22 ms·

I strongly doubt we would let giraffes as a whole go extinct. There are many species (mostly birds) we have kept around for over thirty years now that went exti

by zanny 9y ago

I strongly doubt we would let giraffes as a whole go extinct. There are many species (mostly birds) we have kept around for over thirty years now that went extinct in the wild since invasive species have rendered a lot of habitats uninhabitable for native fauna. It would be an undesirable state of affairs to see giraffes go extinct in the wild, but zoo populations can maintain themselves and would probably expand to compensate if they were the only populations left.

emodendroket 9y ago
I don't see any reason to see that as implausible. There used to be so many passenger pigeons in North America that they blocked the sun. Now there aren't any.
- zanny 9y ago
  Except the Passenger Pigeon died off in 1914. A lot of noteworthy fauna died in the 19th and 20th centuries from the combination of mass human expansion, industrialization, and globalization. The difference is that in 1889 there weren't passenger pigeons in every zoo and an active awareness they were critically endangered. Even if people knew they were endangered back then, the US might didn't do enough to keep the species alive - our awareness as a species of the danger we pose and our responsibility to preserve other lifeforms is something that is fairly new to the last couple decades. Today, we have the IUCN, which didn't even exist until 1964, fifty years after the Passenger Pigeon was gone. We keep track of at risk populations and have a vast infrastructure of care facilities and a lot of interested parties and money in keeping species from dying out. We have an interconnected global communication system to always know what is at risk everywhere. Whereas bans on the hunting of passenger pigeons in the 1880s and 90s weren't enforced and few were aware of them it would be much easier to spread information on and enforce such bans today. The only captive population of passenger pigeons in the early 20th century was at the Cincinnati Zoo, which slowly died off because they only had an unsustainable population starting out of 20. Today, there are thousands of captive giraffes around the world, and the news of their endangerment should promote more preserves to adopt giraffes to make the species can be kept stable if they die off in the wild.
  - emodendroket 9y ago
    A lot of those same factors still apply. If the giraffe becomes a species that exists only in captivity, I suppose it's better than it not existing at all, but it's basically a failure from a conservationist standpoint.

by zanny 9y ago

emodendroket 9y ago

I don't see any reason to see that as implausible. There used to be so many passenger pigeons in North America that they blocked the sun. Now there aren't any.

zanny 9y ago
Except the Passenger Pigeon died off in 1914. A lot of noteworthy fauna died in the 19th and 20th centuries from the combination of mass human expansion, industrialization, and globalization. The difference is that in 1889 there weren't passenger pigeons in every zoo and an active awareness they were critically endangered. Even if people knew they were endangered back then, the US might didn't do enough to keep the species alive - our awareness as a species of the danger we pose and our responsibility to preserve other lifeforms is something that is fairly new to the last couple decades. Today, we have the IUCN, which didn't even exist until 1964, fifty years after the Passenger Pigeon was gone. We keep track of at risk populations and have a vast infrastructure of care facilities and a lot of interested parties and money in keeping species from dying out. We have an interconnected global communication system to always know what is at risk everywhere. Whereas bans on the hunting of passenger pigeons in the 1880s and 90s weren't enforced and few were aware of them it would be much easier to spread information on and enforce such bans today. The only captive population of passenger pigeons in the early 20th century was at the Cincinnati Zoo, which slowly died off because they only had an unsustainable population starting out of 20. Today, there are thousands of captive giraffes around the world, and the news of their endangerment should promote more preserves to adopt giraffes to make the species can be kept stable if they die off in the wild.
- emodendroket 9y ago
  A lot of those same factors still apply. If the giraffe becomes a species that exists only in captivity, I suppose it's better than it not existing at all, but it's basically a failure from a conservationist standpoint.