It does not directly address the issue of marine mollusks, but the
January/February 1999 issue of Nature Conservancy cites a report from the
August issue of BioScience that found that 85 percent of the threatened
species in the U.S. faced habitat degradation (beach development is cited
as an example), about 45 percent were threatened by introduced species, 24
percent by pollution (a unionid is cited as an example), and fewer than
twenty percent by overexploitation, including "overzealous collectors".
Such statistics may help in arguing that habitat damage is more serious a
problem than collecting and in demonstrating the need for knowledge about
habitats obtainable only by responsible collection.
 
David Campbell
 
"Old Seashells"
 
Department of Geosciences
CB 3315 Mitchell Hall
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill NC 27599-3315
USA
 
919-962-0685
FAX 919-966-4519
 
"He had discovered an unknown bivalve, forming a new genus"-E. A. Poe, The
Gold Bug