By Anne Eychaner
Arizona Daily Wildcat
January 27, 1998

Get in touch with nature

To the Editor:

Once again the Wildcat has demonstrated its complete lack of scientific understanding and Eric Clingan has demonstrated his complete lack of concern for the real issue at hand, preferring instead to resort to the no-original-thought-required, stereotypical portrayal of environmentalists, thereby clouding the question ("The Dodo and the Pygmy," Jan. 21).

Mr. Clingan would have you believe that this issue is one of twelve owls vs. the continued education, development and the entire existance of a city of hundreds of thousands of people, most of whom do not live in an owl habitat. He is sadly mistaken. This is an issue of human beings being unable to live in a sustainable fashion in the areas in which they co-habit with numerous other organisms.

Neither is this an issue of evolution (or extinction) by natural selection, as Mr. Clingan believes. No population on the planet can adapt to having its habitat destroyed wholesale. Mr. Clingan also seems to think that these twelve individual animals will spontaneously change the behavior and habits that have been programmed into their DNA by the experience of thousands of generations of pygmy owls before. These birds have no choice over this matter. While it may be the best shot these animals have against encroaching development in northwest Tucson, evolution happens one generation at a time, not in any given individual. If this population goes extinct, it will be because of humans.

I'm just sorry that Eric never had the chance, as a child, to take off his shoes and go tromp around in a creek, turning over rocks, getting dirty, finding all sorts of cool things like crayfish and water bugs - er, excuse me - slimy invertebrates. But his mother must be glad she never had to put up with him coming home at suppertime with his pockets full of (insignificant) frogs or horny toads or anything like that. He must have been locked in his room growing up, to not be able to find any value - scientifically or spiritually - in the continued existance of the organisms and landscape of our desert southwest.

Anne Eychaner
Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Senior
Undergrad Teaching Assistant Conservation Biology, Ecology 406

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