Editor:

I could not agree with Tony Greenfield more (Coast Reporter letters, June 15) in the sense that, as contributors of arguments for or against any position, we should proceed in our discourse with fact-based knowledge. Unfortunately, Greenfield, whether intentionally or not, apparently fails to subscribe to this belief. 

Facts regarding biodiversity ought to come from the province of knowledge from which they are derived (biology) and not from anywhere else. If one wants to know facts about the starry heavens, one seeks knowledge from astronomy or cosmology and not from episodes of Seinfeld.

His suggestion that one should walk into the forest and survey the biodiversity themselves is ridiculous, as it assumes that anybody is capable of performing such a survey. This job should be left to trained biologists, and no one else. When one has health issues, one sees a doctor, and not an accountant or real estate agent. 

Biodiversity is an extremely complex and interconnected system, only a tiny proportion of which is visible to the naked eye, and which even biologists are struggling to understand. A quick Wikipedia search or thumbing through a biology textbook will reveal to any willing reader the web of complex life forms existing together with us on this planet. 

I will end with a fact taken from an introduction biology textbook (Biology, 8th ed. Campbell, et al.). I suggest anybody reading to contemplate this fact: two handfuls of fertile soil contains more life forms (micro-organisms invisible to the naked eye) than all of the human beings that have ever existed.

Jaryd Turner

Gibsons