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Why Is It Important To Preserve Endangered Species – Outlook Perspective Interpretation of the news based on evidence, including data, as well as anticipation of how events will unfold based on past events
“Evolution loves death more than it loves you or me. This is easy to write, easy to read and hard to believe.” – Annie Dillard, “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek”
Why Is It Important To Preserve Endangered Species
After midnight, during an expedition in southwestern Ecuador in December 2013, I saw a small green frog sleeping on a leaf near a stream on the side of the road. It was Atelopus balios, the Rio Pescado stilt-footed toad. Although a single male was spotted in 2011, no populations have been found since 1995, and it was thought to be extinct. But here it was, raised from the dead like Lazarus. My colleagues and I found several more that night, males and females, and sent them to an amphibian ark in Quito, where they now bask safely in captivity. But they will die out one day, and the world will be none the poorer for it. Eventually they are replaced by a dozen or a hundred new species that evolve later.
Pdf) Endangered Species
Mass extinctions periodically wipe out up to 95 percent of all species in one fell swoop; these occur every 50 million to 100 million years, and scientists agree that we are now in the middle of the sixth such extinction, this one caused primarily by humans and our effects on animal habitats. It is an “enormous and hidden” tragedy to see creatures pushed out of existence by humans, laments Harvard entomologist E.O. Wilson, who coined the term “biodiversity” in 1985. A joint paper by several prominent researchers published by the National Academy of Sciences called it a “biological annihilation.” Pope Francis conveys the biodiversity crisis with a moral imperative (“Every creature has its own purpose,” he said in 2015), and biologists often cite an ecological one (we must “face a dramatic decline in biodiversity and the subsequent loss of ecosystem services prevent). “, some wrote in a paper for Science Advances). “What is Conservation Biology?”, a fundamental text for the field, written by Michael Soulé of the University of California at Santa Cruz, says: “Diversity of organisms is good … the unjustified extinction of populations and species is bad . . . . [and] biotic diversity has intrinsic value.” In her book “The Sixth Extinction”, the journalist Elizabeth Kolbert captures the panic that caused it all: “Such is the pain caused by the loss of a single species that we are ready to perform ultrasounds on rhinos and hand jobs on To get.”
But the impulse to conserve for conservation’s sake has taken on an unthinking, unsupported, unnecessary urgency. Extinction is the engine of evolution, the mechanism by which natural selection cuts out the ill-adapted and allows the hardiest to flourish. Species are constantly dying out, and every species alive today will one day follow. There is no such thing as an “endangered species”, except for all species. The only reason why we should preserve biodiversity is to create a stable future for ourselves. Yes, we have changed the environment and thereby hurt other species. This seems artificial because, unlike other forms of life, we use the feeling in agriculture and industry. But we are a part of the biosphere like any other creature, and our actions are just as voluntary, their consequences just as natural. Conserving a species that we helped kill, but on which we are not directly dependent, serves to relieve our own guilt, but little else.
Climate scientists worry about how we’ve changed our planet, and they have good reason to be afraid: Can we feed ourselves? Will our water supply dry up? Will our homes wash away? But contrary to these concerns, extinction has no moral significance, even if we caused it. And unless we somehow destroy every living cell on Earth, the sixth extinction will be followed by a revival, and later a seventh extinction, and so on.
However, we are obsessed with reviving the status quo ante. The Paris Agreements aim to keep temperatures below two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, even though temperatures have been at least eight degrees Celsius warmer over the past 65 million years. 21000 years ago, Boston was under an ice sheet a kilometer thick. We are near all-time lows for temperature and sea level; Whatever efforts we make to maintain the current climate will eventually be overrun by the inexorable forces of space and geology. Our concern, in other words, should not be to protect the animal kingdom, which will be good. Within a few million years of the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs, the post-apocalyptic void was filled by an explosion of diversity – modern mammals, birds and amphibians of all shapes and sizes.
Five Ways That High Tech Maps Can Help Protect Biodiversity
This is how evolution continues: through extinction. The inevitability of death is the only constant in life, and 99.9 percent of all species that have ever lived, as many as 50 billion, are already extinct. In 50 million years, Europe will collide with Africa and form a new supercontinent, destroying species (think birds, fish and anything vulnerable to invasive life forms from another landmass) by irrevocably changing their habitats. Extinction of individual species, entire lineages and even complete ecosystems are frequent occurrences in the history of life. The world is no better or worse for the absence of saber-toothed tigers and dodo birds and our Neanderthal cousins, who died out when Homo sapiens evolved. (After several studies, it’s not even clear that biodiversity is suffering. The authors of another recent National Academy of Sciences paper point out that the species kingdom has not seen a net decline among plants over 100 years at 16,000 sites worldwide . )
The preservation of biodiversity must not be an end in itself; Diversity can even be dangerous for human health. Infectious diseases are most widespread and virulent in the most diverse tropical areas. No one donates to campaigns to save HIV, Ebola, malaria, dengue and yellow fever, but these are key components of microbial biodiversity, as unique as pandas, elephants and orangutans, all of which are apparently endangered by human interference.
Humans should feel less shame about shaping their environment to suit their survival needs. When beavers make a dam, they cause the local extinction of many river species that cannot survive in the new lake. But the new lake supports a range of species that is just as diverse. Studies have shown that when humans introduce invasive plant species, native diversity sometimes suffers, but productivity—the cycling of nutrients through the ecosystem—often increases. Invasives can bring other benefits, too: Plants like Phragmites reed have been shown to perform better at reducing coastal erosion and storing carbon than native vegetation in some areas, such as the Chesapeake.
And if biodiversity is the target of extinction fears, how do they consider South Florida, where about 140 new reptile species, accidentally introduced by the animal trade, are now successfully breeding? No extinctions of native species have been recorded, and, at least anecdotally, most native populations are still thriving. Those that are endangered, such as gopher tortoises and indigo snakes, are mostly threatened by habitat destruction. Even if all the native reptiles in the Everglades, about 50, became extinct, the region would still gain 90 new species – a biodiversity bounty. If they can adapt and thrive there, then evolution promotes their success. If they outcompete the natives, extinction does its job.
Endangered Species Facts And Information
There is no return to a pre-human Eden; the goals of species conservation must be aligned with the acceptance that large numbers of animals will become extinct. Thirty to 40 percent of species may be threatened with extinction in the near future, and their loss may be inevitable. But both the planet and humanity can probably survive or even thrive in a world with fewer species. We do not depend on polar bears for our survival, and even if their eradication has a domino effect that will eventually affect us, we will find a way to adapt. The species we rely on for food and shelter are a small proportion of total biodiversity, and most humans live in – and rely on – areas of only moderate biodiversity, not in the Amazon or the Congo Basin.
Developed human societies can exist and function in harmony with various natural communities, even if these communities are less diverse than they were before humanity. For example, there is almost no original forest in the eastern United States. Almost every square inch was clear cut for wood by the turn of the 20th century. The green desert we see now in the Catskills, Shenandoah and the Great Smoky Mountains has all grown back in the last 100 years, with very few extinctions or permanent losses of biodiversity (14 total east of the Mississippi River, counting species recorded in history , which is now apparently extinct), even though our country’s population has quadrupled. Japan
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