thomas leverett weblog: Reply to Bryan Crow, and his response

Thursday, January 29, 2009

Reply to Bryan Crow, and his response

I do not object to that at all. The course of dialogue, in print or in speech, is to first, open the door of conversation, then to open the mind to thought.

It is refreshing to hear that falcons (all the genus) are still of interest to younger people. The falcon is connected to so many cultures in so many ways. Unfortunately, what was taught and learned, over time becomes myth, then legend. We seldom remember how bad something was until we experience it yet again. We are seeing that with many of our raptors. We escaped the DDT period only to fall into yet another created environmental issue. Only this time are we going to listen to what our wildlife and ecosystems are trying to tell us before it is too late?

Your papers, such as Mr. Mohammed AlOtaibi, which are placed on the internet, do get read. That is one way ecological problems get tracked and issues are templated, to get a broader overview. Issues, such as BDE, and the effect it has on indicator species, is much too great to chase down all the leads, so we (not me exactly, others), look for papers with key phrases to make sure that we all are open to a larger problem. Upon their return, thank your students for me.

One may never understand that a source that they found to support their paper, could just be the piece of a puzzle that someone else was looking for. Never take anything lightly (trust me; I have personal experience with this. Another East coast institute, and myself ran into the same issue, but through opposite means and were put together by a third party that had read both of the papers and contacted us).

As for the "Canary in the Coal mine", I will try to find another description that better, more broadly, illustrates the desired example. See, thanks to you and your students, I now know that something I stated was not totally understood, and that I need to develop a more globally recognized illustration.

If you were to put aside what you know

because of what other people told you,

how much of what you know
do you truly know for yourself?

John Tarrant

Explore, experience, learn...Then teach others

Cheers and Happy Holidays

Byron Crow, Ex. Dir.
Montana Raptor Institute for Research & Education
five, 13th. Ave. W.
Polson, MT. 59860
C: 406. 253.1514
byron@mtraptor.org

*************************************

-----Original Message-----
From: leverett@siu.edu [mailto:leverett@siu.edu]
Sent: Monday, December 15, 2008 10:12 PM
To: Byron Crow
Subject: Re: EAP2B Student Salama; R.P. Peregrine Falcon paper, 12-06-'08

Dear Dr. Crow,

Thank you for the letter. Our term is over, but several of the
students who studied the big birds encountered this chemical
and this problem, so I took the liberty of simply putting your
letter verbatim on the central blog of the class:

http://cesleap2.blogspot.com/2008/12/mr.html

Please let me know if you object to this & I will remove it if
you like.

Our Saudi students in particular were very interested in the
plight of the falcon and were very interested that in some
cases it has become an urban bird. One did the Saker falcon in
Kazakhstan and found that it is almost extinct there also. The
reference to you actually appears in a paper by Mohammed
AlOtaibi.

Thank you for your patient correction- almost all students
found themselves genuinely liking the birds they were writing
about, although the immediate purpose of the class was to
improve their writing itself. They will be happy to know that
their papers are being read carefully; I have always told
them, "write to change something; write to actually help this
bird." We can only hope that this will play a part.

In any case, I hope they understand the experession, "canary in
a coal mine," as we encountered it several times, and I
explained it more than once.

Cheers,
Tom Leverett