collecting, vouchers, pay and the blame game (too long)

[Richard E. Hill]

Doug, I am generally a great fan of yours. I enjoy your insightful and
thoughtful comments.  I am a believer in careful disorderliness.

I agree with the concerns in your recent post and frustrations, but I do not
accept the broad statements and what I think are conclusions. Perhaps I am just
in a cranky mood.  Forcing voucher collection and payments will not work as
well as developing an ethical and professional culture of taxonomists,
consultants and agency staff working in association to achieve common goals.

I think your perspective is that of an entomological taxonomist.  I am an
invertebrate specialist working mostly with crustaceans and temporary pools
these days.  I work mostly in northern and central California, but throughout
the western USA.  I am a developing taxonomist and consultant, both private and
agency.  I have been a regulator.

I think the botanists are way ahead of the rest of us (I hate to admit that).
California has many well-qualified and dedicated field botanists who regularly
identify to species and verify determinations with museum specimens and
taxonomists.  Many species are further identified to sub-species.  Vouchers are
often collected and placed in museums or offered to specialists.  I think the
backbone of the botanical knowledge in California is the California Native
Plant Society (CNPS).  This group is composed of professional and other
botanists.  They produce and/or support professional publications such as
floras and taxonomies (The Jepson Manual) that form the taxonomic system for
consultants and others.  We have dozens of county level or local floras.  I
suspect that the state of and quantity our botanical knowledge is dependent on
professional, amateur and agency staff collaboration. The CNPS exerts
considerable influence and peer pressure for ethical work.  I believe that
their effort has developed environmental survey standards sensitive species
identifications to species level, and habitat inventories at the species
level.  There are thousands of non-economic botanists in California.

Educate me if I am inaccurate.  Do the botanists agree?

We must have a couple of hundred non-economic entomologists in California, and
tens of non-marine invertebrate biologists.  Or are those numbers too high?  Of
course most of those are amateurs.

The problem you point out has more to do with the lack of entomological or
invertebrate appreciation.  Consultants have not needed to know anything about
insects or other invertebrates.  Agencies have not wanted to know species level
anything.  Many regulators do not understand or have an interest in
invertebrates, or don't trust the results of surveys.  Fish work has long
identified stream invertebrates to family or genus.  Many generally available
keys do not allow general biologists to key below family.  Most broadly
available keys are national in scope.  Specialists may have keys to species,
but generalists often can not easily find them or use them.  There is little
money for specialists to develop keys, and less for consultants to use them.
My view is that university entomological programs usually emphasize
agricultural or other economic insect or invertebrate courses, not
environmental entomology or invertebrate courses.  I seem to be hearing that
those courses are diminishing and we are losing taxonomists at an alarming
rate.  Is that true for botany?  I don't think it is in California.

I am afraid that museum taxonomists are being paid according to their
recognized value to the economic community, and have little value to the
non-economic community.  At least part of the problem is a perception that
taxonomists as a group are uniformly highly ethical, and consultants as a group
are uniformly lacking in ethics.  My experience is that both groups contain
great people and terrible people and a great majority in-between.  The
polarizing statements do neither group any good.

With respect to agency designated sensitive species (endangered, threatened,
rare, etc.), vouchers may be required.  (I won't discuss whether we should
collect sensitive species here).  I work with fairy shrimp and other listed
invertebrates.  To receive a permit to collect listed fairy shrimp, one must
first pass an identification exam.  Collected specimens must be accessioned
into a recognized repository and a fee is charged or may be charged.  Species
determinations are required.  However, the USFWS originally required that you
had to be a recognized expert to collect and identify specimens, but
non-experts were allowed to make visual surveys and provide visual
determinations.  As recently as last week, I was told (CAUTION: 2nd hand
information) by a biologist I trust that he had missed a marginal pool during
dry season work, found the pool after recent rains and observed shrimp in the
pool.  When he notified the agency and asked for permission to make collections
to verify species identity, he was warned that his visual inspection without
prior permission was a potential violation of his permit.  I wish this was such
a rare kind of incident that it was just a outlier, but I have experienced many
like it and know many more who have their own horror stories.  Four years ago,
I asked for permission to hatch cysts in order to check cyst (egg)
identifications made from a key I was developing.  I was told that I would have
to prove that I could identify the cysts to species before I could receive
permission to culture cysts to check the validity of the key.  (The methods
have been accepted and results have been used in court).

