I thought this episode emphasized a point made in the recent discussion by
Don Wells and Emmanuel aboiut phelsuma imports. O'Shea is looking for
geckos on this island, but only finds two despite the fact that he has
ultra-modern climbing equipment including a crossbow. They seemed to comb
the forest pretty well, but they couldn't find almost any geckos. Obviously
there are geckos there because of the imports over the last few years, but
the question is where were they. Obviously, O'Shea didn't really know where
to look for the geckos on New Caledonia. Therefore the study was flawed and
could not hope to garner any sense of what the true gecko populations on the
island were. The fact that it was put under the guise of trying to get
protective status made it even worse. TC
>From: Greg Watkins-Colwell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>To: Gecko List <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: [Gecko] New Caledonia and O'Shay
>Date: Mon, 05 Feb 2001 19:57:41 -0500
>
>The collector who fell from the tree and died (that Aaron was talking
>about)
>was Peter Rankin who died in 1979.
>
>I have been talking to Aaron today about the show (which he has not yet
>seen... they didn't send him his tape as promised!!) and he said 2 weeks of
>filming boiled down to less than 30 minutes... a lot was removed. He said
>that the Directors had a hard time understanding some thing, including that
>the rough-nose from the new island is NOT a new species, but already has a
>species name assigned to it... the DNA analysis is just to confirm if it is
>genetically unique or not. so the whole "instant conservation need" thing
>was really over-kill and a lot extra glam for the "Animal Planet" audience.
>
>I do wish they would have shown some of his great South Park impressions
>though. They are much better than his gecko calls. ;-)
>
>Greg
>
>--
>Gregory J. Watkins-Colwell
>Dept. of Biology
>Sacred Heart University
>5151 Park Avenue
>Fairfield, CT 06432
>
>and
>
>Yale Peabody Museum
>Dept. of Vertebrate Zoology
>170 Whitney Ave
>PO Box 208118
>New Haven, CT 06520-8118
>
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