One of the most infamous places for this kind of activity is the island of
Malta, where a large segment of the population goes out and shoots
everything in sight, and considers it their inalienable right.
Conservationists who have tried to change the laws and the customs have been
threatened with mayhem, and some may even have been killed. Malta is one of
the countries applying for membership in the E.U., and I believe the E. U.
will impose strict conservation laws on them as a condition of membership.
Of course, whether those laws will be enforced is another matter. Similar
destruction of mammals is going on in Africa by the armies who are killing
their fellow humans in the most barbaric ways.

In North America, we've largely eliminated the yahoos who once gathered at
sites such as Hawk Mountain to kill the migrating raptors. One little step
toward making this a decent and civilized country. But it makes me sick to
realize that even as the populations of wildlife worldwide are threatened by
destruction of their habitats, they are also being decimated by the assholes
[forgive me if that offends you] of the world. It sometimes makes me wonder
whether we ought to just give up and let the idiots destroy the world and
get it all over with; I never conclude that that's the right way, but the
effort to get our fellow humans (well, that's what they are at least
nominally) to behave in rational and decent ways certainly can get
discouraging at times.

Burt Guttman guttmanb at evergreen.edu
The Evergreen State College
Olympia, WA 98505 360-456-8447
Home: 7334 Holmes Island Road S.E., Olympia 98503

-----Original Message-----
From: Gary Bletsch [mailto:garybletsch at yahoo.com]
Sent: Friday, July 04, 2003 11:09 PM
To: jbroadus at seanet.com
Cc: tweeters at u.washington.edu
Subject: Re: Willow flycatcher and a cultural divide


Dear Jerry and Tweeters,

Your Lebanese acquaintance accurately summed up the way birds are viewed in
the Middle East: targets for yahoos.

I have watched Arabs and Turks blasting away at Greater Spotted Eagles,
Squacco Herons, Rollers, gulls, terns, shorebirds, wagtails, warblers, and
on and on. I have watched them shoot perfectly edible ducks, only to leave
them floating downstream, to be eaten by crabs or gulls, I suppose. They
shoot birds all year long, including the nesting season.

They also use traps and birdlime to catch Turtle Doves. I once read that the
number of Turtle Doves trapped each year on one island in the Red Sea was
equal to the number of Turtle Doves fledged in all of Germany.

A British friend of mine raced down to Morocco one time to see a tiny flock
of the critically endangered Slender-billed Curlews. He barely made it. I
forget the number, but as I recall, all but one or two of the birds had been
shot by the time he got there. I believe all but one, or indeed all of them,
were dead by the time he got back to England.

In my entire four years in the region, I met exactly one Arab birder. I also
exchanged a few e-mails a couple of others, one of whom was a biologist. For
every Arab or Turkish birder, though, there must be tens or hundreds of
thousands, perhaps millions, of people who go out and shoot every bird they
see. In Syria, for example, they make decorative wall-hangings and table
centerpieces out of birds.

Cultural sensitivity be hanged--the way they treat birds in the Middle East
is nothing short of barbaric.



Yours truly,

Gary Bletsch

near Lyman (Skagit County), Washington

garybletsch at yahoo.com <mailto:garybletsch at yahoo.com>



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