Wall of Nessus

Jerry Friedman · 15 Jun 2010, 04:39 · from 2010-June.txt.gz

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From: jerry_friedman at yahoo.com (Jerry Friedman)
Date: Mon, 14 Jun 2010 21:39:42 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: (urth) Wall of Nessus
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From: Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com>

> Wolfe makes a point of many Earthly species being extinct by Sev's time, and eagles are endangered even
> today.

Fortunately, this last is not true in general.  The bald eagle, golden eagle, and white-tailed eagle (the widespread species in the cooler parts of the northern hemisphere) are all rated as Least Concern by the IUCN, though populations of all of them have been reduced or eliminated in some places, and the bald eagle was listed as endangered in the lower 48 for a number of years.  There a few endangered eagle species, many of them restricted to islands, but I can't find a good list.

The Commonwealth has teratorns, which are much bigger than eagles and should naturally be much rarer, so I'd think it has eagles.

> There could be a similar shortage of the highest flying gesse, perhaps from Exultants overhunting them from flyers.

A great image, but if you're going to overhunt waterfowl, shooting them when they're flying low or walking or swimming is a lot easier.

I'm no expert, but I think that in our universe, aristocrats have been in the forefront of conservation of the species they like to hunt.  It's the species that the poor can kill for food or money, or the ones people see as threats (e.g., to livestock), that get hunted to extinction.

Jerry Friedman

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