Ellen--

You go girl!!!  You took the words right out of my mouth.

Debbie Duval

>>> Ellen Bulger <[log in to unmask]> 12/28/2007 8:55 AM >>>
Shell clubs do good. Shell clubs provide data.

This past term I had an assignment for one of my classes that was a real eye
opener. Had to do a statewide biodiversity assessment for an insect family.
I chose Apidae, a bee family. Who can resist hymenoptera? Not me. Besides,
bees are not obscure. Their importance to human life is so obvious that even
your average Kmart shopper would understand it.

This will be a cakewalk, thinks I. It's not like I'm doing something
obscure, like Thripidae.

Ha.

Just try and find data on any insect family that isn't under the eyeballs of
hobbyist enthusiasts. Big Leps? You've got plenty of data from the butterfly
collectors. Dragonflies? There's plenty of information there too. People
collect them. Now there are even folks who watch them, who freak out at the
thought of collecting even insects. But bees? Not even the little halictids,
but the big obvious ones like the bumblebees? Ha. Ha and double ha!

(I collect 'em, by the by. Net 'em and put them in a killing jar and stick
pins right through their wee little thoraxes. Brute moi. Gotten stung too.
Fair's fair. A bees gotta do what a bees gotta do.)

Breathe easy Marlo. Except for a few students like myself, nobody is
collecting. The bees are safe from hobbyists. They aren't safe from
development, disease, pollution, habitat destruction or invasive species.
They aren't safe from climate change and all the pond ripples that causes.
You have bee species that are plant specialists and the yearly calendar is
all screwed up and you can bet your "Condescend to the Wildlife Foundation"
bumper sticker, there are extinctions happening right and left.

Does it make you feel better if nobody notices?

Shellers notice. Shellers can tell one species from the next. Shellers talk
to each other. I can go online and ask the conch-Lers what is the furthest
north anyone has collected Xenophora and folks will tell me. And odds are, a
lot of the people who will tell me about such things are members of shell
clubs.

People noticing invertebrates? Good gravy, what a wonderful thing. I've
stood on the beach on St. Thomas, at some huge awful resort, dripping in my
snorkeling gear, and listened to someone get out of the water and say "Don't
bother, there's nothing down there to see." While I've just seen a fabulous
wealth of gorgeous worms and slugs and sea stars and tunicates and sponges
and hydrozoans and what all else and had a glorious little beast that looked
like for all the world like Bullina lineata, only more ruffled and ornate of
body, with white and pale green speckles along the mantle (still trying to
figure out what species that was) crawling across the palm of my dive glove.

Holy heck, at least the shellers are paying attention.

I wish there were bee clubs. There are bee keeping clubs, but those are all
about Apis mellifera, not wild bees species. I wish there were wild bee
clubs and Hymenopteran clubs and clubs for every order of every phylum of
every living thing. And I wish they got together and held SOCIAL meetings
and talked about lichens and had craft contests of, oh, embroidery featuring
mayfly motifs and shared recipes for obscure echinoderms (though I'd take a
pass when it came to tasting) and  did all those cool things like bringing
in expert speakers and educating such public as could be bothered to pay
attention and funded scholarships, and yes, collected, but mostly CARED and
watched, and TALKED to each other socially, and kept an eye on their
favorite organisms in the wild and elsewhere.

Surely that is better for the natural world than all this attention focused
on Paris Hilton and American Idol and Nascar and shopping, shopping and more
pointless stupid damaging shopping?

But golly, the few people who are interested in the natural world on a
hobbyist level keep getting their knuckles rapped by enviro-puritans. Don't
you know it is wrong to interact with the natural world in any other way
than exactly the approved way.

Baloney, sez I, because I can use the word I'd prefer here. Poo to
shame-based eco-nagging that alienates people from nature and sends them
scurrying to their television sets and the Home Shopping Channel.

Oh, but you are allowed to watch nature on the Discovery Channel. >_<

Get out there and touch it. Get out there and join a club, if you are lucky
enough to find one.

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