Dennis Paulson:
>I just spent the weekend with a British birder. If you want to see the
>future of nature appreciation, go to England, where, in many areas, you
>have to do something much like what Michael imagines. The crowds at the
>nature reserves can be large enough so that sitting at home watching the
>Discovery Channel seems the better alternative....

I used to work with, and occasionally take birding trips with, a
native of Britain. When we were in Texas some rare little thang
had been spotted by Dave DeSante, who'd been along the Rio Grande
to do a little recreational birding. A day or two later the
area where the bird had been seen was surrounded by about two
dozen folks, most of whom had large lenses. It was a USA record
bird, so attracting listers like Limbaugh attracts gun nuts.

Anyway, in the course of our chuckling over the crowd which we
found more entertaining than looking for the bird itself, particularly
since we'd been looking in the brush from the wrong direction and
found ourselves staring at it from the opposite side of some
police-style yellow tape folks had put up to mark the spot, my
friend made some interesting comments.

In Britain, apparently, within hours of the discovery of such a
rarity hordes of folks show up. If it hangs around for a day
or so, you can literally end up with crowds of THOUSANDS, blocking
traffic for miles, etc etc.

It's kind of a cart-before-the-horse problem, isn't it? If we
had that kind of interest in that proportion of the population
today, we'd not be seeing such idiocy out of Congress on natural
resources - at least I'd like to think so. But such interest
seems somehow linked to scarcity - we'll pine for it once it's
gone.

But not before, at least not en masse.

- Don Baccus, Portland OR <donb at rational.com>