Now that the dogs days of summer are upon us, the cicadas are out singing. A UConn professor is offering a $50 cash reward for a live specimen or verifable sighting in CT, MA or RI. These cicadas were last seen in 1954 and are thought to be extinct. This offer ends July 30, 2005.
Thursday, July 28, 2005
Cash Reward for Cicada
Now that the dogs days of summer are upon us, the cicadas are out singing. A UConn professor is offering a $50 cash reward for a live specimen or verifable sighting in CT, MA or RI. These cicadas were last seen in 1954 and are thought to be extinct. This offer ends July 30, 2005.
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2 comments:
Periodic cicadas are fascinating, although if you live in an area where one of the many broods hatches in force, they can also be overwhelming. I grew up on Staten Island and remember well (although I was 8) the 1962 hatch of what we called 17-year-locusts. They hatched in May or June, I think, and carcasses and exoskeletons were everywhere and the noise stopped only at night. Staten Island had been the home of a noted naturalist and writer named William T. Davis, who made his reputation studying periodic cicadas in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
In 1996, I was working as a reporter in Westchester County when the same brood was ready to hatch again, so I called the Staten Island Institute of Arts and Sciences, where Davis’s journals are kept, and asked them to skim the index of his journals to see if Davis had any records of periodic cicadas in Westchester.
Sure enough, he wrote that he had traveled to Cortlandt, to a place called Colabaugh Pond, in 1894, and had found this brood. I mentioned it in a column and said that entomologists believed they were extirpated from Westchester. But in early June I got a call from a fellow who told me he thought he had them near his house. When I asked him where he lived, he told me near Colabaugh Pond. I drove over and there they were, making their weird noise, which is different – more ethereal – than the noise we’re hearing now from dog-day cicadas.
Which brings me to the Connecticut scientist who has put a $50 bounty on the head of specimens from this year’s brood, which is thought to have been extirpated from Connecticut. But suppose someone does find some specimens. Isn’t a $50 bounty a guarantee that if they’re not extirpated already, they soon will be? On the other hand, as far as I know, periodic cicadas emerge in spring, not July. So it might be too late to kill them all off anyway.
I too find the $50 reward (maximum of $200) for an 'extinct' species questionable too. I would like to think the professor was trying to be creative and get people aware or involved. It's enough money to get some people interested but it's not enough that they'll be a run of bug nets from the dollar store. What I did envision happening was lots of "dog day cicadas" getting collected for the reward. They're much easier to find & catch than a extinct cicada. Thus the question is what effect would this reward have on non-threatened species? I will try to follow up on the bug hunt results and post it here.
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