Silent Spring

[Karl Magnacca]

On 30 Jan 2006 at 8:12, ralf becker wrote:
> Please have a look at:   <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4582024.stm>
> All is silent down at the pond
> Conservationists must face the reality that animals and plants will go
> extinct, argues an eminent biologist.

Does this guy actually deal with people who work with endangered
species, or just sit with his head in the academic clouds?  Since when
did conservationists believe that no more species will go extinct, or
that habitat loss was the be-all and end-all of conservation?  It's
remarkable that an article that claims to take a more realistic look
than "conservationists" ends up with such an incredibly simplistic
conclusion: that the causes of amphibian extinctions are complicated and
we don't really know what they are, so we should just give up trying to
preserve them and document them as they go (I suppose that means we
should divert resources from the ones that can be saved so that we can
find out what happened to the ones that are going extinct?).  Never mind
the vertebrate-centric view that the frog went extinct, so preserving
the forest was pointless.

I'm sorry, but people like this just piss me off.  They claim to be on
the "good side" but write very public articles that portray conservation
biologists as fools who can't see beyond their own blinders.

Karl
=====================
Karl Magnacca, USGS-BRD, 808-985-6076
PO Box 11, Hawaii Natl. Park, HI 96718
"Democracy used to be a good thing, but now it has
gotten into the wrong hands."   --Sen. Jesse Helms