Collecting and Mitchell's Satyr

[Michael Gochfeld]

Last week's discussion of commercial exploitation and extinction of 
populations, prompted me to comment that the elimination of Mitchell's 
Satyr from New Jersey (at least from all known NJ colonies) has been 
attributed to overzealous collecting, whereby people visited the 
colonies day after day during the flight period for several years.  
Whether the last Satyr was collected or whether the collecting reduced 
the population below a critical level, is moot.  By the time Mitchell's 
Satyr was officially listed as endangered, the NJ colonies had been 
eliminated as far as we know.  I personally suspect that we'll 
re-discover it somewhere in NJ, because there are several examples of 
fen habitat that seem suitable and undisturbed (this was not a case of 
habitat loss).  However, I also believed that I would re-discover the 
Passenger Pigeon.

Michael Gochfeld