Maybe because I’m strongly biased against grouping and labeling people (and myself) in general, but I find the premise of the original post to not be particularly useful and more judgey than constructive - it’s written sort of like a clickbait headline, both grouping poeple and trying to rank them. To what end? What will we have learned by ranking these groups (which overlap in many ways)?
What matters is how big the problem is, what people’s motivations/incentives are, and, more importantly, how to change them if possible. While also recognizing that there are myriad ways in which people interact with nature that may be OK while still something we may personally find disagreeable.
As someone who was really into catching snakes but only seldomly does it now:
seeing a snake and making that split-second decision to catch it, then actually catching it, is undeniably thrilling
snakes feel really great to hold
you feel like you’re doing something so many others are afraid to do
speaking as a guy who was in his 20s, it definitely gave me a feeling of being tough/brave/masculine
I wanted to help people understand that snakes are not inherently evil or deadly
i wanted to share photos of me holding snakes, it was part of my identity
for some snakes (like many garter snakes in California), a close-up of the head scales are often necessary for identification
Why do I not really do it any longer?
people and other herpers I respected brought up the fact that it stresses the snakes out
after stressing some herps out too much, in my late 30s, I realized that causing undue stress just so I could take some photos that people on Instagram would like is not worth it. It made me feel pretty bad. Thus I started this project, to try and shine a light on in-situ herp photos a bit more.
as I got older I became more secure in myself and my identity and didn’t need to “impress” people or myself by catching snakes
I started to get interested in plants, birds, and other taxa and realized I could take cool pictures of those without overly disturbing them.
Thanks to everyone who replied. I have found this thread to be a useful discussion about ethical practices and taking accountability for our decisions.
Thanks to @tiwane for your vulnerability when analyzing the younger version of you. A lot of herpers might be able to relate to what you shared.
As a mushroomer, carrying around a bag full of mushrooms, (basically a bag of spores) and unintentionally - or in many cases intentionally - spreading their spores, I think that may actually benefit the species in the long run.
Now, tromping through sword fern and walking on old logs - there might be a few unhappy plants. I generally try to avoid walking directly over plants. If there’s a walkable game trail, I’d prefer that over stomping on trilliums and ferns! Not to mention the happy slugs and bugs hanging out underneath them!
I take many photos in IDing rare and endangered plant species for the Native Plant Trust. Standard procedure is flower in detail, leaf (showing stem join and arrangement) and whole plant in situ. Plus anything special that distinguishes this species from a lookalike.
If it’s the wrong time of year and all the attributes aren’t there, then a species-specific I.D. isn’t possible; sometimes we have to return later if the unique pods haven’t developed, for example.
So in asking for better photos, iNAT needs folk to show the characteristics that make it incontrovertible, all the characters are shown. And to know what needs being photographed-- there, you have to know the species first. If I can return later after a preliminary photo, and check out the species characteristics on Go Botany or the like, then I go back for the glory shots. Venation and microhirsute leaves, colored stems, rhizomes vs. roots-- these are characters than can prove the ID.
In short: a snapshot is often not enough, no matter how pretty.
Reading here the many replies trying to defend or blame various types of outdoors visitors— in all categories, you will get individuals who just won’t follow the rules, are uneducated, or simply don’t care. One factor being overlooked is that whatever the cause of environmental or organism disturbance, it relates to being anthropogenic in one of a myriad of ways. The burgeoning overpopulation of our species with an ever increasing sense of entitlement also means more garbage, more use of natural resources, more contamination of the environment, and more needs for space-- space to live, recreate, manage the works.
Some outdoors organizations are promoting equity and pushing for more involvement with being outdoors-- so the message that visiting Yellowstone is a now rare commodity, or that viewing receding glaciers for sport is adding to the environmental impact, hasn’t come through. One conservation org recently came on the scene buying up wilderness areas and closing them to visitors. I was horrified recently when a state park with a HUGE parking lot was so overfilled, the traffic jam of idling cars waiting for a parking space to open lasted many hours. Many were using the area as an off-leash dog park.
So, maybe we need to start licensing access to wilderness areas… and part of the training will be to leave no trace and do no harm. And the nature orgs should start requiring all photos submitted to the annual contests to swear “No organisms were harmed in the creation of this photograph.”