The Bush Administration has not only brought endangered species listing to a halt, as pointed out in my last posting, but it is trying to reverse some listings. With Salmon, the Bush Administration is going to count nursery salmon hatchlings in its count to determine of whether wild salmon should be listed as an endangered species. The underlying argument put forth in a ruling by U.S. District Judge Michael Hogan found that the federal government had made a mistake by counting only wild fish -- and not genetically similar hatchery fish -- when it listed coastal coho salmon for protection. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/04/29/MNGOM6CPC51.DTL
The decision would allow logging, farming, and industries not to have to worry about ecosystem-wide modifications to highways, farms and dams. Water could be diverted to farms, suburbs, and industry without any regard to whether wild salmon could make it up stream to spawn.
Now if we apply this same logic to orchids just think of the possibilities. We could count orchid species in nursery to determine whether they are endangered or not. Most endangered orchid species would be saved. CITES would not matter, and the destruction of habitat would not matter either. To bad orchid people do not have as much of a pull with the Bush Administration as farming and logging. It goes to show you that the definition what is endangered is often political. Some people feel that ex situ conservation by itself is enough to save a species regardless as to the species survival in the wild, or possibility of ever returning to its natural habitat.
Among stamp and coin collectors, it is important that coins and stamps are used even the fancy ones. If a stamp on coin is only for collecting it loses its value and is hollow. Is not the same true for orchids? Is ex situ conservation really conservation without in situ conservation, or at least the fight to save habitat?
By the way I am neither a stamp or coin collector. I am a person that when I go to buy stamps tries to buy the unusual or the stamps that are made for collectors and then I use them. When I have told this to stamp collectors that I have met, they get excited and treat me as if I were a stamp collector. Same goes with coins.
Mark Sullivan
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