Hi All,

I'm not sure if I've missed my opportunity to post, since the subject seems to keep changing. I'm going to post on what I think the original subject was though, even though it's not directly related to beekeeping. 

The ethics of the environment is a question I think about a lot. Why should we care about the Topeka shiner, or American dipper? I don't know that we need to care about them individually, it seems like it's more an artifact of caring for the entire system, and then hyper focusing on a particular example that shows how we as a large population can affect an organism we didn't even realize existed. 

I had to take an ethics in biology course my first year in college. We studied GMO's because at the time South Dakota (where I'm located) was the largest producer of GMO grains in the nation and it was a hot button issue (still is apparently). At that time it was just one more class to wade through, but by the time I was ready to graduate, I found myself referencing it more and more for various reasons. A conclusion that I finally had to reach on actual environmental ethics was one of balance. We have tools, we discover more tools, but should we be using them? And if so, to what extent? Where research is concerned, is the knowledge necessary? Can this foreseeably be used in a way that the researcher feels is harmful to the world (this is the gray area where we run into problems)? Does the necessity for the knowledge outweigh that potential damage?

The balance of nature is way off, and regardless of how willing people are to admit it, deep down we all know it.  As Mr. Borst said, humans are a part of nature and that should be recognized as well. I think the uncomfortableness comes when we as humans stop working with nature   and start trying to control it for selfish gain rather than comfortable survival, while still mostly ignorant of the total (or even partial) effects that it can have on our immediate surroundings, let alone the world as a whole. One example that seems to be coming up in our area a lot right now is land alteration for farming. Land alteration is necessary for farming. Kathryn talked about deforestation to plant GM crops being an issue. That is something I've honestly never heard of, and not really sure how it would be any different than deforestation for organic crops. If you have actual forests, the fact of the matter is, trees will have to be taken out to grow anything else, whether it's nature or a farmer trying to grow it. It sounds like the struggle in her area is more between encroaching societal growth and farming, whereas ours is between farming and wildlife. Obviously the players will change depending on the location, but the problem of balance seems to remain. 

Here on the plains of Eastern South Dakota, we don't have forests, we have small strips of trees put in by early settlers as wind breaks. These wind breaks have become habitats in their own rights. With the rise in grain prices due to ethanol production, a common situation has become 100+ year old tree belts being torn out of fields to put in a few more strips of soybeans. The farmers try to justify with the corresponding rise in land rent, but whenever this thinly veiled reason is given, a murmur about the Dirty 30's ripples across the conversation. Another common sight is tiling going in (for the same reason as the tree belts are removed) that drains wetlands that the surrounding ecosystem has integrated itself around for hundreds of years, again for essentially inconsequential profit. The frustration this causes is almost physically painful, because of the shortsightedness of these particular human decisions. 

I guess this is just a commentary on what I see going on in the world right now. 

Good luck to all in their endeavors.

Rebecca Zens
[log in to unmask]
605.770.1823

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html