Subject: Canadian Geese Limited
Date: Aug 5 14:31:35 1999
From: Don Baccus - dhogaza at pacifier.com


At 02:05 PM 8/5/99 -0700, Steven Kimball wrote:
>I realize that the comments were tongue in cheek. It's the attitude (blame
>the geese for being nuisances even though we created the situation that made
>them nuisances) behind the "joke" that I'm objecting to.

Suggestions that we mitigate a nuisance, whether tongue-in-cheek
or not, don't necessarily mean that the person making the suggestion
BLAMES the source of a nuisance.

Your projecting a motive that the person making the statement doesn't
necessarily hold, and that's unfair.

>No, I don't think that the demise of humans would lead to the extirpation of
>starlings (or of crows or Canada geese either).

>My point as regards these birds was that , to one degree or another, they
>have become nuisances because we have altered the environment in such a
>fashion as to cause this to happen.

But you're wrong. It's not our alteration of the environment in the sense
you mean it that has led to starlings spreading throughout North America,
it's the fact that they were transported here in small numbers. They did
the rest themselves.

> AND THE GREATER OUR NUMBERS, THE
>GREATER THE CONSEQUENCES OF OUR THOUGHTLESS ALTERATIONS OF THE ENVIRONMENT,
>SOMETIMES TO THE POINT THAT OTHERWISE HARMLESS ACTIVITY (from a global
>perspective) BECOMES HARMFUL.

No need to shout. Doing so doesn't make you right.

>It's similar to the situation with grizzly bears. Many people move to
>grizzly bear country and then leave their trash out where the bears can
>smell it. Then when bears start showing up they complain that bears are a
>"nuisance."

The situation with starlings is very different than the situation
with grizzly bear.

>In the Northwest, the clearing of forests for agriculture and urban
>expansion has created opportunities for starling populations to grow that
>they would not have otherwise had.. Starlings love short grass and are
>often seen foraging on lawns.

I wish urban areas and forest clearings were the only places starlings
flourish. Starlings are cavity nesters, and evict many bird species
who live in some kinds of forested areas. Oak Island outside Portland
is a great example of a place that provides many cavities for starlings
to nest - in trees.

The fact that starlings are so well adapted to many of our remaining
more-or-less natural as well highly altered habitat types that makes
them so widespread and obnoxious. Pigeons are an example of an
introduced species which doesn't flourish in nearly as many different
non-urban habitats within the country as starlings do, and because of
this they are mostly an urban nuisance. And aren't really much of an
ecological threat, as these urban areas are already so altered that a
few million pigeons don't really make it much worse (from a conservation
perspective).

>As to mindlessness, nothing could be more mindless than the reason for the
>introduction of starlings into North America: the desire by the American
>Acclimatization Society, at the end of the last century, to introduce into
>North American every species of bird mentioned in Shakespeare's works.

It wasn't mindless, it was mindful - stupidly mindful, but mindful
nonetheless.

The potential for such introductions to turn into runaway wrecks
wasn't well understood back then. They were ignorant, sure. We're
ignorant of many things today, and perhaps should keep that old saying
"pride goeth before a fall" in mind when we point fingers at folks in
the past, shake our heads, and make-believe that we'd be much smarter
if we were living in the same era.

Certainly human change to the planet is the single most important
factor in our loss of biodiversity and rapid rate of extinction.
Certainly the growth in human population is the single most important
factor that will lead to those unfortunate trends continuing.

If we're going to fight the good fight, though, we need to take care
that we have our facts right, our i's dotted and t's crossed. When
we cross the line from objective and factual analysis and criticism
into hyperbolic and easily disproven hand-waving, we're doing nothing
good for the conservation movement.



- Don Baccus, Portland OR <dhogaza at pacifier.com>
Nature photos, on-line guides, Pacific Northwest
Rare Bird Alert Service and other goodies at
http://donb.photo.net.