1961] 
Insect Control Programs 
105 
tive sevin for most districts. Finally, a new Methods Improvement 
Laboratory is opening this year at Otis Air Force Base in Massachu- 
setts, and one way or another we may hope to see some more sophisti- 
cated control measures tried against the gypsy moth. 
After five stormy years of air spraying, the fire-ant control program 
goes on pretty much as before, but with greatly reduced dosage in 
many areas. The reduction seems to have been forced in part by 
serious wildlife kills and perhaps some destruction of livestock and 
poultry, as well as by the threat of residues. Where the new double 
quarter-pound treatment is being applied, damage to warm-blooded 
animals is apparently not serious. It is, of course, effective against 
the ants for a much shorter time, and it is doubtful whether its residual 
effect is up to the task of preventing reinfestation of treated areas. 
Recently, “mopping-up” activities have been required after treatment 
in a number of places. 
There is a question, already decided in the negative by some of the 
infested states, whether the eradication campaign should continue in 
its present form. Not without some logic, wildlife experts have called 
the fire-ant program, “scalping to cure dandruff.” But this campaign 
has so much momentum, fueled annually with 2.4 million dollars in 
Federal appropriations, that even the defection of such key participant 
states as Alabama and Florida has failed to halt it. As the possibility 
of eradicating the fire ant by the present mass spray techniques recedes 
into future decades, it will be interesting to see how many more years 
Congress will vote to keep the present control machinery rolling. 
CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 
The case histories we have reviewed illustrate, I think, the point 
that mass air spraying of non-selective insecticides can be disappointing 
as control agents and are in some cases dangerous to the living human 
environment as well, perhaps, as to man himself. These dangers are 
usually discussed as “side effects,” a term which in itself reflects the 
special viewpoint of many of the control men on the job. These are 
“practical” people, absorbed in managing large teams with complex 
apparatus, and often caught up in the direct urgency of “crash pro- 
grams.” Their efforts are directed at a clear and simple goal — the 
eradication or control of a particular insect. In the heat of such 
campaigns, complaints arising from damage to humanly-valued re- 
sources are likely to appear as mere incidental annoyances to the 
control men, and the damage itself is minimized and shrugged off. 
But the side effects of the control men may in reality amount to 
catastrophes from other viewpoints, as in the case of the fire-ant 
