[Pollinator] Fwd: Pollinators & Smuggling: TX man pleads guilty to smuggling dead hummingbirds

[Peter Bernhardt]

Dear Pat:

Thanks for the clarification.  I am sharing this information with Dr.
Mayden who is teaching a course in animal diversity (for non majors) this
year and his course may touch on superstitions.  It's sad to think that
we've reached a level of affluence in America to the point that we are we
now importing folklore ultimately destructive to environments beyond our
borders.  Yecch!

Perhaps we need a page on the NAPPC website to bust superstitions about
native pollinators replacing them with facts?  For example, most male bees
feed themselves and DO pollinate flowers except in the naturalized,
commercial honeybee (Apis mellifera).  Monarchs in Canada DON"T fly all the
way to Mexico in autumn.,  They produce more than one generation along the
way  and it's the last generation produced that reaches Mexico.  The
hummingbird bill isn't a single tube.  There are two mandibles as in all
other birds.  Butterflies don't have hair-like stings that break off on
human skin (learned that one as a 7-year old). That sort of thing.  Let's
see what Laurie has to say.

Peter


On Thu, Sep 4, 2014 at 11:24 AM, De Angelis, Patricia <
patricia_deangelis at fws.gov> wrote:

> Good question! Here's another article that postulates they were possibly
> intended as good luck charms.
>
>
> http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/texas/article/Dallas-man-charged-with-smuggling-dead-5483979.php
>
> Patricia S. De Angelis, Ph.D.
> Botanist, Division of Scientific Authority-US Fish & Wildlife
> Service-International Affairs
> Chair, Medicinal Plant Working Group-Plant Conservation Alliance
> 5275 Leesburg Pike, MS: IA
> Falls Church, VA 22041-3803
> 703-358-1708 x 1753
> 703-358-2276 (FAX)
>
>
> On Thu, Sep 4, 2014 at 11:58 AM, Peter Bernhardt <bernhap2 at slu.edu> wrote:
>
>> Dear Patricia:
>>
>> Thanks so much for circulating this item.  I wish there were more details
>> in this newspaper article.  Was the man selling fresh, whole corpses or was
>> he bringing in taxidermic specimens for people with stuffed bird
>> collections?  One wonders if the prospective buyers planned to wear them on
>> their hats.  It was perfectly legal to do so over a century ago.
>>
>> The reason I mention this is that I saw a travel documentary on Mexico
>> City on Public Television about a year ago.  The woman shopping in the open
>> air markets noted that some stalls sold magical items.  This included dead,
>> drying hummingbird corpses on sticks to use as love charms.  Have we
>> reached a point in America in which such charms have a big enough customer
>> base to become lucrative but illegal?  Either way it's not good for the
>> 200, or so, hummingbird species native to the tropical Americas.
>>
>> Peter
>>
>>
>>>
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>
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