It’s all conjecture at this point, but there’s an argument to be made that increased funding (like when Biden quadrupled their budget, as someone else said he did during his term) could have pushed it back as the Darian Gap is a natural choke point that provides much better bang for your buck compared to having to fight it back across what could potentially be the entire continental US in a few years (or less).
If the feral hog population is a vector as well, we could see it explode like a wildfire out towards the east coast, and with climate change who knows how far north they will go. I don’t think there’s a snowball’s chance in hell of us ever being able to contain it like that again. In 5 years time Canada might be allocating funds towards trying to contain it at the US border.
FaceDeer@fedia.io 2 weeks ago
Yeah, IIRC the main "breach" happened during Covid as a result of the disruption caused by the pandemic, it's not something whose root cause can be blamed so easily on Trump. There was a program operating down in Panama to prevent the fly from spreading up through the narrow isthmus there by releasing sterile males and the supply chain disruptions broke it for a year or two, resulting in the flies getting through to Mexico where it's a lot harder to eradicate them.
Trump's cuts and chaos sure haven't helped the situation, though, and with dedicated effort it might have been possible to turn back the tide before now.