Tweets,
Something Dennis said caught my eye and thought I'd respond.

He stated "Sadly, there is no local listserve for discussing other aspects
of nature (there is one on butterflies, I believe), so tweeters fulfills an
important need. As Brian Bell wrote, the breadth of discussion on tweeters
is what makes it a unique resource."

I don't intend to comment on whether certain discussions belong on tweeters
or not. There are listing rules and whether you like them or hate them, by
being on the list means you are in some form ok with them.
What I would like to offer is an idea; with different services like Yahoo
groups or other listserv hosting places its fairly easy to set up a
listserv, all you need is someone willing to serve as manager and enough
people interested to join. If enough people would like to debate
northwestern ecology or herps etc.. maybe some people may be interested in
getting together to form a separate listserv for such topics. Just a
thought, I'm by no means offering to do it myself and not commenting on
whether these issues should be on tweets or not, just providing an
alternative.

An interesting discussion on herps and native fauna.

Scott Downes
downess at charter.net
Yakima WA