Lynn...
 
Well said!!! A finer point could not have been put on it with a pencil
sharpener!
 
Kim Hutsell
San Diego
Lynn Scheu wrote:
>
> 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