Collecting, Watching, and Catch-And-Release

Kathleen Moon kmoon at ucla.edu
Sat Jun 19 04:08:53 EDT 1999


John Acorn wrote:
> 
> Butterfliers and Lepidopterists,
> 
> Chris Durden wrote about himself:  "Why am I not a member of NABA? I am not
> willing to encourage the efforts of some of their members to suppress 
> butterfly collecting."  I would like to comment, as a member of both NABA 
> and the Lep. Soc.
> 
> When I began promoting butterfly watching as an alternative to collecting, I
> did so for two main reasons:  1) it was clearly possible to identify
> butterflies at a distance, at least to the extent that one can identify
> birds, and 2) collecting is hard work, and that discourages people.  I never
> meant to give the impression that collecting was evil, only that there is an
> alternative way.  But the world has always wanted to believe that butterfly
> collectors are evil (just look at how they have been portrayed in film and
> literature), so I soon realized I had little control over that.  As C.
> Eugene Emery Jr. wrote in the Sceptical Inquirer, "The human brain seems
> programmed to give more weight to one well-told story than to piles of data
> suggesting that the story is false."
> 
> Soon, however, I realized that the people I was influencing also felt that
> chasing butterflies while fiddling with binoculars was hard work.  They, on
> their own initiative, gravitated to catch-and-release.  So I thought about
> it, agreed with them, and started promoting catch-and-release.  On my own, I
> use optics more often than not, by the way, and leave the net in the car,
> but clearly many people find it much easier to learn about butterflies with
> them in the hand.
> 
> Then I found myself in a middle ground, where some pro-collectors mistook me
> for their enemy, and some anti-collectors mistook me for their enemy.  Nets,
> it seemed, were evil too-- and nerdy.  But we have had such great success
> with catch-and-release here in Alberta, I can't let go of the idea that this
> is yet another fine way to promote butterfly appreciation, based on an
> angling model, so to speak (trout fishermen especially, are now almost
> fanatical about catch-and-release), rather than a birding model.  After all,
> butterflies are not birds, and they are not fishes, so why not explore the
> possibilities?
> 
> I agree that NABA serves to suppress collecting, even though they officially
> deny it, and may not realize how strongly their actions affect traditional
> entomology by influencing the decisions of protected areas management, and
> the hands-off approach to nature in general.  The greatest sadness I feel
> about NABA is that its publications give the impression that butterfly
> watching is a fully developed idea, and not a work in progress.  "American
> Butterflies" is in my opinion not an open forum for discussion of new ways
> to approach butterflies, but rather a vehicle for promoting one particular
> activity while suppressing all mention of the alternatives.  As such, it
> presents "one well-told story," and subtly works against the rational
> discussions that we need so much right now.

You are quite right.  Your percetions on the subject of NABA and
collecting are totally "on the money" - unfortunately.  It is precisely
for the same reasons as you have just stated that I do not belong to
NABA either.

I do, however, have a couple reservations.  First, not all youth look at
life the same way - *THANK GOD!!*.  Second, there are many times when a
butterfly will bask in the sun and your position si not amenable to
studying it from a distance.  The only alternative is catching it,
releasing it if need be a minute or two later.

Before I get off my soap box, I think I need to say something about
people.  Have you ever seen "A Girl of the Limberlost"?  I recommend it
highly.  The main character is a dirt-poor teenage girl in a rural part
of east central Indiana (the title refers to the Limberlost Swamp; now
mostly drained, although I hear there is talk of bringing some of it
back) faced with very severe hardships at home (father had abandoned the
family, mother can't afford to send her child to high school, let alone
buy her any books, so she earns her own way through by helping a nature
photographer who is interested in the moths found in the swamp and its
vicinity (a couple saturniids are specifically mentioned).  Despite the
tauntings, at times quite severe, of her fellow students - and the
hardships that the family faces, and her mother's opposition - she
succeeds.  Much is made of her mother's amazement at the girl's success
and her admiration for her daughter and her tenacity in the face of such
staunch, unceasing and unyielding opposition.

While keeping in mind that this is **NOT** a flame job aimed at you,
John, you and others need to realize that kids can sometimes be rather
crude toward each other - to say the least!!  When I was in third and
fourth grades, my fellow students were mowing me down like so much tall
grass in their lawn because I spoke French with my parents (their idea
was that I would never speak English properly; I did so even in gront of
them because my parents were always more comfortable speaking French). 
I replied that 1/ if they didn't like it that was their problem and 2/ I
could care less what they thought about it, adding that, 3/ come high
school, they would all have to learn a second language, while I would
already know one.  They got their comeupance bigtime in a very high
profile way in our sophomore year in high school: the French instructor,
knowing I was a native speaker and had taken Spanish, would ask me for
the answer, sometimes openly in the hall right in front of them!  Talk
about "in your face" and "rubbing it in" ....  What made it even worse
for them is that he didn't mean to make asking me for said information
such a bitter pill for them to accept: it was purely coincidental.  Even
before that, though, by sixth grade, I had become the class grammar
wizard - in English.


More information about the Leps-l mailing list