Concealing precise locality data

[Una Smith]

Tangental to the current discussion of concealing precise locality
data for important natural history materials, I would like to point
out an incident in Usenet this past week.

There was a recent formal proposal made to create a new Usenet
newsgroup, rec.outdoors.caving.  Initial comments were favorable,
but then members of a large, semi-private mailing list began to
oppose the proposal.  Their position was that cavers can not and
should not discuss the details of specific cave sites in a public
forum, because the information could (and probably would) be used
by unethical parties to invade the caves and/or pick them clean.

The proposal to create rec.outdoors.caving has been withdrawn.

        Una Smith                       smith-una at yale.edu

Department of Biology, Yale University, New Haven, CT  06520-8104  USA