Conditions for Overcollecting

[John Grehan]

I wish to add my support to the comments by Mark Walker regarding
the problem of commercial collecting of proscribed species and
the reality of overcollecting. As both Mark and Niklas Wahlberg
point out, habitat issues represent a critical element of the survival
problem. I wonder if conservation related agencies find it so much easier 
to give the appearance of action by regulating collecting than actually
solving decimation or loss of habitat. If the US Fish and Wildlife Service,
for example, put as much effort into habitat as they appear to have with
 imposing the Lacy Act perhaps a lot of insects (and other organisms)
would have been a lot better off. The postings about habitat requirements will
certainly provide a realistic context for evaluating collecting. In New
Zealand
there was an early (but fortunately abortive) effort to regulate all insect 
collecting while habitats were being actively destroyed throughout the 
country, often with government financing.

I recently found that State regulations for a collecting permit were so
restrictive for general collecting that I had to return the permit - result
no collecting for me and nothing learned about the area in question
for the agency that developed the permit regulations.

I admit some of the above comments are generalized and open to
critique.

John Grehan