Collecting in Florida

[Kondla, Norbert FOR:EX]

BRAVO, well said. people with interests in butterflies should not be
squabbling on the basis of moral/ethical preferences - it is understood
that we all have them and are unlikely to change them readily. what i
have been struggling to grasp is the extremes that some bureaucrats will
go to in dealing with insect watchers/collectors with no apparent
benefit to either the public interest nor the maintenance of insect
biodiversity(which is something that is in the self-interest of both
watchers and collectors)

> ----------
> From: 	Joseph G. Kunkel[SMTP:joe at bio.umass.edu]
> Reply To: 	joe at bio.umass.edu
> Sent: 	Wednesday, February 11, 1998 10:06 AM
> To: 	aa6g at AA6G.ORG
> Cc: 	leps-l at lists.yale.edu
> Subject: 	Re: Collecting in Florida
> 
> This discussion:
> Chuck Vaughn wrote:
> > Neil Jones wrote:
> > > > It seems they think catching butterflies is the same as shooting
> vertebrate
> > > > animals?
> > > Why the distinction? ...
> > 
> > I hope your not going to try to tell me that catching a butterfly
> and putting
> > it in a case is the same thing as shooting a lion and hanging it's
> head on your
> > wall. ...
> 
> Reminds me of an appocraphal story told about a young idealistic
> assistant professor who taught here at UMass Amherst before I got here
> in 1970. The story goes:
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
> A certain young professor gained reknown for one particular lecture he
> would give in Botany 100 every year.  Secretaries and upper-classmen
> would attend this lecture to relive it each year.
> The lecture began with the lecturer taking out a daisy and ripping off
> its petals, one by one.  There would be a tittering in the audience as
> this ceremony continued to its end with a petalless daisy.
> Next he took out of a bag a peeping chick and rung his neck to the
> cries
> and gasps of the audience.
> The rhetorical question ensued, "Why did you not cry in protest for
> the
> plant?"
> 
> PS: That professor as popular as he was in his quest for respect for
> all
> plants did not get tenure, so it is said, because he did not balance
> his
> popular teaching with professional research.
> -------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> The current discussions surrounding the Florida Collecting Experiences
> are disturbing in that they are bordering on being devisive in the
> group
> of leps-listers.  We all share a love or at least interest in
> lepidoptera.  As a childhood collector of insects in general I
> occasionally had twinges of sorrow when I would kill a Giant Silk Moth
> which I had raised lovingly for just that purpose: killing it and
> mounting it on the wall like the head of Chuck Vaughn's lion.  I am
> sure
> that Teddy Roosevelt, in an earlier era, had similar feelings of pride
> and admiration about his vertebrate trophies which many uf us have
> admired at his Sagamoor Hills mansion.  But times and attitudes
> change;
> what was acceptable in my youth as a hobby may not be encouraged in
> the
> younger generation.  I was not encouraged but I was not discouraged.
> We
> need to foster any interest in Leps and previously collecting and
> rearing immature leps seemed to me to be a normal, laudable interest. 
> We need to allow it when it does not harm an endangered species.
> Horror
> at depetalling a common daisy is a laughable extreme (I hope no
> flower-people are listening).  Current K-12 emphasis is on observing
> nature.  Unfortunately, for undestanding of life and its ultimate
> conservation some animals and plants must be killed during research. 
> How do we raise a generation of scientists and naturalist who will
> have
> the correct balance of respect for life but curiosity about mechanisms
> (that require killing to observe)?
> 
> Professionally I have slaughtered thousands (more like millions) of
> cockroaches in the pursuit of understanding insect development (my
> passion). This was no endeavor to save the world from a pest. It was
> an
> extension of my childhood fascination.  It was my intellectual
> curiosity
> and cockroaches were a convenient lab animal.  I also spent summers on
> a
> dairy farm learning to shed by maukish sentimentality about killing
> those cute racoons which were decimating our corn crop.  How can be
> encourage our youth to investigate and appreciate the great biological
> questions that remain?
> 
> Recently I have returned to studying Leps.  I have run light traps
> that
> attract moths by the thousands and I have spent evenings mounting my
> catch and further studying the evolution of the venation of noctuids
> in
> particular.  Perhaps I have killed an endangered moth here and there
> (unknowingly and possibly inadvertantly).  I have this ongoing
> interest
> in collecting noctuids.  Is it essential research?  Is it more
> important
> than a longtime hobbyist's fascination with the group?  Are our
> northeastern noctuids less deserving of conservation than the average
> Floridian butterfly?  
> 
> Last summer I attended the 50th Anniversary Lep Soc meeting and had my
> consciousness raised about Lep conservation.  Overall I think it is a
> good thing.  I have innaugurated a thrice weekly Lep Walk of my own
> during which I census the butterflies on a 3/4 hour transect and
> photograph them rather than catch them.  However when I convince
> myself
> that a population of a species is high enough locally I will have no
> conpunction against catching some specimens for wall decoration and
> appreciation by my family and friends who will listen to my babble.  I
> also would like to grow some from eggs, as I did as a youth, to watch
> the marvelous metamorphosis that drew me into biology in the first
> place.  Clearly at this time in history, that behavior is still
> possible
> and legal here in western Massachusetts.  We have an endangered
> species
> list but our concentration is on protecting the environment rather
> than
> the species that cling to life in those environments.
> 
> For the time being, I have cancelled any thoughts of collecting, or
> even
> observing, leps in Florida.  Are the Floridian Leps better off for my
> absence?
> 
> Cheers to all.
> -- 
> ______________________________
> Joe Kunkel, Professor
> Biology Department, University of Massachusetts at Amherst
> joe at bio.umass.edu  http://www.bio.umass.edu/biology/kunkel/
>