Fwd: value

[Chris J. Durden]

Check the price of that Macaw in your local pet store. How many Birdwings 
could you buy for that amount?
This argument is ridiculous.
...........Chris Durden

>________________________
>Message: 4
>Date: Wed, 29 May 2002 07:52:07 -0700
>From: Paul Cherubini <monarch at saber.net>
>Subject: Re: Commercial value of butterflies
>Michael Gochfeld wrote:
> > It's not an underground at all. There is a whole list serve
> > devoted to the sale and purchase of specimens (both live and dead).
> > It's the commercial aspect of butterfly specimens that worries
> > conservationists (birders and butterfliers don't buy and trade specimens).
> > Not many species command hundreds of dollars,
>Mike, an article in Outside Magazine hints at an underground
>industry where big dollars are paid for perfect rare / endangered
>butterflies and moths:
>http://www.outsidemag.com/magazine/0196/9601is.html
>"Although their case is the most prominent, Kral, Skalski, and
>Grinnell are not the only collectors to have run afoul of the Fish &
>Wildlife Service. Last July a commercial dealer named Charles
>Kondor was sentenced to five months in prison in Wisconsin.
>The indictment that same month of a collector in Texas, John
>William Kemner, who specialized in Mexican butterflies, is
>rumored to implicate some of the most important museums in
>the country, from the Smithsonian on down. Butterfly poaching
>and smuggling cases have been investigated independently in
>Britain, India, and China, where a pair of alpine silks was
>reportedly sold on the Japanese market for $37,000."
>I just wanted to know whether or not the motivation for
>the collecting and breeding of rare species in the Skalski-Kral-Grinnel
>case was to make money via underground trading or
>the motivation was simply to accumulate the worlds finest
>collection of rare butterflies (with the recently passed Fish &
>Wildlife endangered species laws getting in the way from time to time)
>Paul Cherubini



 
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