Subject: Re: Begineer

From: "A.P.K.Torry" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 22 Jul 1996 08:57:52 GMT

IRRELEVENT a moth has as much right not toi be collected as does a butterfly!

Your case for non-collecting must stand unopposed for all members of the order
 or non at all.

Andrew T

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From: [email-masked] (DIPTERA2)
Date: 22 Jul 1996 15:07:21 -0400

Insects have rights? Hmmmmm. Pretty funny. 
THE BEETLE GUY IN OKLAHOMA  \ /
 If you think education is                  (_)
expensive, try ignorance.               \-{  }-/
 Throw another steak                     \-{_}-/
 on the grill.                                    <>

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From: [email-masked] ("Colin Cracknell")
Date: Tue, 23 Jul 1996 16:09:45 GMT

I don't agree. I'm a photographer rather than a collector, but I would 
support collector's rights; I feel very sorry for T.K., not so much for 
his court sentence as for the barrage of abuse that he's suffered here.

One excuse for collecting in this country is that it can bring people 
into "real" entomology. All of us, but beginners in particular, need 
something concrete for some of our labours. For me it's photographs. For 
those who can't/don't want to take photo's, it's what? How is such a 
person to learn the difference between Clouded Yellow & Berger's Clouded 
Yellow without being intimately familiar with a cherished specimen of at 
least one of them? "From books" won't do as an answer. With a book there 
is an overload of someone else's information. With a collection, 
specimens or photo's, you have the cherished result of your own efforts. 
Which is more likely to sink in?

Having said that, in the UK there is far *less* excuse for collecting 
butterflies than moths. With butterflies, there are a few "difficult" 
cases where one might need to net a specimen for positive ID, but that 
can be done without any more invasive procedure. Some moths cannot be 
positively ID'd while alive, and almost all of them *have* to be trapped 
in order to be observed at all.

I don't think I've ever heard of dipterists campaigning against lethal 
traps, even though from my own point of view I hate them; there's no 
point in photographing the catch. Do butterflies have more rights than 
flies?
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[email-masked] | "Ask not for whom the book burns, 
                           | it burns for thee." ([email-masked])
All opinions are my own, but Darter Systems agrees with me.
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From: Michael Pennington <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 23 Jul 1996 23:30:33 +0100

In message <[email-masked]>
        [email-masked] ("Colin Cracknell") writes: 

> For me it's photographs. For 
> least one of them?

Strange how people differ. The sight of my first Clouded Yellow (on 
the west coast of Britain) was enough). I never felt any desire or 
need to kill it and keep it to look at (but I would have liked a photograph). 

Now I collect many specimesn because I have a need and a reason to do 
so (Shetland is relatively poorly covered and I am still learning my 
micros). But if a suspected Berger's Clouded Yellow flew past 
tomorrow I still couldn't collect AND kill it. A value judgement I know but ...

-- 
Mike Pennington
Baltasound, Unst, Shetland
[email-masked]
Shetland Wildlife Pages http://www.zetnet.co.uk/sigs/birds/links.html

"I wanted to build a team that was unbeatable, so they'd have to 
bring a team from Mars to beat us" - Bill Shankly

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From: [email-masked] (P. Stadel Nielsen)
Date: Mon, 29 Jul 1996 13:21:31 GMT

>Which is more likely to sink in?

Now I can't help it, I must add some comments on this collecting
subject. I guess some info on how things are here in DK would be of
interest.
I am a lepidoptera collector _and_ deeply involved in habitat
conservation for insects (5 years working with Maculinea arion in DK).
I have been interested in leps for more than 30 years and have been
president for the Danish Lepidopterological Society for 21 years.  So
much for my background.
The quote above is to us a most important point in the discussion.
Here there is no real difference between being a collector and
conservasionist ! As we have no professionals working with the Danish
insects (at least not ecology) the amateur entomologists have provided
+95% of all knowledge about insects in DK. And even if we had
professionals, they would never be able to follow the status of f.i.
2600 DK species of Lepidoptera, we even can't. We are actually far to
few people for this, only abt. 100 serious entomologists. This is
really a big problem, as we get lots of requests for information about
"interesting" leps on one or another place, but most of the time, we
have to say that no (recent) information is available. A pity if there
actually is some vulnerable species. 
This problem has come partly from the fact that collecting butterflies
has not been accepted in the public , but also because teaching
biology in our schools has been very scarce and bad for years. People
are feeded with fantastic nature film in TV, causing people to use
only their feelings - nature is cute (yak !) - but they never get a
proper first hand understanding about how things are "out there".

