Emma Thackery wrote:
>
> Looks like you're still smarting because I proved you wrong
> in that other thread too.
You're trying to rewrite history. Here's my last posting
in that thread, to which you never responded. I refuted
your last response, and you wisely backed out of the
discussion, once it was obvious you couldn't back up anything
you said with facts. The facts support me, not you.
That's just burns you up. It's about time somebody
put you in your place, and I've done a masterful job
of it. Get used to it!
Emma Thackery wrote:
>
> In article >,
> Mark Thorson > wrote:
>
> > I did check my facts.
>
> The assessment you cited was a relative one. Your logic is faulty and
> your research expediently selective. For starters, "Least concern" does
> not mean "no concern". As I said before, hunting of the species has
> been banned in certain regions because of the significant decline in
> the ortolan population--- especially in the European Union. Here is
> but one of hundreds of such expert references you chose to igno
>
> <http://www.sekj.org/PDF/anz42-free/anz42-091.pdf>
This is a classic trick of the propagandist: to cite
a reference as though it supports what you said in
the hope that nobody would look at it and verify that
it really does support what you said. It does not.
You said:
> I hope you're joking given the protected nature of this
> endangered songbird species.
The word "endangered" does not even appear in this
article. In fact, it says that BirdLife International
has classified this species as "vulnerable" in 2000.
However, that is certainly not its present classificiation
by BirdLife International, which is given he
http://www.birdlife.org/datazone/sea...sid=8 941&m=0
BirdLife International ranks it as "Least Concern",
and they are the authority used by the IUCN for
the IUCN Red List.
Also, this article only concerns a small area in
southern Finland. As the article itself notes,
"The main distributional area of the ortolan bunting
is in the east and south of Europe, mainly in dry
and open landscapes (Cramp & Perrins 1994)."
The relevance of a population decline on the
remote fringe of its range hardly seems relevant
to whether the species itself is endangered or
threatened. These are migratory birds not
confined to any particular region. As the
articles notes (on page 13), the ortolan bunting
winters in sub-Saharan Africa.
Furthermore, the article describes a so-called
population "crash" occurring between the late
1980s and mid-1990s. But this "crash" merely
restored the population to what it had been
fifty years earlier. As the article says on
page 10, "Within our study area in particular,
the ortolan bunting densities in the period
1936-1939 (Soveri 1940) were only about 35%
of the densities observed during the early
1980s (Tiainen & Pakkala 2001)." It would be
just as accurate to describe the period of the
early 1990s as the end of a surge in population
rather than a "crash".
In no sense can this article be considered
evidence that the ortolan bunting is endangered.
It only considers a small population on the
fringe of its range, and it admits that fifty
years earlier population densities were about
the same as after the so-called "crash".
And yet, this is the best evidence you can
muster that there's any problem taking ortolan
for eating purposes. In areas where these birds
live in abundance, there's no shortage at all.
They are not endangered or threatened at all.
You can't eat enough of them to significantly
impact the population. Eat and enjoy!