>Now if it is possible to do this with big game animals - then saving a
>cute little pupfish or Topminnow or Madtom ought to be a whole lot
>easier. This may be political incorrectness, but it looks awfully silly
>to have a hissy fit over the idea of allowing private citizens to
>commercially propagate and distribute a little fish whose entire
>population resides in a single tributary or spring the size of a
>swimming pool!
You are a bad man, JF! I'm telling...but I don't know who to tell...
You are hurting, not helping, the environment by identifying discreet units
of it and extracting them for their protection. Species in decline are
indicators that the environment itself is in decline; their ecosytems have
been stressed and we're seeing visible signs of it. Focusing on the
species themselves is like missing the forest for the trees. In the case of
Devils Hole, there are other species endemic to that ecosystem besides the
pupfish that few people talk about or know about: the Devils Hole warm
spring riffle beetle Stenelmis calida calida, and a snail, genus
Tryonia. Aren't they sexy enough to save, along with their desert
ecosystem that was here long before we were?
In other aquatic and terrestrial systems with endangered species, who knows
what other species in them are in also peril? These declining species are
like canaries in a coal mine. So we're supposed to say the coal mines are
okay, just that we have the canaries are in the wrong place?!
-- Jay DeLong Olympia, WA
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