Michael: thanks for the thoughtful post (I love tweeters). Please
clarify one point, though: why isn't thinking that environmental change
is simply a valueless, existential process *also* an imposition of meaning
onto the bio-physical world, equivalent to your example of nostalgia for
Turdus migratorius males giving territorial calls in May?

I'm having growing difficulties with the supposed/implied neutrality or
value-free nature of scientific discourse as opposed to other ways of
knowing.

Regards,

Tom Love
Dept. Soc/Anth
Linfield College
McMinnville, OR 97128
tlove at linfield.edu

On Thu, 12 Feb 1998, Michael Price wrote:

> 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)
>
>