a) If I only make it to county resolution, unless I have sadly
overlooked something, the result would surely destroy the intention,
that is to map where stands of plants are so that people can visit the
stands, investigate them, and make reports etc. on the progress of a
species. I believe that if we have enough public awareness, vandalism
and collecting should not be a major problem.
b) On the problem of vandalism and collecting, I believe that if
vandalism and collecting of plants does actually increase (I am not
convinced that it will to any extent) it could not possibly increase to
the extent that it would cause more damage to stands of plants than the
program would do good, i.e. I believe that even if vandalism, etc.
does go up, the main problem, which in my mind is developement of land
and bog draining, will decrease as developers are not allowed to ruin
these sites because people will actually know that these plants are
there and they are in danger.
c) I would be interested in any form of restriction, I mean to have, for
example, two programs, one is distributed to the general CP community
and goes into only enough detail to show plant distribution (i.e. on a
county level) therefore not increasing vandalism and collecting levels,
and the other is only distributed to people or institutions, such as
serious researchers, e.g. dedicated ICPS members who can produce proof
that they are only interested in conservation, or institutions like the
North American conservancy council, etc. that goes into detail of
individual sites and access details, and which species are to be found
in what sort of numbers in individual bogs.
These are just ideas and suggestions, but I stick firmly to my line that
such a map would be useful for the aid of conservation. I support Jan
and agree with everything he's said on the subject of this mapping
business.
Regards (any comments welcome, but please don't use too abusive language
:-) ),
Toby Marsden