Hydrophis donaldi - news

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regalringneck
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Re: Hydrophis donaldi - news

Post by regalringneck »

.. coupla things, mebbe more ;)

declarations that our friend ( mine anyway if they truly care about wildlife) indigo being a troll (w/o a paratype) are misguided, he is bringing forward a refreshing challenge to "authority" something that used to distinguish americans from iberians and other domesticated homonids ... alas no more ... dont be unduly threatened & im glad our resident researchers are defending the method. I too know if theres snakes to be found, theres plenty for pickels ; just none for the hobbyists : }

...to the poster who gave us an excellent summary/refresher on genetic drift; mega thankyous.

... to someone who knows better; dude ... kids participate here ... please reflect & refrain from such foul algorithms/euphemisms/mannerisms, that decay & degrade the enlightenment normally correlated and associated with your particular clade ... 8-)

2 Joshua, im not going to go into it here, i appreciate you caring enough to comment, but you ... why my dear fellow would you think you have more information on that sordid afair; (hint; the whole research ? was & is bullshit; & old news to many of us), than me w/ 20 + years working in azgfd, & Joshua ... theres like 60 other historic az dead jaguars ... so whens enough enough ... for you? Most wildlife biologists familiar w/ encinal az & nm; believe only welfare ranching stand between us citizens & a viable resident pop of jags ... pity i wont get to witness the "environmental justice" when it happens ... but it will happen :}

Lastly, & knowing less than usual ... im guessing any seasnake specific enuff to a small area off the ossie coast ... cant really be too different than its congeners 3 bays away ... jus say'n .. VD will be the final authority ... but only if he comes clean on dem tats / cheers :p
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chris_mcmartin
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Re: Hydrophis donaldi - news

Post by chris_mcmartin »

regalringneck wrote: VD will be the final authority ... but only if he comes clean on dem tats
I'm more in awe of the lats than the tats, and I mean that in the most non-erotic way possible.
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mywan
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Re: Hydrophis donaldi - news

Post by mywan »

IndigoBlue wrote:... killing animals to put in jars does nothing but promote the benefit of the museum...
You can't be serious? Venomdoc already explained that the internal structure is as important a diagnostic tool as the external appearance. Yet you simply repeat the above straw man again as if it was never said.

You say "nothing but promote the benefit of the museum". So here are some examples.
How else would we know lateral lines in fish are actually specialized sensory organs, which then lead to learning that the lateral lines of mormyrid electric fish utilizes anti-Hebbian learning? How would we have learned that a if you clip off parts of a zebra fishes heart it will regrow? And if you don't think this is important to medicine you need to learn how this is related to stem cell research. In fact, given the shear volume, is it even worth my time writing a book in this post to illustrate? We wouldn't even know how pit vipers senses work, or about any of the myriad of other sensory systems. The detailed internal structures of bat sonar is required to model their abilities, which is being exploited to improve inspections of everything from the structural integrity of buildings to navigation system in cluttered environments. None of this happens without doing some cutting. Even the locusts strapped down and made to watch star wars would have been pointless without know what LGMDs are, which we learned about from dissecting the bugs brain. It's being developed as a collision avoidance system in cars. Museum my a**.

Secondly, the perspective issue has also been mentioned to you. Conservation requires that we concentrate on those policies which maintains a strong population. What happens to individual animals is at best a secondary issue. What sense does it make to spend huge resources, and lost resources through unavailable science, to protect a handful of individual specimens when other practices that kill them by the millions goes unchallenged? Lawmakers can often play the protection game when passing laws against native hobbyist, but watch how fast that rhetoric changes when a commercial fishery wants to add a non-native fish to the list of natives by legal definition. Nor is it even in their vocabulary to compare the effect of hobbyist to even a single roadside mower, much less to the wholesale commercial destruction of habitats. Do you even know what the dead zone in the Gulf is? The oil spill that was such a huge environmental disaster is trivial by comparison.

