I need help.......

[Paul Cherubini]

Ken Philip wrote:

> For a specific case, consider the Painted Lady in Interior Alaska.
> This species is known to reach Alaska occasionally--I have a small series
> of very worn specimens from the north shore of the Kenai Peninsula--but
> there were no records from Interior Alaska until 1986, when I obtained a
> (suspiciously) fresh specimen from the summit of Ester Dome, near Fairbanks.
> At any rate, the specimen cannot be used to prove natural dispersal to
> Interior Alaska--and nor can subsequent specimens unless the numbers are
> very large (which is unlikely).

During the 14 years from 1986 to 2000 no more fresh Painted Ladies were
seen in the Fairbanks region despite continued school releases during this 
period. And no fresh Painted Ladies were apparently ever seen
in Anchorage- a much larger city with 5-10 times as many schools and 
associated releases. Thus it appears the chance that the faunal record database 
would record a false positive due to school releases is extremely low.

Ken, do the occasional sightings of worn specimens on the Kenai peninsula 
(presumably somewhat near Anchorage) really prove natural Painted Lady 
dispersal to coastal Alaska from Mexico or the USA?  How do we know for sure
these fairly rare Alaskan records of Painted Lady sightings weren't really 
false positives resulting from butterflies that hitch hiked on ships from USA or
Canadian seaports (the way monarchs do from the USA to England
each year)?

Michael Gochfeld wrote:

> Perhaps we should be considering releases in a risk assessment
> framework. What is the probability that something bad will happen. Most
> likely it is small, but what is "small".  Moreover, there are at least
> two dimensions to "risk": probability and consequence.  We need to
> recognize that even highly improbable events might have substantial
> consequence.  Optimists focal on the low probability and pessimists on
> the high cost of being wrong.

The bottom line seem to be deciding what is an acceptable risk standard
in regard to both probability and consequence. The pro-release
community considers a negligible risk standard as appropriate 
as do federal regulatory agencies like the EPA in deciding matters
such as acceptable levels of pesticides in our food.

The anti-release community is in favor of a zero risk standard;
i.e. Glassberg, Pyle & Tuttle say they want releases of commercially 
obtained butterflies permanently banned)  For example, Bob Pyle has
stated he feels a zero risk standard is appropriate in regard to
eliminating the chance of even one false positive sighting of a monarch 
ever being recorded in his home state of Washington due to a school
or wedding/funeral release.

Paul Cherubini