'...the land and fresh-water fauna is disappearing rapidly, and unless we now make an organized effort it will be too late to study it effectually, and future generations will wonder what manner of people we were not to leave behind us some adequate record of the marvellously interesting forms of animal life which we had succeeded in exterminating...'
Spencer, W.B. 1921. The necessity for an immediate and co-ordinated investigation into the land and fresh-water fauna of Australia and Tasmania. The Victorian Naturalist 37(10): 120-122.
Below are some of the arguments I've heard against invertebrate salvage. If you hear or know of others, please email me so I can include them in a conference poster.
Bob Mesibov, 23 March 2007
Motivation is important and I'm not going to do it. Salvage would be too depressing.
Look, I'm a biologist, I study Nature. In salvage areas - farms, suburbs, industrial zones - Nature isn't working properly anymore. I do my fieldwork in national parks, where people haven't stuffed things up yet.
I don't leave the office unless I'm funded to do it, and there's no money for salvage.
What's the point of sampling an area if it's going to be destroyed? You can't go back to resample it in future. If you're going to do biological surveys, do them in places where you can monitor changes over time. Monitoring surveys have long-term value.
I've got species and habitats to save. Sorry, I don't have time to worry about what's going to disappear. What's lost is lost.
I already do surveys in areas to be developed. The problem is, I'm only paid to look for threatened species. I can't collect miscellaneous bugs at the same time that I'm looking for rare plants and vertebrates, there just isn't the time.
It's too hard, there's too many choices. What and when you collect would depend on where you're going to be salvaging, and you wouldn't know that from month to month. My agency insists on carefully thought-out research plans. How can I plan something like this?