Hi Tweets,

Jack Bowling forwards:

>UK News / 'Common' birds at risk / Christopher Elliott
> LAPWINGS, tawny owls and yellow wagtails are among seven once common birds
(snip)

Mixed feelings to this. Extirpation through human habitat destruction is one
thing, but a number of these species have become so dependent on traditional
human agricultural or urban practices that as those change, improve or end,
the birds unable to adapt to the change die off. There seems a real conflict
between ecology and human sentiment here, leavened with the human desire to
have the things of the world that were present in our childhoods not change.

I tried to put the import of the article into local, personal terms,
imagining how it would be similarly to lose a common 'garden' bird, American
Robin Turdus migratorius, say from urban cat predation on the vulnerable
'branching' young. Nature is simply what is, so there's no caring there one
way or the other. But in my human sentimentality, I'd be devastated by the
vanishing of the robin and the values which I apply to its worth have no
intellectual, ecological basis, but are emotionally founded. A morning in
May without robin song? Unthinkable! But *why* is it unthinkable? Who cares
that a forest species of thrush with a loud territorial song and which eats
worms and bugs has adapted to a human urban garden-habitat as a forage and
nesting area and can't adapt to the suddenly-increased numbers of a
human-introduced small alien ground predator? As someone once remarked, "In
the final analysis, there's no such thing as environmental destruction, only
environmental change." (or, Paul Simon's: "One man's ceiling is another
man's floor"). It's only the human imposition of human values--estheticism,
resistance to change, nostalgia and empathy (as well as the tawdry wanting
to retain a species tick) are at least as important in my opinion as
scientific curiosity and ecology--which turns alteration into destruction,
and deems the survival of species important.

I'd suggest that as well as understanding how to conserve, we understand
with equal clarity *why* we're doing it.

Michael Price A brave world, Sir,
Vancouver BC Canada full of religion, knavery and change;
mprice at mindlink.net we shall shortly see better days.
Aphra Behn (1640-1689)