tagging experiment

[Cris Guppy & Aud Fischer]

You have signficant ethical, not to mention legal problems. It is people
like you that give a bad name to "amateur" science. I hope the USDA comes
after you. Furthermore, why should anyone pay any attention to your data?
Since you will happily break the law to prove your point, I assume you will
also falsify data.

-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Cherubini <cherubini at mindspring.com>
To: leps-l at lists.yale.edu <leps-l at lists.yale.edu>
Date: January 15, 2000 2:27 AM
Subject: Re: tagging experiment


>John Lane wrote:
>
>> Jacob: When you first posted the "news" on the IBBA web site, I thought
>> it said the eastern wild-caught stock released at Paonia, CO came from
>> Waverly, IA.
>
>All the eastern wild-caught monarchs that were released in Paonia, Colorado
>came from Waverly, Iowa. Jacob Groth had state and federal permits for
>every release he was involved with. But he had nothing to do with the
>Iowa to Colorado transfer. I did this one without a permit because
>the United States Dept.of Agriculture would not grant one. Up to now
>USDA , like the monarch scientists, had assumed the Rocky Mountains
>were a great barrier to monarch movement and would not consider
>allowing eastern monarchs to be released west of the continental
>divide even for an experiment intended to test this presumption.
>
>In establishing this strict policy around 1993-94, USDA had consulted
>with monarch authorities such as Dr's. Karen Oberhauser and Chip Taylor.
>On July 5 last summer,  Karen indicated her passionate opposition to
>transfer studies when she posted the following statement to the dplex-list:
>"as a scientist and as a citizen committed to doing everything I can to
>preserving the phenomenon of monarch migration, I am unwilling to
>take the risk or to condone such studies."
>
>But, none of the monarch scientists (e.g. Brower, Taylor,
>Oberhauser, Pyle, Altizer, etc.) who are so strongly opposed
>to experimental monarch transplants has been willing to come
>forward with evidence or a model (acceptable to an insect
>pathologist or invertebrate geneticist)  explaining how harm from
>a transfer of 5,000 monarchs could occur. Thus Jacob Groth, myself
>and other monarch workers are left unable to understand
>the scientific basis of their very serious concerns.
>
>Below is Dr. Karen Oberhauser's July 5, 1999 post in it's entirety:
>
>"As a scientist, I would love to know the answer to the question
>of whether there are genetic difference between the eastern and
>western monarch populations in responses to migratory cues.
>However, I can only think of one way, using our current
>understanding of monarch migration, to get a definitive answer to
>this question - releasing large numbers of monarchs from different
>natal origins in places other than those in which they would find
>themselves naturally. At this point, we don't know enough about
>the natural cues used by monarchs to duplicate them in the lab, so the
>releases would need to be in "the wild". Large numbers of butterflies
>would be needed because the recovery rate is very low."
>
>"Clearly, the most interesting comparison would be between monarchs
>from the eastern and western populations. However, the potential
>problems with such a release have been pointed out often, and
>are well-summarized in a BioScience Article by Brower et al
>(1995, 45:540-544; see also further discussion of this point in
>the September 1996 issue of BioScience); these problems include
>risk of transferring diseases which occur in different frequencies in
>different populations, and the chance that such transfers could make
> it difficult or impossible to study many aspects of basic monarch
>genetics and population structure."
>
>"It is, of course, possible that large-scale studies would not impact
>monarch populations in irreversible or harmful ways. However,
>as a scientist and as a citizen committed to doing everything I can
>to preserving the phenomenon of monarch migration, I am unwilling
>to take the risk or to condone such studies."
>
>