This leeds to a strong decrease in number of new lepidopterists,
people who often soon after having collected butterflies, continues
with moths, micros and even other more difficult insects groups. This
together with increasing difficulties in getting permission to use
light when mothing in forests has reduced our knowledge on the status
of our leps to a whorrying level. Remember that these collectors
observe far more than they collect.
Naturally you can study butterflies by photografing, but it will never
give the same basic knowledge about how to recognize and understand
the insects. This we have learned many times here f.i. observers often
claim to have seen some rare species (naturally it must be such one)
but have not got a proper photo or one at all. First when asked
detailed questions,  they realize that it was not the rarity. Besides
that, we have also had insidents where photographers were destroying
the foodplants in their senseless effort to get the right picture, so
black sheeps can be found anywhere.

In DK we have 3 protected butterflies: C. hero which has been
considered extinct since 1983, E. aurinia which is still not rare in
Jutland, and M. arion the only proper species on this list. The
legislation only forbids collecting of the species, but also states
that "this legislation is not of hinder for cultivating places or any
other legal use" ! This means, that a farmer who owns a place for f.i.
M. arion, can cultivate it without getting pursued, while a collector
taking  a specimen at the same plase can get in jail for up to 2
years. One of our best populations of E. aurinia was actually
destroyed because of heavy grazing with sheeps for the purpose of
"nature management" the same spring as the legislation came into
force!
To regulate collecting rare species better, the Danish entomological
societies have had internal agreements for many years, not to take a
few selected species: Heodes tityrus (most likely extinct since 1986),
C. arcania which is really on the edge now, and resident populations
(which we have none) of P. machaon. Further we have ethic rules like
the English ones. So generally collecting is done in a responsible
manner by us. Fortunately we have no trading of Lepidoptera, so mass
collection for this purpose does not take place.

Finally an example from DK that collection has no influence on small
and very local populations.
Near Copenhagen we had one of the biggest populations in Europe of the
noctuid Photedes morrisii. The habitat was only 3 x 100 m along the
coast, and was discovered many years ago. Danish collectors have taken
many morrisii here each year, but the population was always the same.
Until Danish authorities arranged socalled nature restoration. This is
done by putting up a fence and letting out a bunch of sheep or cattle
to graze the area totally down. Even the place was protected by law,
this was made in the place for morrisii  in 1987, and  we havent seen
the morrisii there since. What danish collectors couldn't do during 25
years, nature conservasionists made in 2 months. This caused a lot of
discussion among Entomologists, and fortunately, embarassed the
authorities so much, that they are now listening more to us.

As long as collecting is done in a responsible manner with respect for
the nature and its creatures, it normally has no influence on insect
populations. Mad people collecting all they can get will always exist
and can hardly be controlled, but our policy here is to keep them in
the societies to influence them to a better behavior. The group
pressure is very efficient. 
We think the beginner should be taken by the hand and be inspired and
educated from expirienced collectors and nature conservers, so that
he/she may one day be a fine specialist in f.i. microlepidoptera
people which we are lacking so severely. And the real entrance to this
is collecting butterflies even there may be no _direct_ scientific
reason for it either in GB or DK.

This was a long story, but it could have been much longer as the
discussion is very complicated with all aspects entangling each other.
I hope it has illustrated that there should be no wall between
responsible collectors and nature conservers, such a wall would be bad
for the nature we all want to conserve. The political and economical
forces we are up against are big enough, so we do not need self made
problems.

Per Stadel Nielsen