Voucher specimens

[A.P.K.Torry]

Neil Jones stated:-     

>Furthermore this defence of collecting went on to attack the protection of 
other
>species on the basis that since the legislation does not protect the habitat
>it was simply anti-collecting. This is not true, no-one is more aware of the
>failure of our legislation to adequately cover habitats that I am, but the 
>scheduling of a species as protection is still a weapon that can be used to
>help conserve the habitat. If something is on the protected list it forces
>non-conservation arms of goverment to take its status into account, they 
may not
>legally be obliged to do so but you can shame them into action if necessary.

This is a complete waste of time since:-

If a massive conglomerate (eg TESCO's) pays national  (and especially) local 
government enough lip-service along with 'empty promises' the  butterfly and 
moth issue goes straight out of the window, of course they can always 
trans-locate the habitat to the central reservation of the M5 motorway.

There is no cast iron way of protecting habitats from development.

If the British government can redraw the boundaries of a national park just 
to build a 5 lane highway then what chance for SSSI's or the like. Even the 
National Trust is currently fighting  an enforcement order to part with land 
for development.

I repeat protecting a species is all well and good but a complete wasted if 
you cannot protect it's habitat with the same degree of enforcement.

Here is an example of the stupidity of legislation against collecting

In the space of a few months the Spanish government banned all collecting of 
insects in Spain and then followed this by permitting the destruction of the 
only European mainland colony of Monarch with the bulldozing of the Torrox site.

What's the point in stopping people collecting Brazilian butterflies and 
moths while at the same time destroying huge tracts of rain-forest for the 
sake of feeding an over-expanded population.

Andrew T