Subject: Neotropical (?) migrants
Date: Apr 29 10:17:07 1994
From: Michael Smith - whimbrel at u.washington.edu



A friend and I have been debating this question for some time now, and
seeing as it has been a while since there was a good debate on tweeters
(the last was the Brewer's Sparrow/taxonomy one), I thought I'd send it
along, see what we can come up with.

Her position is that neotropical migrants exist in the West, mine is that
they don't. It's really a question of how you define neotropical. I'm
more familiar with the eastern species than the west, but it seems to me
this whole neotropical business is mislabelled (spelling, Dennis?), and
should be called trans-Gulf migrants, referring to the Gulf of Mexico.
Now there are many people who share this belief and already refer to them
as such, but it seems that in the west there are alot of people who want
to jump on the bandwagon and SAVE THE NEOTROPS (besides, it's a great
catch-phrase). Partners in Flight, for instance, continues to put all
these prioritized lists of neotrops in trouble, and the status of
neotrops by state, and can't help but think it's all a bunch of hooey.
Not the PIF isn't doing good work, they seem to be making great strides
in avian conservation, but I don't think there are any 'nice and neat'
categories that migratory western birds fit into because they don't have
any great ecological boundary to cross, like the Gulf of Mexico.

Anyway, that's probably enough for now, but I'd like to hear the Tweeters
opine on this one...

Mike Smith
University of Washington
whimbrel at u.washington.edu