Note: This is a drastic revision of a previous blog post. Professor Dash OK'ed its demolition and reconstruction in class on Monday.
The United States Fish and Wildlife Service listed 1200 animals from insects to mammals as endangered in 2009. 1200 animals is a lot of animals, many of which I had never heard of, such as the Kangaroo rat and the Gila monster. Don't worry, they are just a small rat and a large lizard. At the risk of sounding overly calloused, I am going to revive the argument we have been having all semester about whether or not it is our duty to keep the number of species at the same levels in the same places as they were before humans "came along". Is it really important that we "save" species such as the Gila monster? Does the Kangaroo rat need to continue to exist? I am not suggesting that we intentionally kill off useless species, but that we simply let nature take its course and discontinue those species who are no longer suited to the changing world.
The only potentially valid argument for keeping track of endangered species is that since we are responsible for the disappearance of certain species, it is our duty to save them. This argument might make some sense for those species whose population we have directly reduced, but cannot possibly hold ourselves responsible for all 1200 in North America. At that point we might as well blame ourselves for the disappearance of the dinosaurs. It is a simple fact that endless numbers of species have come and gone from the planet over the course of the last several billion years. Why should it matter to us that species are coming and going all around us? If the life of the Earth was represented by a roll of toilet paper, Our own time on the planet is only a small slice of the last square on the roll. When we think of the history of these animals coming and going, is it really tragic? Is it sad? Not unless you have a weirdly intimate connection with the velociraptor. It doesn't matter to us that many of the dinosaurs, incredible creatures, were wiped cleanly off the face of the earth by a meteor. It doesn't matter to us that the Dodo bird no longer exists. The question becomes "when do we start to really care?"
I have come to the conclusion that I don't care about the disappearance of wolves or cougars. I don't feel sorry that the Adirondacks are changing at all and don't feel that any of those changes are necessarily bad. However, when I imagine change occurring in the woods of northern Maine, the woods I grew up canoeing and fishing in, it makes my skin tingle. It is easy to care about an area, you just have to have a real connection to it. The handful of times that I have been to the Adirondacks haven't been enough for me to establish that connection. However, having a really good connection to an area lends a very biased view to conservation. For example, I would like everything in the Maine woods to stay exactly the same as when I was a child, even though I now recognize that eliminating change is not crucial. Because of this, maybe the best conservation work is not done by people with a connection to the land but rather by those who don't and have no bias.
Sources:
"Total Number of Known Threatened Species: 16,938." Endangered Species International. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Mar. 2015.
"List of Endangered Species in North America." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 11 Mar. 2015.
I can understand the importance of looking through an unbiased perspective in regards to a changing environment. Striving to keep a region similar in a constantly changing world is a futile effort. However, I disagree in doing absolutely nothing.
ReplyDeleteSince humans have inhabited the earth, we’ve had a serious impact on environmental conditions. These environmental changes have destroyed many habitats and forced species to the brink of extinction. Therefore, humans have been the cause of many species endangerment. In this post, the author brings up idea of keeping track of which species humans have affected. Yet with the human pollution of the environment, how can we know which species are dying out to a changing environment versus which species are dying out because of human impact?
I can’t morally deem the endangered species list “unimportant” because humans have been the catalyst for the changing world that has killed many of these species. I’m not saying that humans should fight to the death for endangered species- I’m saying that humans should consider the implications of their pollution in the environment on species biodiversity.