have talked to the US about expanding it. The problem is that South America is an enormous place, whereas Panama is a narrow isthmus. It could have been done with some amount of money, but that opportunity ended in 2010 at the latest.
replyIn the end though, history will see it as a half measure where they really shouldn't have half assed it. It only took one moron to defund the project and all of it will come streaming back.
reply[deleted for being misinformation]
replyHmm, that seems to contradict the article directly - insecticides were used to try to battle screwworm initially and were not really effective - the solution was using sterile male flies to stop reproduction - which would work in South America just as well as it did in North (with sufficient scale)
replyYou and the article are correct so I erased my comment.
replyI found and read through some of the reports of the time to try and prove myself correct. I'm wrong.
https://www.nal.usda.gov/exhibits/speccoll/exhibits/show/sto...
Releasing the steriles blindly is not enough, you gotta monitor the pest too. This is prohibitively expensive in rainforests and other areas with poor infrastructure.
replyOkay, maybe you could release the flies in large enough numbers not to need monitoring but I guess it would also be prohibitively expensive.
I think the issue is that you would have to push the barrier across the entire South American continent, which is twice the distance of the US-Mexico border and also crosses the Amazon where there is basically no infrastructure.
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