Variations on a theme.

[Michael Gochfeld]

"The killing of birds for scientific reference causes debate and dispute
whose intensity is in inverse proportion to its relevance as a
conservation issue, with similar degrees of heat being generated only by
such momentous things as the standardization of vernacular bird names."

So you can see we're not alone.  This was Nigel Collar's editorial
"Opinion: Collecting andConservation: cause and effect.  Bird
Conservation International (2000) 10:1-15.

Collar then implied that these were relatively simple questions that
people felt they had the power to "achievge a resolution" (surely and
illusion).

Collar then went on to write: "Really important matters----global
warming, intransigent debt arrangements for developinmg nations,
exponential human population growth, obliteration of habitats for short
term gain, scandalous abuses of biocide in agriculture, saturation-level
corruption, and incompetence in state conservation agencies....are
poised to degrade the ornithological environment beyond recognition".
Those issues should keep him busy a while.


Collar goes on to explain the mutual reliance of scientific collecting
and conservation.

Mike Gochfeld







 
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