The missionaries are back...

[Kenelm Philip]

	Something in the human psyche appears to require people to prosel-
ytize for their ideas, instead of just quietly going about whatever they
do. So once more we get intemperate postings against collecting butterflies.

> If we collected birds the same way people collect butterflies,
> there would soon be no more of them, probably what is happening to
> butterflies.....

That's simply not true, as regards butterflies in North America. Loss of
habitat is the problem, not collecting. And collecting of birds is indeed
going on--museum curators still go out with shotguns (and gov't permits).
Even if butterflies were classified with birds, and possession of any part
of a butterfly were outlawed, musuem people (which includes amateurs with
appointments as research associates) would still be out there collecting,
armed with gov't permits. By the way, feral cats kill 30,000 times more
birds than scientists do. For some strange reason, the gov't does not see
their way to regulate cats.  :-)

> I can't stand people who kill something and don't eat it.

There are lots of people I can't stand--but I just don't associate with
them. They do their thing, I do mine, and everyone's (more or less) happy.

> WHY do we need "voucher" specimens.

As someone commented recently, you can't get DNA from a photograph. Nor can
you examine genitalia, analyze for other chemicals (either innate, or pick-
ed up from the environment), study morphology in general, and do much of
what constitutes current taxonomy--without actual specimens. And there
appear to be a lot of cryptic species out there...

	The collectors don't appear to have quite the same missionary zeal.
Perhaps they are happy to let watchers watch--leaving more to collect? :-)
However, if a group chooses to arrange an outing without nets, I would
not myself insist on my right to join them while wielding a net. Instead,
I would simply go to some other spot... (Of course, if the watchers decide
to picket all known collecting sites, then I'd be right there, net in
hand. Nor would I approve of collectors following all NABA groups around
in the field and grabbing the bugs being watched.)

	Whatever happened to toleration? It seems to have died when the
age of political correctness arrived.

							Ken Philip
fnkwp at uaf.edu




 
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