Re: Plant mapping
Wayne Forrester (forrestr@mendel.Berkeley.EDU)
Thu, 7 Mar 1996 14:50:58 -0800 (PST)
> I think the view that hobbyists are a bunch of poorly educated people
> who are only interested in going in the field hoping to find a new
> site they can destroy in no time is tiring and frustrating. Who ever
> declared that nature is the property of professional batanists or
> zoologists? Isn't nature everybodies property? Does the fact that
> people are paid to do the work enhance the quality of their work? In
> the past many of these stupid hobbyists have discovered interesting
> things, new species,...., without having had the legitimation of being
> paid for their work. Does this impact the quality of their work? I
> think it's simply arrogant to insult all the non-professional workers
> (non-professional meant in the sense of non paid!!!!) by telling they
> are not worth of getting informations available to their collegues who
> get paid for their work.
>
>
>
I really don't think anyone is implying that all, or even most
hobbyists are unscrupulous and just waiting for information on where
they can grab their next cache of wild plants. There is no doubt that
the vast majority of people, hobbyists and otherwise, who would access
the location data are conscientious and would do nothing more than visit
a site and enjoy it without causing any significant damage. The problem
is it only takes one greedy collector to seriously damage a site by
removing large numbers of plants or otherwise disturbing the site.
Wayne Forrester