Posted by Duncan on November 20, 2002 at 09:38:19 from 205.188.209.46 user Duncan.
In Reply to: Re: Egg-collecting & AR's influence posted by Mike Dennis on November 20, 2002 at 07:56:31:
Well I suppose until you apply a moral aspect to wild animals (and as a society we still veer in and out of doing so, really) then it's no different from stamp collecting - not everybody's bag, but there are so many different eggs, all slightly different, some rare, etc. So there's the young boys interest in building a collection (which also involves the 'adventure' of climbing trees or crossing marshes, etc.) Then there were the serious collectors who did it in the name of science and a number of 'dealers' in between as the serious collectors were prepared to part with serious money for the eggs of rare birds.
Until Natural History was replaced by Environmental Science (that's not quite right, some science historian will have to clarify this) then what mattered was what existed, not what exists.
Did AR decide that wild birds had rights, or just that places were better for humans with wild birds in them? I don't know.
Duncan