[Mboxmaja]

Hi,

Don't worry leo, I take no offense to a healthy dialouge about different philosophies, especially from someone as passionate and knowledgeable as you are.

Insects are complicated little critters. You are correct that, in theory, you could wipe ot the population by burning the 'island'. These insects (and plants) have evolved with fire, and have ways of recovering. Its difficult to have this argument without having a particular insect or plant species as an example. Of course there are exceptions to fire adaptations.

As an ecologist, I concentrate on the health of the ecosystem/habitat. If we talk about rare plant species, habitat degredation is a greater risk to them the the loss of a pollenator, in my opinion. If there are no plants or no healthy plants to pollenate, what have we gained? Remeber most prairie plants are perrenial. they will still be around to be pollenated when the insect population rebound. Also, like plants, some insect population explode right after a burn, what if those insects are the unique pollenator of a species? Fire ecology is such a complex (and beautiful) thing. I know there are negative impacts, but if you look at the big picture, the benifits outway the negatives. Of course thats a generality, there are exceptions.

More photos:







Kyle