Rob Weir is correct when he writes that, as the headline put it, “Rattlesnakes must make their own way in ecosystem, or not.” (Guest column, April 27).
The proposal to compensate for the depletion of rattlesnake breeding populations due to human activity is intended to do just that. The idea is to help rattlesnakes make their own way by boosting population density to levels that will allow them to maintain healthy populations.
One logical way to do that is to intervene by introducing additional rattlesnakes to the Quabbin ecosystem. The Quabbin ecosystem itself was created by a major intervention; damming the Swift River. Most ecosystems, including those on the East Coast, have been modified by human intervention. American Indians were heavily involved in shaping the world they lived in, a point made abundantly clear in Amherst author Charles A. Mann’s excellent book “1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus.”
State game officials have continuously played an important role in successfully managing wildlife populations including eagles, bears and moose.
While it’s true that attempts to compensate for the blocking of salmon migration routes to their upstream breeding habitats by restocking the rivers with hatchery-reared fish were unsuccessful, conservation biologists should not be faulted for at least trying to repair the damage from damming rivers.
They were merely trying to respond to our interference with the ecosystem by building the dams in the first place. And I’m sure they knew that the dams would not “disappear.”
Guy Lanza
Amherst