Date: Mon, 4 Dec 2006 14:06:16 -0800
From: "mike denny" <m.denny at charter.net>
Subject: [Tweeters] New National Park for the Birds
To: "Inland NW Birders" <inland-nw-birders at uidaho.edu>, "tweeters"
<tweeters at u.washington.edu>

Hello All,
A new national park has been created in northern Brazil that covers
58,000
sq. miles of habitat. It is in the State of Para and will be next to
Amazonia National Park. WOW what great news! 54% of all this planets
living
species are within this parks boundry.
Later Mike

-------
Hi, Mike and tweeters.

I agree that this is fabulous news. I don't know where the figure of
54% came from, but I strongly suspect it's in error. The Amazon Basin
is very rich, but one part of it doesn't have half the species in the
world. It certainly doesn't have half of even the South American
species in the two groups about which I know the most, birds and
dragonflies (1300 species in South America), and I'm fairly certain
that's also the case for butterflies. Besides, we don't know anywhere
nearly enough to come up with figures like that, not even close. I'm
working on South American dragonfly biodiversity and conservation,
and for many species we don't even know all the countries in which
they occur. And they are a relatively well-known group; our knowledge
is much poorer for the tens or hundreds of thousands of other
insects, not to mention nematodes, mosses, slime molds, etc. etc.
Someone went way out on a limb to estimate a number like that, and
it's misleading if it makes us complacent that such a large
percentage of species are protected. No doubt that the number of
species it will protect is tremendous.

Dennis
-----
Dennis Paulson
1724 NE 98 St.
Seattle, WA 98115
206-528-1382
dennispaulson at comcast.net



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