PLEASE VOTE ON THIS ISSUE

[Kojiro Shiraiwa]

In article <E3BEBD13AA at dannii.e-eng.hull.ac.uk>,
E.D.Chesmore at E-ENG.HULL.AC.UK wrote:

> While I can understand the wishes of some people to release
> butterflies in an attempt to gain public awareness of the declien of
> butterflies, I consider this viewpoint to be very narrowminded and
> similar to some views in the UK.
>
> Butterflies form a small proportion of Lepidoptera (about 2% in the UK)
> yet I hear no-one advocating the mass release of moths, or what
> about declining fly, beetle species, etc.  In the UK, butterflies are  of
> Lepidoptera.
>
> I don't believe releases of this nature, without any sound ecological
> reasoning, will achieve anything, especially public awareness.  The
> "public" has a notoriously short memory and all the releases will
> achieve is to destroy the years of hard work of scientists carrying out
> surveys.  I suppose there might be one good outcome - lots of
> nutritious food for birds.

Is this mean that someone is raising butterflies in capitivity and
releasing them all to the wild?
 If so, I'm worried about MORE DECLINE of butterflies. i.e., if they
release butterflies from captivities (raised with lots of help from human
& perhaps protection from its predators (birds, insects, bacteria, virus,
etc), some individuals may not be suitable for wild environment.  If this
group of weak butterflies are released and breed with all others, they
might end up with population with weak resistance to such predators (which
might cause rapid decrease of population).
 Some animals are not able to go back to the wild after human care, they
die soon after release. So, think this issue should be studied more
carefully.
 How do you think?

K Shiraiwa
Chiba, JAPAN