Quoting Marien Faber <[log in to unmask]>:

>> "I don't believe this piece of research is cause enough to tell a
>> child not to take home a beautiful valve from the beach. Taking
>> home a few shells as a small child is often how malacologists are
>> born. It was in my case."

> I think this piece of research   will cause people to turn away from
> nature and become more ignorant. It will be much easier for
> hypocrite politicians to turn a blind eye to real ecological threats
> when at the same time they can impose a ban on shell-collecting.
> Then laws will tell parents to keep their children from taking shells.

* it's either interesting that those proposing regulation of
interactions with wild species don't consider the necessity of folks
handling and collecting and knowing about species-level differences of
what they're protecting, or more sinisterily that they want to prevent
this familiarity in order to suppress love of wild things, in order to
allow the habitat destruction wonks to have their way.

Here's the final paragraph of a report I'm writing:

"The other thing that this season's work has suggested is the need for
public education in the appearance of the rare species, both to
increase public awareness of mussels in general and to acquire records
of the rare species. This publicity could take the form of a poster
illustrating all the local species, focused on the rare species,
accompanied by a brochure featuring the same illustrations and more
text, and a website. We tried to launch such general interest in
mussels with identified sets of shells handed out at the Ontario
Rivers Alliance annual meeting in 2012  but without any evident
success.  In eastern Ontario the rare species, unlike the common ones,
are all of distinctive appearance, and a well-designed poster would
alert naturalists and other outdoors-persons to recognize them."

...and of another document I'm working on:

"For those already entranced by Unionids, the difficulty of arousing
this interest is a real puzzle. Since 1995 [I have] tried to interest
paddlers, creek cleanup groups, conservation authorities, naturalists
groups, and NIMBYs in the eastern Ontario Unionid fauna, but fewer
than a dozen persons have responded to the extent of learning to
recognize some species. During this same period Odonata and
Butterflies have come to be of routine interest to naturalists: one
can only surmise that the birding-like methods of pursuit of these
taxa, with the use of the technological novelty of digital
photography, have made these flitting Insects attractive, while
picking up and puzzling over shells, no matter how lovely, has been
somehow regarded as too 19th Century to be appealing.

"Approaches that have been tried include a publication in a local
naturalists' journal, invertebrate identification workshops,
presentations to naturalists clubs, and involving volunteers in
surveys.  At Parc de Plaisance, a programme where visitors and their
children are invited to search for mussels is very popular... We've
urged shoreline cleanups to include picking up Mollusc, especially
Unionid, shells – but there hasn't been much response..."

fred.
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          Frederick W. Schueler & Aleta Karstad
Bishops Mills Natural History Centre - http://pinicola.ca/bmnhc.htm
Mudpuppy Night in Oxford Mills - http://pinicola.ca/mudpup1.htm
Daily Paintings - http://karstaddailypaintings.blogspot.com/
          South Nation Basin Art & Science Book
          http://pinicola.ca/books/SNR_book.htm
     RR#2 Bishops Mills, Ontario, Canada K0G 1T0
   on the Smiths Falls Limestone Plain 44* 52'N 75* 42'W
    (613)258-3107 <bckcdb at istar.ca> http://pinicola.ca/
------------------------------------------------------------

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