Re: NANFA-- Columbia trip gear (hellbenders plus!)

Bruce Stallsmith (fundulus_at_hotmail.com)
Fri, 09 Jan 2004 08:35:57 -0500

>I understand erring on the side of caution - I really do. But nowadays
>everbody
>is raising all kinds of alarms with nothing to back it up, or else they
>produce
>junk "science" to justify their claims. I have not seen any credible
>evidence
>that NA naturalists are contibuting to the decline of any NA animal by
>"collecting" them. I still believe that if this were a _legitimate_
>concern,
>then the majority of professional zoologists would consider it a point of
>honor
>never to harvest wild animals for their own various studies of imperiled
>species.

I wasn't talking about any and all collecting of wild animals for study. I'm
concerned with collecting species for which there is good reason to think
that they're vulnerable to unexpectedly quick decline, such collecting done
for some variety of the pet trade. The fact is that most professional
ichthyologists nowadays _don't_ indiscriminately collect buckets and buckets
of fish, which in truth was once the case. Why? Because they've put together
two and two and realize that populations aren't infiniite, and habitats
aren't stable.

One can make the argument that it's a god-given right to collect and keep
hellbenders, or whatever. I merely make the argument that there is over 6
billion of us on the planet now and we're leaving bigger and bigger
footprints.

Your mileage may vary, of course...

--Bruce Stallsmith
Huntsville, AL, US of A
Where men walk tall and the hellbenders stay low
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