At the risk of cluttering  up the list with too many of my thoughts, i
will dive headfirst into the lively ethics debate once more, while
ignoring  tales of 2 1/2 foot beached gloriamaris critters.
 
The situation in the Phillipines has disturbed me for years.  If ever
there was an entire country headed for ecological collapse, this is the
best candidate, from what i keep hearing. The government seems to have,
if my sources are anywhere near accurate, neither the resources nor the
will to slow the accelerating  pace of environmental mayhem caused by a
deadly combination of poverty, swift population growth, and greed in all
its ugly manifestations.  In defense of  semi-scientific collecting
activities, however, i would put forth the reality that 99%++ of the
damage afflicted upon this wonderful repository of biodiversity, is the
result of large-scale or simplywidespread plundering  (The
often-rehearsed euphemism "harvesting", which  we  hide much ecological
rape under, does not apply in most cases there (if what i have been
hearing is accurate, ie!!)) of   theoretically renewable resources by
detructive and/or uncontrolled methods:  dynamiting  coral ecosystems
for fish, using cyanide to stun tropical fish, wholesale harvesting of
corals, reckless clearcutting of huge tracts of forest ( a shameful
practice Canada is still afflicted with, i must report) , and of course
the gathering  of  amazingly large amounts of shells for "ornamental"
purposes  (so as to avoid offending a lot of people, i will keep my
opinions regarding the use of  once-living , live-collected organisms'
remains for paper-weights, door-stops and bric-a-brac to myself) : the
"commercial" shell trade.   Despite the fact that  a surprisingly large
number of  "specimen shells" come from this country (in which over
20,000 molluscan spp have been found!) , the absolute ammount of
environmental destruction involved in their capture represents such a
minute fraction of the total damage, and more importantly, the
*long-term and irreversable* destruction occuring  there, that i would
venture to say it is worth