museum 'poachers'

[Kenelm Philip]

	I am amused by the people who seem to have just realized that
museums (horrors!) actually take specimens--even birds (not to mention
mammals, fish, etc.).

	However, while there have indeed been curators who collected
illegally, and thus really were poachers (even scientists can be crim-
inals--and museum curators who venture into crime are known for being
'self-documenting' criminals, since their collection labels provide
evidence), the vast majority of these people collect with due regard
for the increasing number of regulations that have zeroed in on collecting.
When you have to get a gov't permit to shoot birds for a collection, and
the permit specifies how many birds of each species you may shoot, one
can hardly accuse you of poaching!

	Some numbers may be of interest. A 1996 article in 'The Condor'
states that scientists in the U.S. collect around 21,000 birds per year,
amounting to less than 0.01% of the human-caused bird mortality. This
is also 1/30,000th of the estimated number of birds killed per year by
domestic cats. There's nothing that makes one feel better than knowing
that 1/30,00th of the problem is well-regulated by ouir gov't!

	As for the existence of drawers of _Pieris rapae_, what harm is
being done by taking large series of an introduced pest species? And
why not take good series of abundant native species? The Alaska Lepi-
doptera Survey has always attempted to get large enough samples so one
can get an idea of the variation within populations. Is this deleterious
to the populations of various species of butterflies? A year ago I
calculated the number of butterfly specimens (all species) the ALS has
taken per square mile (in the region of interest) per year over its
32-year life. The result: 1 specimen per 1000 square miles per year.
Not much of a problem for the butterfly populations--especially when
it is clear that a few Fairbanks vicinity areas that I check regularly
have not been affected by every-year sampling. The only case I know
of where a population of one species near Fairbanks was, as far as I
know, destroyed by human activity involved a bulldozer, not a collector.

	Campare that to the recent paper in the J. Lep. Soc. estimating
over 20,000,000 butterflies killed along Illinois roads in only seven
days. 500,000 of these may have been Monarchs. People who object to seeing
a few drawers of a single species in a collection should consider giving
up driving during the summer.  :-)

							Ken Philip

P.S. And yes--collecting is indeed fun, despite mosquitoes, black flies,
close encounters with very large furry beasts, bogs, and scree slopes.
Not to mention the deplorable habit up here of having July snowstorms.
There was once an institute director here who was a real Puritan--he
thought that doing science shouldn't be fun, but just grueling work.
If you were having fun there was something wrong. I disagreed with
him at the time--and still do.




 
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