Your belly aching about a few monitored and controlled takes of wildlife is like washing a single grain of sand on the beach and saying you only want a cleaner beach. It's just plain silly, and much worse, an absurd distraction from our actual environmental problems.
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gbin
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Re: Hydrophis donaldi - news

Post by gbin »

regalringneck wrote:... he is bringing forward a refreshing challenge to "authority"...
Respectfully, John, Indigo's been doing quite a bit more than that. Challenges are fine, even welcome, when they come with reason not only behind them but also presently in them - that is, when they are being made by someone with a mind that's at least somewhat open to responses. He's instead given plenty of indication that reason no longer has a place in his thinking; that makes what he's doing a mindless attack rather than a challenge. Further, from the very start he expanded his mindless attack to include not only a practice that he objects to but also the people and profession that utilize it. How many scientists do you suppose he actually knows, anyway? Not to mention knows well enough to make derogatory declarations about their motives, etc? That's all just garbage, and it deserves to be derided as garbage.

Gerry
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Joshua Jones
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Re: Hydrophis donaldi - news

Post by Joshua Jones »

Regalringneck, you seem to have forgotten to have mentioned your name in both your profile and your avatar, so you'll have to excuse my ignorance in regards to who you are and/or what your qualifications may be.....

But......Since you've worked with AZGFD for 20+ years, then surely you must be aware of these three pages, posted on your department's website.

http://www.azgfd.gov/w_c/es/jaguar_management.shtml

http://www.azgfd.gov/w_c/jaguar/MachoB.shtml

http://www.azgfd.gov/w_c/jaguar/JaguarFAQ.shtml

I think the second question on the last page makes my point the best. Game and Fish have captured one jaguar. The first page makes it clear that the number seen in the last 40+ years falls WAY below the 60 that you've mentioned. Unless you count the illegal killings of jaguars by hunters and ranchers since the early 1900's, the total number stands at one. Since we are discussing the killing of animals for scientific purposes, namely in order to identify them on a specific level, your comments still seem unfounded to me. :?

Edit: I will say, though, in regards to your question, enough is already enough. I cannot stand to see this species in the process of being extirpated from Arizona.
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gbin
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Re: Hydrophis donaldi - news

Post by gbin »

The death of that jaguar was indeed unfortunate. But it will never be known because it can't be known how much of the responsibility for that death actually lay with the folks attempting to study it and how much with the simple vagaries of nature. We've much more opinion than evidence on the subject, and that's how it will remain.

Something we do know, though, is that the jaguar's death was not a setback for the species or for a population of the species in AZ. There wasn't a population, but only an individual. Granted, that individual offered at least a bit of hope of there being an AZ jaguar population again some day, but the greatest way in which it offered hope was in what it could possibly teach us about the needs of jaguars there, as the likelihood that it would ever have been a member of a genuine population there was exceedingly remote. That's why those folks were attempting to study the animal, after all, to make the most of what little hope it provided. For my part I can only applaud, not condemn, them for their efforts.

Gerry
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mywan
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Re: Hydrophis donaldi - news

Post by mywan »

IndigoBlue wrote:And nine sea snakes of which were the only ones found at that time? Why nine? One wouldn't suffice?
No. As was already mentioned to you statistical robustness is required. For instance, I found an unusual morph of Etheostoma stigmaeum locally. I would have not even been able to identify it myself without some more common morphs in the same population. If our description was limited to this one unusual morph I would have had no method of identifying it without capturing, and possibly killing, it myself. As it is I got what I wanted without the fish ever even knowing I was there.
ugh

Re: Hydrophis donaldi - news

Post by ugh »

reptilist wrote: The idea that recycling metals will ever replace mining is not even close to being a reality.........

Bryan,
I appreciate your balanced approach to resource exploitation vs nature preservation.... Unfortunately, the almighty dollar will win, again.

(Yes, I do work in the mining industry but I would be glad to switch sides to join any enviro activist organization who can match my salary.)

Well, we see that almighty dollar won you over- quite shamelessly at that! :lol:
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regalringneck
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Re: Hydrophis donaldi - news

Post by regalringneck »

... Josh, you're still typ'n & you're still wrong & misinformed; read more, especially between the lines, & mebbe type less on this particular subject.

Dr. B; there actually appears to be a meta-pop extending from the north sierra madres into the se az/nm-bootheel country, hence their occasional peregrinations norte. Dont forget tho Leopold described them as numerous in the jungles of the colorado river delta, historically they ranged throughout the southern US. A females w/ cubs was killed (whats new?) as far n as the grand canyon; obviously they belong here. I suspect we'd have a substantial reduction in our ubiquitous pumas & peccaries if they had these spotted beasts to compete & be gobbled by.

