Collecting in Florida (Neil)

[Mark Walker]

Neil wrote:

>This is the first step in getting people to conserve habitats.
>While the reaction of the authorities may seem to be heavy handed
>It actually is the start of enlightenment.

No, no, no, Neil, this is not enlightenment.  This is delusion, bureaucracy
and knuckleheadedness.  Do you honestly think that the problem is with
unenlightened authorities?  Do you think that the reason habitat is being
destroyed is because people don't have the proper view of insect rights?  It
is and always has been an issue of economics, not of animal rights.

I've never met a ranger who considered butterflies disposable.  In fact,
they usually put butterflies ABOVE their rightful position.  It's the rest
of the Insecta that get the short end of the stick.  If biting flies were to
keep the tourists away, I wonder how much protection they would receive.
How much should they receive?

The people who really need _enlightenment_ (that is, those that could care
less about butterflies becoming extinct)  are not even participants.  They
are oblivious to the situation and to any laws that might be generated as a
result.  I guarantee that no government official, _enlightened_ or
otherwise, will ever apply this heavy-handed _new_awareness_ to that
anonymous group of people.


<SNIPPAGE>

>Until you get them to realise that butterflies are proper animals worthy of
>conservation you will not get habitat protection to work.
>


I honestly don't think this is the problem.  Habitats should be protected
because they are habitats, not because they sustain one posterchild species.
Indeed, the hype over the El Segundo Blue may have spared a few acres of
California coastal sand dune habitat (which sustains a plethora of other
plant and animal species), but it did nothing to stop the further
development of the Santa Ana mountains.  But as the hype increases (now) to
save the local Checkerspot sub-species there, the unique and threatened
sand-fly habitat of Colton is further decimated by single-family homes.  The
hype over Schaus' Swallowtail has existed for over 50 years, and yet today
the remaining suitable habitat for reintroduction is but a fraction (what,
maybe 2%?) of what it was in 1950.  I could go on.

Besides promoting last ditch efforts to preserve the final remaining acreage
of endangered species habitat, all that this _enlightenment_ accomplishes is
an increasing prejudice against people like ME - alone, in the few wild
areas left undeveloped, with my net and a deeper concern for the butterflies
than all of the so-called _enlightened_ people combined - the SOURCE of the
data that generated the hype in the first place.

Summary:  People have always loved butterflies.  Habitats continue to be
destroyed.  Collectors notify when it's gone too far.  Environmentalists
lobby bureaucrats.  Collectors are arrested.  Habitats continue to be
destroyed.

Does this really make sense to you?

I say pass legislation that requires a certain percentage (50%) of
undeveloped land to remain undeveloped.  Further, in sensitive areas we
should mandate UNDEVELOPMENT.  This way there will be no extirpations or
extinctions, few rare or threatened species that would create market value,
and, in most cases, populations that would support the microscopic negative
pressure produced by collecting.

If we can figure out a way to make this economical for everyone, then we can
all win.

Mark Walker.