'Endangered' Luna Moths

[Pierre A Plauzoles]

In a previous article, triocomp at dial.pipex.com (Chris Raper) says:

>On 15 Sep 1997 21:32:51 -0500, lday at iquest.net wrote:
>
>>An added point is that the moth may be doing fine in much of its range,
>>but if you're a 10-year-old kid who likes bugs, and luna has been
>>extirpated from the area where you live, it doesn't do you much good!
>>:-(  I would have killed to see a luna moth during my childhood in the
>>overdeveloped suburbs of Chicago.  I only saw them in field guides.
>>I could hardly believe it when, as an adult, I saw them by the dozen
>>in southern Illinois (300 miles from anywhere I could have ridden my bike
>>to as a child).  People need nature where they live.
>
>Mmm - I like elephants but I don't expect to see them roaming the
>fields around the UK countryside - unless there has been a breakout
>from a Safari Park!  :-)

Right!  ... but then elephants have never been even close to inhabiting
the British Isles in anything approaching recent history, either, whereas
the luna and several other species of saturniids, and very possibly other
families as well, have actually lost considerable ground in urban
settings due to the abundant use here in the US of mercury vapor lights
for street and space lighting - or so it is said.  I don't know how it is
in Europe, but I suspect similar conditions probably exist.

>If there are no lunas within 300 miles of Chicago it would suggest to
>me that they have either suffered from _massive_ habitat loss, a
>devistating foreign disease or they simply don't live there because
>the conditions have never been right :-\

Most of our major metropolitan areas have been the focus of tremendous
expansion in the last fifty years and mercury vapor lighting has for
better or for worse had a major part to play in that expansion.  When Liz
mentions 300 miles, I am a tad surprised, but I can believe it: the light
does carry considerable distances, being refracted by particulate matter,
pollutant and otherwise, in the atmosphere.

Actually, I should not be surprised, since the economic "hinterlands"
around Chicago do extend much farther than what we have here in Los
Angeles: only to the south and southwest is this not present here, but
our atmosphere is ruined for certain types of astronomic observations
unless you go all the way to Kitt Peak in southern Arizona.  Perhaps I am
exaggerating a bit here, but that is what I am told by some experienced
observers.
--
Pierre Plauzoles   ae779 at lafn.org
Canoga Park, California