Date: Fri, 23 May 2003 10:29:20 -0400 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Gerald & Laura Tarbell Subject: Re: Open season on Horseshoe Crabbers & Birders? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I don't think that handing a crabber a copy of a position statement will change his mind about anything. The birding community has long taken a stand on the harvest of horseshoe crabs ever since we discovered that their breeding season creates a staging area for migrating shorebirds and that the numbers of crabs are declining. This is the same old story about people exploiting a resource to depletion and then wondering what happened to it. I call it the 19th century mentality. That's when the exploitation of resources became accelerated to a point that we suddenly were faced with conservation issues to save anything. The whole notion that got us in this fix was that humans really believed that resources of Planet Earth were infinite and that we didn't have the wherewithal to seriously deplete them. About the time that we looked around and noticed a lot of things going extinct we gradually bought into some conservation ideas. However, the last to buy into them are those directly affected - witness loggers in the northwest. That guy who started this whole thread by telling some birder to get out of crab territory would probably tell you (even if he really knows better) that there has been no decline in the numbers of crabs and if there is, he would blame the damn birds that come and eat all the eggs every year. No position paper will ever change an attitude like that. DNR knows how everybody (interest groups, like us) feel about the issue and are caught in the middle trying to keep us all happy. I wish them luck. My personal position is that there should be no horseshoe crab harvest whatsoever in any eastern waters until populations have recovered to their origianl abundance and that anyone caught with one in their possession should face very stiff penalties. But as usual I'm lying out here in the extremes. I doubt if anyone else on this web would dare to state or agree with such a radical position. How can we consider jailing somebody for possessing a crab? It would be like locking them up for shooting a spotted owl. Nobody would have the guts to try it. Instead they get a ticket , a scolding from a judge and a little fine. Has anyone ever really done time for destroying wildlife? Jerry ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================