Thursday, August 12, 2004
 
Another Invasive Species Threatens Ecosystem

From the New York Times: Red-Footed Falcon Debuts in Western Hemisphere:
    So Mr. Laux, an ornithologist who has led birding trips all over the world, recruited island friends with telescopes and digital cameras to send images of the bird to Jeremiah Trimble, an expert birder and curatorial assistant at the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology. When Mr. Trimble arrived at his office on Tuesday, he looked at the photos, consulted his reference materials and left immediately for Martha's Vineyard. Mr. Laux had spotted a red-footed falcon - Falco vespertinus - the first reported in the Western Hemisphere. And now birders from all over are arriving to see it.
Undoubtedly, this single bird will eat all the tasty small rodents and will mate with the local falcons to spawn a new race of super falcons with European accents. We cannot allow this to happen. We must kill it now, and we can grill it later!

Unless it eats snakehead fish, in which case we should bring a dozen over from its native habitat so it can eat all the tasty snakehead fish and mate with local falcons to spawn a new race of snakehead-eating super falcons.

Man, I am glad I am a Republican, because being environmentally sensitive is confusing and tiring. One snakehead fish is bad, because making the local ecosystem more diverse with token representatives of outside species can ruin the delicate balance of a natural system which has survived for aeons, but a single red-headed stepchild falcon is a tourist attraction, good for the local economy.

As the partially-educated like to quote, "Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."


- posted by Brian J. @ 3:33 PM
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