I don't tell this story to impugn the USFWS or any other agency.  There are
many excellent biologists working for agencies.  However, my experience is that
many excellent mammalogists, ornithologists, herpetologists, botanists, etc.,
find themselves in charge of invertebrate issues and have no clue about the
subject.  They have very low comfort levels and may make illogical or
impossible demands.  We have to educate these "entomologists" or "invertebrate
specialists."  The dance is very important.  If we help too much, we are in bed
with the agency, if they learn too much they are in bed with us.  Consultants,
agency staff and taxonomists can form amazing, pulsating, dances that may do
the resources little good or great good.

I know that often taxonomists are asked to make IDs without compensation.  I
know that regulators often accept IDs without considering the validity of the
ID.  Taxonomists may look down at their noses at consultants, but if you want
to be paid by them for your efforts, treat them like a customer or at least
like a colleague.  Taxonomists need the broad support of many developing
taxonomists to support their work.  Most of us are too independent.

Treat consultants and agency staff poorly and they will stop coming or find a
way to avoid needing your services.  It seems to me that taxonomists have
developed mechanisms to separate themselves from the ethics and economics of
open market taxonomic work rather than to develop ethical standards and test
their moral fiber daily.  Isn't that the Ivory Tower Syndrome?  (Granted, many
consultants and agency staff deserve the same criticism from their own Ivory
Towers: they often conform to the local conditions rather than live by an
educated set of ethical standards and fail to test their moral fiber daily).
I'm still developing my standards, and don't always pass the test.

My point is this: The botanists seem to be doing a better job of working
together and developing well thought out associations, ethical standards and
work standards so their work in protecting habitats and species can progress.
Entomologists and others who profess to own the moral and ethical high ground
should spend more time seeking out and associating with quality consultants and
agency personnel.  Together, all should form working associations so more focus
is on the needs of the resources and less on vague proclamations on the ethics,
morals, expertise and values of the other.  In particular, taxonomists need to
stop crying about their under utilization and develop amateur and professional
associations that will increase their value and improve knowledge of the
resources.

Peace!


Doug Yanega wrote:

> That's not the thing to hope for: the thing to hope for is that the
> agencies for which the consulting work is being done will *require* that
> all work is vouchered, and this cost will be passed on; if consultants were
> *forced* to deposit vouchers, then the problem would be minimized. Of
> course, this is obviously only wishful thinking, and while we're wishing we
> might as well also wish that consultants be certified to do taxonomy. Or
> are we also expected to continue doing IDs for consultants for free, as
> well?
> It's also complicated by the fact that a fair bit of the environmental
> consulting done these days is in order to establish the NON-occurrence of
> specific sensitive taxa, so folks such as developers are often going to
> want to *avoid* having consultants collect any specimens which could come
> back to haunt them, even if it costs nothing extra. While there are
> probably some top-notch consultants who would be willing to pay to house
> vouchers, and could pass the costs on *anyway* (because they are involved
> in litigious situations where the vouchers could be important to winning
> their case), such cases are probably a minority, and you'd have to overcome
> not only a general resistance to fees, but widespread resistance to
> instituting a requirement for vouchering in the first place. Environmental
> consulting is a very political (and commercialized) enterprise, and
> expecting it to adhere to strict ethical and scientific policies is a tall
> order.
>
> Peace,
>
> Doug Yanega       Dept. of Entomology         Entomology Research Museum
> Univ. of California - Riverside, Riverside, CA 92521
> phone: (909) 787-4315 (standard disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)
>                 http://insects.ucr.edu/staff/yanega.html
>   "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
>         is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82