Although my post was intended to inspire and give charge only, I will
make a comment.
You pick the species you can help, the method, the policy or just the
location. But the time is now.
The MN Northern Cricket Frog is neither "accidental" or "occasional"
to MN. It is a breeding species that needs state protection.
The waiting list has become a dead list for federal endangered species
protection. State protection is the only protection that can be
currently expected.
For the current situation on the Bush record for federal endangered
species protection you can start here.
http://www.nrdc.org/bushrecord/wildlife_species.asp
The tools to protect an eco-system rather than a specific species are
more important and more scary as we never have had a good evaluation
and implementation technique for federal protection of areas. For that
you have to look more broadly at what has occured in just the last 5
years.
Link starts at 2001
http://www.nrdc.org/bushrecord/2001.asp
Conservation is a root and core of a conservative agenda.
The last conservation oriented president in the US was Nixon.
Rich
I will just leave it at that as it is to personal of an issue for me.
>
> It is far too extreme to call a few individuals of a species at the
edge
> of their range endangered when the species is found in very large
> numbers across half the country. It is endangered only if political
> boundaries have any biologic significance, and they do not. Suppose
> instead of doing it state by state we did this county by county?
>
> I listened to hundreds of Northern Cricket Frogs in Kentucky on my way
> home, and even recorded some. We have some small ponds here where the
> numbers would be in the thousands. I also listened to Northern Cricket
> Frogs on my way out on my trip in other states. Scarce, they are not.
>
> It is a very scarce population at the extreme of the species range in
> MN. Maybe of importance to people there to protect, but not of any
> significant importance to the species as a whole.
>
> Walt
>
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
|