BirdForum is the net's largest birding community dedicated to wild birds and birding, and is absolutely FREE!

Register for an account to take part in lively discussions in the forum, post your pictures in the gallery and more.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="THE_FERN" data-source="post: 3574204" data-attributes="member: 13145"><p>Need to decouple the legal from the scientific. This proposal is ok from the former perspective as the alternative is essentially no protection at all (complainants can just cite a competing taxonomy), but it doesn't make sense from the scientific viewpoint. Science needs to be clear which taxonomic approach is being used, and there is a case for having regulatory bodies for each concept (e. g. PS, bs etc) although achieving this is unlikely. The essential problem is all these schemes attempt to impose discontinuous classifications on continuous variation. In these circs decisions are, and always will be, (at least somewhat) subjective.</p></blockquote><p></p>