Despite knowing leg snares had a 50% capture mortality in a recent sonoran jag study, the "standard method" for large carnivores was nevertheless deployed on our one (we actually have 2 ) az jag., rather than "camera traps" which would still leave us 2 jags. I suggest thats where indigo & other critics rightfully chastise & critique our "professional work" & too often unchallenged methods. Again the whole borderland "bear & lion study" was a bs cover to catch a jag; lots of prestige & self aggrandizement happens when you're the researcher presenting results from a US jag study @ such a conference, heck this might even result in "increased fitness"... but not for the jags :?

Noteworthy is the crickets chirping when any of us mention propogating jags for re-patriation,... one day it will be someones "great idea" :}

Now if you'll scuze me, i have pickled seakrait & sourkraut to enjoy w/ my tea ... prior to working on my lats :p
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Martti Niskanen
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Re: Hydrophis donaldi - news

Post by Martti Niskanen »

Just read the whole of this thread. Why are you wasting your time on someone who is scientifically illiterate and has fixed opinions?
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gbin
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Re: Hydrophis donaldi - news

Post by gbin »

Please call me Gerry, John - I feel quite old enough as it is, thank you, and the appellation "Dr." leaves me too little room for occasionally irresponsible behavior besides! ;)

Yeah, I'm familiar with the fact that the jaguar's historical range included much of AZ, and I too most definitely believe they belong there and want to see their return. But so far as I'm aware, only males only rarely manage to find their way up from Mexico, and the distance (complete with its various obstacles) is considered too great for females to overcome on their own. As you know, you can't have a functional population - or even much fun - without females. ;) Personally I love the idea of translocating some females up from Mexico to get things going, but we'd better not hold our breath waiting for such a thing to happen; heck, folks are having an awfully hard time getting the ocelot translocation program going, and that should be far easier.

I won't deny you make some valid points about the story involving Macho B, both generally and specifically. I actually started my career working with Siberian tigers (albeit in a captive rather than field setting), and spent more than enough time with the species to witness firsthand the effect large carnivore work can have on some of the workers involved. Or maybe it's the kind of worker who tends to be drawn to that work, instead; for my part I was apparently largely immune, and ultimately found small carnivores (especially mustelids) more interesting because so many of them are so much less known. Not that I'd object to working again with tigers, jaguars or some such, mind you... I'm not fond of leg snares, either, and agree the folks in AZ should have heeded the warning of that Sonoran jaguar study. Even worse is that they were doing what they were doing without proper permission, the ramifications of which are still playing out, I believe.

But I have to add here that as worthwhile as camera trapping can be, it can't tell us anywhere near as much as capturing, sampling and radiocollaring. And when you take on the capture of wild animals by any means, you take on at least some risk of harm coming to them thereby. (You take on another kind of risk by being hands-off with them, too, which a lot of people tend to forget.) I have personally trapped and blowgunned a great number of small carnivores in the wild and have worked up quite a number of small and large carnivores in zoos, too, and I can tell you that I have never stopped consciously thinking about that risk and trying to minimize it. I have also personally participated in a fair number of studies in which the sacrifice of the animals involved (no large carnivores here!) was required, and I can tell you that I have never stopped feeling the responsibility of that sacrifice, either. But the fact of the matter is that in wildlife science as in so many other worthwhile endeavors, "you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs." Wild animals live every day of their lives at risk of one or another terrible thing happening to them - heck, to a lesser extent, so do we all - but at least the potential reward that comes from their participating in a scientific study goes way beyond what happens to them alone.

Gerry
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Joshua Jones
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Re: Hydrophis donaldi - news

Post by Joshua Jones »

Wow. :lol: Regalringneck, if my girlfriend knew that you want me to read more than I already do, she'd probably have words with you. :lol: Here's the deal....You said this:
regalringneck wrote:... i hear what indigloe is hitting on, much like us here in az killing every jaguar we can ... to conserve them ...
And I explained (and offered evidence) why the total number killed by a conservation agency was only one. There have been too many jaguars killed in this state, and I never disagreed with that. AZGFD did use a trap that was inhumane, true. But they let him go. What these two people did resulted in his death, and both were investigated for their actions. (For the record, Emil McCain got five years of Federal probation, and Janay Brun got off, since she was only following Emil's orders to place jaguar scat near lion/bear trap sites.)

