Government views Monarch Butterfly Releases as a threat to Western Milkweeds

[John Shuey]

For perhaps the first time in my life - I find myself in odd (but
tangential) agreement with Paul  Cherubini.  The IUCN numbers are probably
wrong, but they probably underestimate the problem, not over estimate it.
Here is a breakdown of extinction status of selected taxa from the US
(amazingly published by Oxford University Press -  "Precious Heritage: The
Status of Biodiversity in the United States"  Bruce Stein et al editors
2000).

IUCN tends to over emphasize the risk to big warm fuzzy animals - birds and
mammals.  They badly underestimate risk to the non- cuddly - fish, mussels,
amphibians.  Entire clades are at risk of becoming evolutionarily
simplified.  The US mussel fauna (the US is the center of diversity for this
group) is already there - all that are really left are the common, highly
ecologically tolerant species.  Our fish are headed there soon.

                                         % known or                     %
critically                    Total species
                                          presumed extinct
imperiled                        considered
Freshwater Mussels                     12%                           25%
292
mammals                                   0.02
0.2                               416
birds                                           0.03
0.03                              768
Amphibians                                 0.01
9.1                               231
freshwater fishes                          0.02
11.4                              799

butterflies*                                    0.00
0.01                             620
crayfish                                        0.01
16.7                             322

flowering plants                            0.01
6.7                           15,320


*Xerces Blue is considered to be a subspecies for this analysis - hence no
US butterfly species have gone completely extinct.

John


>
> Patrick Foley wrote:
>
> >                                 % extinct        % IUCN threatened
> > Molluscs                        0.2                    0.4
> > Crustaceans                    0.01                0.3
> > Insects                            0.006             0.09
> > Fishes                            0.1                    2
> > Amphibians                    0.1                    2
> > Reptiles                            0.4                  3
> > Birds                                1                   11
> > Mammals                        1                     11
> >
> > Total animals                0.04                  0.3
> >
> > Total Plants                0.2                        9
>
> > The actual extinctions and IUCN threatened numbers are
> > appalling, but they probably represent the vulnerable tip of
> > the iceberg.
>
> Then again, some of these IUCN threatened designations
> may not have a legitimate scientific basis. I would, for example,
> question this one:
>
> "In 1983, the IUCN Invertebrate Red Data Book designated
> monarch migration a threatened phenomenon."
>
> Paul Cherubini
>
>
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