Gene GeRue wrote:
> Good people can do bad things, whether Patrick Moore or Edward O Wilson.
> Successful scientists, like politicians, tend to become arrogant. In
> NATURALIST (p. 272), Wilson describes how he and a crew from National
> Exterminators sprayed parathion on entire mangrove islands to kill every
> living animal organism, to facilitate his colonization experiments. Some
> beetle larvae survived, so he then caused the islands to be fumigated with
> a poisonous gas. Not my concept of environmentalism.
Yes, he really did that, and I'm not especially comfortable with it,
either. But to be fair, the islands were very small patches of
mangroves in the Florida Keys, no more than a few square meters,
really. A few mangrove islands out of literally thousands.
He came up with the idea as a way to demonstrate an ecological theory he
had been developing with another ecologist, Robert MacArthur. The life
on these mangrove islands consisted of a few dozen species of common
invertebrates. The number depended on their distance from other islands
and the mainland. Within less than a year they were totally
recolonized. The results of the study contributed greatly to the Theory
of Island Biogeography, a foundation theory for conservation biology and
ecology in general.
Wilson might have come up with a different method, and were he to do it
today, maybe he would (though it's hard to imagine a better way). This
was back in 1966 when we didn't think about these things as much, and
early ecology is full of this kind of stuff. In any case, I tend to
think the results far outweigh the temporary harm that was done.
I myself have sometimes collected voucher specimens of rare plants in
order to provide ironclad documentation of a population. I can't say I
ever felt good about it, but in some cases it was the only practical way
to get the Forest Service to protect a site.
Wilson is surely a great ecologist, but I can't say he's really that
likeable a fellow. One could cite many other examples of scientists who
are also environmentalists or, more accurately, conservationists.
Doug
