Releases: enough for now (fwd)

[Neil Jones]

This message below is a response from Robert M.Pyle which was posted on
Dplex-l in response to the recent note from Hans Schnauber.
Hans invited people to feel free to copy his posting  from  dplex-l to here
when he made it several days ago. It appears that nobody felt inclined to do
this, for he has now done so himself.

Forwarded message follows:

> From: tlpyle at WILLAPABAY.ORG (Thea L. Pyle)
> To: dplex-l at raven.cc.ukans.edu
> Subject: Releases: enough for now
> 
> from: Robert M. Pyle
> 
>         1) It was the staff of the Xerces Society, not myself, who contacted
> Mr. Schnauber's sponsors in Portland, advising them to withdraw support for
> his megalomaniacal "national butterfly release."  I had no contact with
> them, but was glad to learn of their responsible decision.
> 
>         2) When I, and others, telephoned the Western Washington State Fair
> official to advise her of the issues surrounding the planned release, she
> responded in a manner that we indeed judged to be "appalled," but said it
> was too late to change the plan.  The "gullible public" I referred to, and
> it is no crime to be gullible, are the good fairgoers who were told and
> believed that the release comprised responsible "research" -- which it did
> not.  
> 
>         3) I have spent much of my career "bringing nature to the public at
> large," through the agency of butterflies, and know very well how effective
> they can be for stimulating conservation commitment.  But this can be done
> most effectively with native butterflies in the field, without interfering
> with natural distribution, atlasing projects, and rigorous migration studies.
> 
>         4) The arguments have been made and made again. As a biogeographer,
> my chief point (in short) is that we cannot learn what indigenous
> butterflies do and where they go, in concert with the winds and changing
> habitats, by shifting them about from one place to another. This isn't
> politics: it is natural history.  In any case, the future of these practices
> will be decided by the state and federal permitting agencies, since folks
> such as Mssrs. Schnauber and Cherubini insist on forcing the issue instead
> of listening to their many peers who question their practices.  Celebrating
> nature, as we do here on dplex, is no crime; manipulating it, in some cases,
> may be.  Transferring native birds has been illegal since 1947.
> 
>         Meanwhile, monarchs are moving, and I propose we let dplex get back
> to documenting and discussing the migration and biology of the animal
> itself.  These vertebrate hyper-tiffs soon get boring.  I would much rather
> be in the field, and suspect that is true for most of us.
> 
> Bob Pyle


-- 
Neil Jones- Neil at nwjones.demon.co.uk "The beauty and genius of a work of art
may be reconceived, though its first material expression be destroyed; a
vanished harmony may yet again inspire the composer; but when the last
individual of a race of living things breathes no more another heaven and
another earth must pass before such a one can be again." William Beebe