The Lesson of the Newt
It’s tough to say “newt†with a straight face, or even to look at one of the tiny amphibians without cracking a smile. But the predicament facing the tannish-brown salamander native to California’s coastal and Sierra ranges is nothing to laugh at. Locally, shade-eating wildfires and a thinning ozone layer are wiping out the newt’s fragile eggs in the Santa Monica Mountains. And if all that weren’t enough, mosquito fish handed out by Los Angeles County Vector Control officials find newt larvae a tasty treat--even better than the mosquito larvae they’re supposed to eat.
The benefits of mosquito fish are obvious: They gobble up the larvae of mosquitoes and keep Southern California livable for us humans. But their use raises inevitable questions about how much tinkering we humans ought to do with the natural order--highlighting the difficulties and uncertainties involved in bumping off a pesky species without disrupting the lives of countless others.
It’s easy to write off small, drab creatures as disposable casualties in mankind’s pursuit of better living. But maybe it’s also a little arrogant. Who really knows which threads are safe to snap and which ones hold life’s complicated web together?
