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Preseving biodiversity
At 03:48 PM 7/21/98 -0400, Aquatic Plants Digest wrote:
>Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1998 11:20:02 -0700
>From: Paul Nicholson <paul at eisusa_com>
>Subject: Re: Aquatic Plants Digest V3 #398
>
>At 0:26 -0400 7/21/98, Richard Sexton wrote:
>
>>What if a bird had speread this seed instead of man ? Do we know
>>for a fact none were spread by anything other than man ?
>
>Your not the only one who has made comments like this. Someone else alluded
>to seeds being carried from Africa to here by birds. Is it possible that
>birds brought in these seeds? Well, yes, but it is very unlikely. It's very
>difficult for a bird to fly from Africa to the American continent.
Of course it is, but that may not be the only vector. Wood floats and
over thousands or tens of thousands of years it seems inevtable that
we're going to have this kind of "pollution" from time to time.
I agree man accelarates this immensly.
>Unfortunately, I don't think there's much anyone can do to stop this. The
>laws may slow things down, but they won't stop exotic introductions.
I agree.
>Well, it ultimately comes down to this question, "Do we want to preserve
>the biodiversity and ecosystems of our world?"
Well, I don't have a hard answer. Personally I think purple loosestrife
is really neat stuff - I like it. Now, if you said you were going to
throw mollies into devils hole and wipe out the Devils Hole pupfish
I'd be outraged.
So I dunno, I apologize in advance for this slack of conssitancy, and all
I can rely on is the arguments zoos use when confronted with the problem
of simply not having enough facilities in the whole world to save all
7 species of tiger. They're going to have to let a couple go extinct;
man preserves what he likes, what is pretty, what sells, what have you
(given you could save only *one* of the warthog or the peacock, what
would you pick ?) and I don't see the action of a few responsible
folks reversing the actions of many irresponsoible poeple especially,
in this case with mother natiure trying to clean up the sewage with
any means at her disposal. Am I angry there are non native plants
is Mass. ? Yes I am, but I'm much, much more angry there is sewage
there, and given it is there I'm *glad* there are some plants eating
it up.
Clearly, in this case the native plants could not consume it at a rate
fast enough; if they could the non native plants would not have
enough nutrients to survive.
So, the anti plant bill is a panacea for good old fashioned pollution
and the polluters who arguably cause the problem and the boaters
who aggrivate it get off scot-free and I predict it's only a matter
of time before a shipment of crypts gets turfed out bacuase of this
bill.
--
Richard J. Sexton
richard at aquaria_net
Bannockburn, Ontario, Canada +1 (613) 473 1719