Date: Tue, 9 Dec 2003 16:45:41 -0500 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Maurice Barnhill Subject: Re: Human intervention MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Bob Munford wrote: >I have read with amusement the ongoing debate on whether to "intervene" >with the SI hummers or to "let nature take its course." [snip] >Now anyone who thinks that assisting the hummers will somehow affect >the genetics of the two species involved, creating a pool of >genetically flawed individuals, with hundreds of, say, Rufous Hummers, >coming north for the winter...well such thinking is (substitute your > >own word here). [snip] Ah, now you are talking about the effect on the _species_, which is an entirely different issue than our effect on individual _birds_. As you say, we cannot effect the species significantly by what we do to one or a small number of individuals. But if we feel obligated to take action to help -- in the human sense -- an individual bird, we should at least watch out that we don't hurt other individuals more than we help the one we intervene for. In addition, as far as I am concerned, we should also ensure that we don't hurt the species trying to help one individual; but this principle is irrelevant to "saving" one errant migrant. > Does this make me hopelessly sentimental? Or a cynic? -- Maurice Barnhill, mvb@udel.edu http://www.physics.udel.edu/~barnhill/ Physics Dept., University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716 ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================