Saturday, March 10, 2007

How Many Beetles Must Die?

Christopher Marley's Form and Pheromone, beetles and butterflies. The environmental effects on collecting insects ... they say that it is clear-cutting that is the danger. Don't get me wrong, I go crazy when I see these beetle collections under glass and I would love to buy one. But something always stops me. I get the same uneasy feeling (well, outrage really) as when I see a bucket-full of dead sea horses. Who said to kill all of those sea horses or all of those sea shells ... just so we could buy a few to have in our bathroom decor? It doesn't settle well with me.

Although, I don't mind collecting my one or two seashells I find at the beach. Or pick up a dead bug here or there. To go out and harvest thousands at a time, makes me feel very weird. It isn't like they are making one or two frames of dead beetles. They must be making thousands, and I would like to know how that effects the population of them or butterflies. For that matter, back to my previous post and the shortage of drift in Northern France. What does one company making all of their wares out of driftwood do to the supply of driftwood? Is there one stick left for the average beach-comber to collect? Or a popular item like the butterflies under glass do to the population of butterflies in Peru? I ask that all the time at the stores and never get a answer that makes me comfortable enough to make the purchase. I just don't know, it is a gut feeling.

But the product is lovely, Simple Singles

3 comments:

Kimberley McGill said...

Thanks for stopping by my blog and offer some encouragement to participate in SPT. And I have to say I immediately like anyone who asks these kinds of questions and feels weird when thinking about someone harvesting thousands of beetles --

Anonymous said...

I agree with you, I could never hang those dead insects on my wall. And there seems to me something wrong about those people raiding their environment, killing all those insects, so we can have an esthetic experience?
I also agree with your worries about not being enough driftwood for everybody. But I could easily live with a bookshelf or a chair made from driftwood. I saw them in Zurich and fell in love, but awakend quickly after seeing the pricetags.

Maureen said...

Excellent post today, Kim -- I'm glad you are bringing this up. It's not the one-single piece of driftwood picked up that makes such a difference .... it's in the multiplying of that one "desire" to have something ... over and over hundreds of thousands of times until we have picked the earth clean. There is only just so much "stuff" we all need to have in our houses and offices. I wish more people would go out into nature once a day at least, just take a short walk, go out on the sidewalk in front of their city apartment and look closely at the bugs and tiny forbs growing in the cracks... instead of always wanting to isolate a beautiful slice of nature , pin it or frame it or box it up and put in inside so we can look at it and think how clever we are for making art of an object. Or finding it in a store -- same thing. Oh, you got me started!

shells, beetles, butterflies, stones, driftwood, bird nests, tree branches .. makes no difference what it is. When you multiply a taking by the # of people who want to have it. It's overwhelmingly destructive.