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Hi Birders,
I have read the many comments about
the issue of the legal collecting of a Yellow Chat in South Australia. I for one
think that this issue has now gone too far and it seems to me to have become a
personal vendetta against the people who wrote the article in the South
Australian Ornithologist. I certainly don't want to be part of
that.
There is a place for legally procured
museum specimens that have good accompanying data associated with skeleton
remains, location, sex, breeding condition and moult information. The
problem with many earlier collected museum specimens is that they have
none to very little, sex or location details etc. To stir up this issue could
result in the stopping of legal collecting. To stop the legal collection
of specimens denies information to taxonomists and people like myself
who occasionally visit museums to check out skins and plumages etc.. I for one,
collect good quality roadkills and beach cast specimens for Museums but that
should not be their only source of materials, because many smaller birds and
larger birds for that matter, cannot be sourced in this way.
If only all the angst generated by
this event could be used to object to the Victorian & South Australian
Governments against the illegal and legal killing of birds in vineyards,
particularly in set nets for grape protection, where many birds like
Grey-crowned Babblers and flycatchers get caught and die, and for "crop
protection" in those States, and in NSW where hunters kill 70,000
waterbirds per year as part of ricecrop
protection, not to mention Queensland where the clearing of land continues which
has an incredible negative effect on many woodland species. Puts that poor one
little Yellow Chat into a bit of perspective.
Alan
Morris
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