From: CurtAdams@aol.com
Date: Thu Aug 29 2002 - 16:24:13 MDT
In a message dated 8/29/02 14:49:04, mail@HarveyNewstrom.com writes:
>On Thursday, August 29, 2002, at 10:30 am, Charles Hixson wrote:
>> The problem is... butterflies were picked as the species to worry about
>> because they were photogenic, not because they were the one most
>> endangered.
>
>Do you have any evidence to support this conspiracy theory? I thought
>that the butterflies were picked because their habitat was closest to
>the fields where the BT pesticide plants would be deployed. It makes
>sense that the closest insects (besides the pests in the fields that we
>want to kill) would be the ones to study.
Well, first of all the idea of a "threat" to the monarchs is laughable.
Even aggressive targeted insecticide use has never driven a species
to extinction, and you'd be hard pressed to pick a less suitable species
than the continent-spanning monarchs. If you were really interested,
you'd look at a species that's limited to cornfield areas. Even then, the
amount of BT which gets out is small compared to all kinds of insecticides
in common use. Just about any sprayed insecticide would bother
insects in adjacent fields far more than BT pollen. And, after 50 years
of heavy spraying, they're all still there.
There's no scientific relevance whatsoever to the monarch studies.
It has no purpose other than grandstanding. The only thing there'd be
any reason to look at would be pollen-eating insects confined to the
farm areas, and that was *not* examined.
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