Marlo said:
 
>A wonderful elaboration.  Whether it's buying, trading or collecting, if
>we support the market, we support the desimation of species countries are
>trying to preserve.
 
But Marlo, Kate, and all,
 
In the case of shells, it is often everything, not just this species or
that species, that some countries want to save. Or should I say "restrict"?
 Or "sell"?  It is too hard, I guess, to differentiate among restricted
species and other species, so governments just opt to make shell collecting
off limits.  Or, as Kate suggested, make a profit from their natural
resources.  This is a preservationist approach with a big bucks spin, and
it is one which I deplore.  It makes of us all just spectators in a zoo,
look but don't touch...everything's off limits.  Unless you can pay enough.
 
We need to be good stewards to our environment, implying intelligent use
of/interaction with/protection for/management of our resources.  Fisheries
are managed. Hunting is managed.  If we are instead put in the position of
tolerated observers, who are restricted from
interaction/collecting/disturbing/killing, eating, etc, we lose touch with
our whole environment, our fellow species, our roots and our planet.  It is
a dead end. Especially if we who are naturalists at heart, by avocation, by
our makeup and training, buy into it. Keep in mind that no species of
marine mollusk has ever been driven to extinction by shell collectors.  Or
even by man, really. (The Hawaiian Achatinellas and Carelias, arguably
might die out -- or already be extinct as in the case of Carelia species --
as a result of man's activities, since man illadvisedly introduced the
snails that killed them.  But keep in mind, even there, that it wasn't
shell collectors who did this but government agencies.)
 
It is up to us and others in hobbies and interests like ours, to help
educate the politicians, the governments, as to the real problems, and
dangers, and stop taking the rap!  Right, as someone earlier said, our
collecting activities do add to the pressure on some already scarce
species.   But our pressures are far less than the least of their natural
predators.  Want to increase the stock of queen conchs?  Get rid of the
rays and the lobsters and the blue crabs and the octopus and the tulip
shells, and, oh yes, and the sea turtles.  This is a web we live within.
All the strands have to work.  There was a time when early man got a lot of
his protein from sea life that he could catch in the shallows -- Largely
mollusks. And there were probably more of those guys than there are shell
collectors today. (We aren't a large group, you know.) If we weren't
killing them off by massive dredging operations, garbage dumping,
fertilizers, beach renourishment, all that litany of horrors we impose on
the oceans, there would never be any problems for which shell collectors
get to take the position of scapegoats.
 
Well, I have about a thousand other things I would like to say on this
subject.  But I won't. (I don't even want to touch the museum issue!)  We
are liable to shut down Conch-L again! <GRIN!> Suffice it to summarize:
 
We aren't the problem. And the sooner we realize that and start hitting
hard on the real problems, the safer this hobby will be, and, by extension,
the safer this whole planet will be. We're just on the edge a bad
situation.  I have been with this list since its birth, almost three years
ago now, and have seen this business of blaming each other for taking
shells crop up again and again.  And, as Tom Eichhorst said a few days ago,
in so many words, we're preaching to the choir.  The 382 people on Conch-L
today are some of the few who know and care about the fate of shells.
Don't sling guilt at each other, please!
 
Lynn Scheu