It has been unusually warm and dry here on the North Coast of Oregon. If not the warmest and driest February/March on record, certainly something close. As a consequence, the butterfly season has started early and most of my attention has been on leps.
So, it was oddly coincidental that Birding [2005 37(2):198-201] magazine included an article on butterfly watching by Dr. Jeffrey Glassberg, author of the Butterflies through binoculars series. One would think that an article in a high-end birding magazine celebrating butterflies would please the lepidopterists community. Apparently, not.
Dr. Glassberg is strongly opposed to the taking of specimens, collecting. He also seems to be opposed to capture using a net even if the butterflies are released after examination. These are hot-button issues among lepidopterists.
I've been a birder for 35 years now and a bird bander for 25. I began watching butterflies in college, in part because I lived next door to Dan Thackaberry who was majoring in entomology and it was convenient to combine field trips. It has only been in the last 10 years that I've really taken butterfly data collection seriously. In 25 years, doing bird work, I have only collected birds that were hit by cars, hit windows or washed up on the beach. I understand the rationale for specimen collecting, but it's regulated for birds (and should be). Butterfly collecting is largely unregulated and there are still folks who collect and mount butterflies for purely recreational purposes (as a hobby). I make a distinction between scientific collecting and hobbiest collecting. I do not collect butterflies. The last thing I need in my house is another collection. I do, occasionally net butterflies so I can get a good look at them and have kept a very few as vouchers to be sent off to university collections. My personal preference is to try to identify without capture, photograph without capture, but realistically my job is documentation. This means I will have to do some netting, some vouchering.
Dr. Glassberg's focus is on the similaries between birding and "butterflying", and most of the main points are sound. It is possible for regular folks to go out, watch butterflies, enjoy them through binoculars, tick species off on a checklist, chase unusual species, travel to exotic locations to see new species just as they would birds. But butterflies are not birds and the comparisons become tenuous if pushed too far. Butterflies are small, many of their field marks are obscure and difficult to make out, they move differently than birds and most of them have life-spans measured in weeks not years. The rationale for regulating the capture of relatively long-lived birds doesn't ring quite as soundly for a butterfly. There is value in evaluating the extractive elements of hobbiest collecting of anything, including butterflies, but any kind of rigid, one-size-fits-all attitude is more likely to be devisive and counter productive.
There are, I think, some flaws in Dr. Glassberg's views that come from the differences between butterflies and birds. The most important of these is connection. As a bird bander, I have a permit to catch birds. Handling them affords me an intimacy that one doesn't get through binoculars. I have invited teachers and students to my banding station to experience this connections and they all tell me they come away with a different perspective. With birds this kind of connectivity can only be had under very special circumstance. The beauty of a butterfly net is that anyone can create that connection between people and butterflies very easily without the red-tape of a permitting process. I'm a bit apprehensive about loaning my $350 pair of close-focus binoculars out to kids and any affordable pair of binoculars isn't going work with butterflies. I can get 20-30 nets for $350. And if done with sensitivity and care, I think one can get considerable educational milage out of the effort.
Certainly, the demographic for most Birding subscribers is upscale and I think one should keep that in mind when interpreting Dr. Glassberg's message, but there is an undertone of self-congratulatory snobbery and elitism to his article that is off-putting to anyone who knows other individuals within the lepidopterist community. Dr. Glassberg did not invent the butterfly field guide. His efforts to devalue the work of others is disingenuous. He is not the only butterfly guy out there trying to raise public awareness and appreciation for butterflies, their habitats and their ecological needs and his sniping at those who aren't absolutely on board with him is reckless. He runs the risk of alienating the folks who can help him the most in getting out the butterfly awareness message. And there are some who would say that he's already burned most of his bridges....
Posted by mbalame at March 15, 2005 02:13 AM