I don't know that it's "unsettling". Both of those seem like objectively good things. The fact that it can be difficult to do both simultaneously is definitely "a thing" but I don't believe it's unsettling. "Difficult to balance" maybe?
Unless you feel that either A- Saving Bees is bad or B- Killing ticks is bad?
I believe that you read it that way. I believe that it's a difficult to understand sentence that doesn't appear to properly articulate the message the writer was attempting to convey and that maybe different word choice would provide greater clarity to their point and further the overall discussion.
TL;dr- we deep enough down the semantics rabbit hole and I'm tapping out. Words, amirite?
Surely that's a factor, but habitat fragmentation and loss of biodiversity are also very important, and are directly related to the loss of bees.
Killing "the disease vector" doesn't heal the root problem, which is rampant, culturally and economically endorsed destruction of ecological diversity and the environments that foster it. This is happening on multiple fronts, climate change being one of them.
I agree with the poster who advocated chickens and possums... except that I'd go much further than just chickens and possums. We also need to dramatically rethink the way development happens. And further incentivize land rehabilitation and polyculture farming methods such as permaculture.
They are somewhat opposed to each other. You spray pesticides and mow to keep ticks down. You don't want to spray pesticides on bees and natural landscaping features taller grasses / plants etc... that provide cover for ticks, not to mention rodents etc... You also want to spray and or mow to keep mosquitoes down. You can mitigate impact on bees by spraying at dusk/night and avoid spraying flowers.
If we let bees die much more than they already have, current farming becomes infeasible not only because other pollinating species can't pick up the slack but because modern farming actually relies heavily on driving bees around in absurd numbers on flatbed trucks going from farm to farm. If we can promote wild populations, it's a very good thing for not only humans but countless other species.
And I'm going to go out on a limb and say something very bold. I believe that these are all cut from the same cloth: conventional, extermination focused approaches to "invasive species"; old-school germ theory approaches to infection; peoples' crass approaches to refugees.