You, on the other hand have only offered opinions (and no evidence) claiming that every jaguar we can find is killed for conservation purposes. That is patently untrue, as I've proven. But since you would rather address me in such a condescending manner than respond to my posts like an intellectual equal (one who is aiming to educate, rather than further their own ego), I will respectfully consider this conversation concluded. If anything, I agree to disagree with you.
gabrielgartner
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Re: Hydrophis donaldi - news

Post by gabrielgartner »

Hi All...

A few points.

1) Stop feeding the troll...seriously
2) This statement keeps appearing "They don't have to pickle every single thing and multiple numbers to do so..."

Indigo, Do you understand the difficulty in obtaining legal permission to collect specimens??? You need to rationalize not only the species, but numbers as well.

3) Indigo, you clearly care deeply about this. I suggest you write an op-ed piece detailing the needless collection of specimens for scientific study and carefully describe what measures scientists can take to eliminate unnecessary collection. I suggest you provide concrete examples of specific techniques, e.g., CT-scans and x-rays of live (preferablly anesthetized) venomous snakes. You can submit it simultaneously to the top peer-reviewed journals in the field, Science and Nature. If you are worried about bias (after all, a scientist editor will likely be reading your piece) then you should submit it as well to major new outlets such as the NY Times. Before you submit, I'm sure forum members here would be willing to read your manifesto... :roll:
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FunkyRes
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Re: Hydrophis donaldi - news

Post by FunkyRes »

My personal observations -

I've looked at a lot of museum data related to herps in Shasta County.

Most of them are old. They collected specimens when they needed to and then further specimen collection pretty much halted.

However I am very glad they collected the specimens they did.

The Sierra Gartersnake and the Oregon Gartersnake use to be considered the same species. Now they aren't.
The two species have a small contact zone here. Yet there were snakes in the Oregon range that the MVZ identified as Sierra Garters because they are so similar. This was confusing to me until I read a paper that had re-examined the specimens and PROPERLY identified them.

That re-examination of the specimens was only possible because specimens had been collected. The error in original ID could be corrected because the specimens existed to be examined.

That's why (well, one of many reasons) why it is so important for actual specimens to be pickled.

Example 2 - Richard Hoyer notices differences in sharp-tailed snakes that had not previously been noticed. So he went to museums and studied specimens and this led to the eventual description of a new species. That was only possible because specimens had been collected.

Collecting specimens is extremely important because it allows re-examination of the specimens by other scientists at a later date.

That's just the way it is.
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lateralis
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Re: Hydrophis donaldi screw those silly snakes lets talk Jag

Post by lateralis »

LOL, since your post got jacked Bryan lets keep it going on Jags, I stopped reading Indigos, glos, whatever posts a while ago...but this did catch my eye
And I explained (and offered evidence) why the total number killed by a conservation agency was only one. There have been too many jaguars killed in this state, and I never disagreed with that. AZGFD did use a trap that was inhumane, true. But they let him go. What these two people did resulted in his death, and both were investigated for their actions. (For the record, Emil McCain got five years of Federal probation, and Janay Brun got off, since she was only following Emil's orders to place jaguar scat near lion/bear trap sites.)
what were they going to do, let it sit in the snare until it croaked? Oh wait, they DID let it sit in that snare for at least a day if I recall....the picture of Macho B's very swollen paw, and the blood clearly show a humane approach by Emil et al :x ...Those two nitwits were patsies for AZGF and it does not take a rocket scientist to figure that one out (recall that McCain's work in MX resulted in at least two Jag deaths). That idiot used the poorest guide in the world in his work, he used his EGO...and now the fool is in Spain working on European Lynx..
Shane_TX
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Re: Hydrophis donaldi - news

Post by Shane_TX »

C'mon. Let's keep it on rare herps in the U.S.

How many adult (even female) Louisiana Pine Snakes have gone off the record after telemetry processes have been performed. Is there even an audit procedure that would account for all of them? Now they're being reported by quasi-experts as reproductively non-existant in Texas.

Funding game or lack of oversight on the most periled snake in Texas?

Shane
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