Insect Regulations

[Pierre A Plauzoles]

Kenelm Philip wrote:

> > The idea of killing something before botheriung to ask what it is, let
> > alone if it is harmful deserves a few descriptive terms attached to
> > it: abominable...
>
> I have to disagree with Pierre here. Some years ago a moth specialist
> wanted to investigate the microleps of one of the Channel Islands off
> California. He applied to the NPS for a permit--and was told he would
> be allowed to collect only one of each species (!). After he explained to
> the NPS people that it can take as long as 10 years after you capture
> some micros before you have indentified what you caught, they reluctantly
> agreed to allow him to capture reasonable samples of whatever he came
> across, not knowing at the time whether any given moth was new or not.
>
>         If you don't collect anything that you don't already know about,
> you'll never come up with much in the way of new species. And if you wait
> to collect your type series until you know, from field observation, the
> complete life history of a putative new species, we wouldn't have even a
> fraction of the information we now have on tropical biodiversity.
>
>         When I made my first field trip to the Magadanskaya Oblast' (NE
> Russia) in 1978, you'd better believe I picked up every species of butter-
> fly I saw, even though (better: especially though) I did not know at the
> time exactly what I had in many cases.

Let's get the picture straight here, Ken: did I say "kill" or "collect"?  Your
research project is not an exercize in killing the bugs because you don't want
in your backyard what you can't identify; you don't go around your yard
squishing every solitary bug you find.  Although I agree that collecting in
probably 99.99% of the time involves killing the catch, I can't accept the
idea that the average American homeowner or gardener, when taking his/her
tomatoes off the vine, *"collects"* the hornworms and then *raises* them to
adulthood then putting them in a killing jar rather than  leaving them for the
neighbothood jay or roadrunner.  This is more along the lines of what one of
us would do, but we are not the "average Joes" of this world.

Pierre A Plauzoles
sphinxangelorum at bigfoot.com
ae779 at lafn.org