Mega Rare Orchid Found in Corkscrew Swamp, Florida

Here's a way cool nature/wildlife story from the incomparable Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary in south Florida.

No doubt some bullet head will hear about this and ask the inevitable question "so, what good is it?" I wish some day when I'm retired I can return that question with my own, "so, sir, what good are you?"

When she was four years old my now almost 30 year old daughter and I were out collecting American Avocets for a research project I was conducting.

I would watch the Avocet foraging and then collect it (that means shoot it and kill it) and open up its esophagus and take out the food items. Then I would sample the invertebrates in a 1-meter square area around where the bird was foraging. Comparing what was available in the sample to what was in the birds' esophagus gave us an indication of what was important for the continued existence of this species as far as food items were concerned. It gave us an idea of what to manage for in alkaline wetlands.

The day that Jennifer was along with me we collected an Avocet and we were sitting on the edge of a township road in Stutsman County, North Dakota, when a local land owner came along in his truck. He saw us sitting by the road and stopped to talk. The conversation went like this:

Farmer, "whatcha got there?"

Me "Its an American Avocet"

Farmer, "Well what kind of a bird is it?"

Me "Its a shorebird, like a sandpiper only bigger."

Farmer, "Is it kind of a snipe?"

Me, "Yes, a snipe is a good comparison."

Farmer, "Well, can you eat 'em?"

Me, "I dont know of any one who has eaten an Avocet but I guess you could if you were hungry."

Farmer, "Well, if you can't eat them, what good are they?"

Classic rectal reasoning that hampers species conservation all over the world.

If we can't identify a reason why something is "useful" then it has no "value" in the minds of many.

I wonder if all the people who survive on digitalis wonder if the Amazonian plant from which digitalis is extracted has any value sitting there in the rain forest? I wonder if people who cure other diseases by the chemicals in an obscure clam in a river wonder if it has any value.

A 5th grade student from Grand Island Nebraska whom I once turned on to the rain forest had a younger sibling who had a disease that was only treatable with a chemical extracted from a different species of rain forest plant. Stephanie could easily say "my brothers life is why this plant is important to me."

I wonder if this Ghost Orchid has any value? To me its valuable because its there. It doesn't need a monetary value fixed to it. The fact that its a functioning part of an ecosystem tells me that its valuable.

I shudder to think at times of how much "value" there is in nature that myopic humans have destroyed simply because they couldn't put an immediate monetary value on it? Again, we need to also ask "what good are you" to the people who ask those assinine questions.