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To Save Endangered Species, Should We Bring Them into Our Cities?
- manicdee 8y agoOne option is to change our cities to be less hostile to the creatures that used to live there.
- baddash 8y agoWhy should we save endangered species from going extinct?
- alex_young 8y agoWhy shouldn't we kill all the weakest lifeforms on the planet? What could possibly go wrong?
- baddash 8y ago"It's obvious that killing all the weakest lifeforms on this planet would cause bad things to happen" I made what you were stating clearer. Why would not saving endangered species lead to all the weakest lifeforms on the planet going extinct? Is it the fate of all of those lifeforms to go extinct without human intervention?
- KozmoNau7 8y agoThe vast majority of endangered species are endangered because of human activities.
- monocasa 8y agoYep. Specifically, just to hit this point home, the impact of humans is an extinction event comparable to the Cambrian–Ordovician extinction event, or the impact that killed off the dinosaurs. Who(or what)ever exists billions of years from now will be able to view the immensity of our impact assuming they still have the tools we have today.
- bad_user 8y agoTo place things in perspective, all wildlife that isn’t domesticated (livestock) or adapted to live in polluted cities (e.g. rats, dogs, pigeons) are now in danger of extinction due to humans. Even insects. It’s only a matter of time before we kill off what remains and you have to wonder, if we made earth so inhospitable to life, for how long can we survive ourselves?
- coldtea 8y ago"It's obvious that we know jack-shit about what could possibly go wrong and environmental dependencies -- so better not go extinguishing lifeforms since we've evolved our means of extinction beyond what natural nature cycles allow". That's a much better formulation. It doesn't have to be "obvious that killing all the weakest lifeforms on this planet would cause bad things to happen" not to do it. It just has to be possible and uncertain.
- derekp7 8y agoMultiple reasons, one of which is that once a species is gone there is no way to get it back. Also, consider reasons that people want to save historical structures, or preserve old / rare works of art. Or why someone would pay money to a vet to save their pet. If you saw a fire spreading and was threatening someone's house, would you call the fire department, or otherwise attempt to stop it? Why or why not? Do you back up the data on your computer? Do you wonder why anyone takes pictures in order to preserve a moment in time, and would be upset if all their family photos got destroyed?
- chr1 8y agoWould storing genomes be enough, similar to backing up data until it is needed?
- Arnt 8y agoOnly if you assume that being reared by older animals of the same species doesn't matter.
- KineticLensman 8y ago> Would storing genomes be enough, similar to backing up data until it is needed? I don't think so, because many of the endangered animals are representative of entire ecosystems. Consider orang-utans and the forests they inhabit (many of which are being destroyed to collect palm-oil). If the animals have gone, it is even harder to make people want to preserve their environments in the face of relentless commercial pressure. Some endangered animals also help shape the ecosystems, e.g. when they are apex predators. Once the animals are gone, recreating their communities is significantly harder. As stated elsewhere, most animals are better raised by their own species rather than humans outside the cage. For primates (e.g. woolly monkeys) individuals that have been raised in isolation in captivity also don't make good parents when they do eventually breed, sometimes abandoning viable young.
- manicdee 8y agoProtecting endangered species isn’t just about protecting a specific set of DNA, as per the article about reintroducing wolves to Yellowstone.
- rangibaby 8y agowatch Star Trek IV (serious)
- francisofascii 8y ago"to hunt a species to extinction is not logical"
- pvaldes 8y agoBecause if we don't care we'll soon find us in serious trouble when the environmental chores that they bring will suddently stop.
- coldtea 8y agoBasic decency when their extinction is caused by us?
- manicdee 8y agoHere is one famous case study: https://www.yellowstonepark.com/things-to-do/wolf-reintroduction-changes-ecosystem https://www.yellowstonepark.com/things-to-do/wolf-reintroduc... The thing is that an ecosystem is a complex biological machine. When we go pulling out tiny sprockets from the machine, things break in ways we can’t predict and often don’t expect. I am far less concerned about an asteroid hitting Earth and ending life as we know it, than I am about farmers eradicating insect “pests” leading to the collapse of life as we know it.
- undersuit 8y agoWell I'm all for that. The most dangerous thing for all life in my city are cars. Dead magpies, raccoons, and squirrels are a common sight in the city. Roadkill deer are more common outside the city or on the high speed roads. Also, deer that are injured in low speed collisions are dangerous when threatened... by somebody just happening to be walking by.
- baxtr 8y agoI’ve advertised this before: one viable option is to have “sanctuaries”, large areas where humans are strictly forbidden to enter. The case of Chernobyl shows that wild life recovers from humans pretty quickly once they’re gone. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/04/060418-chernobyl-wildlife-thirty-year-anniversary-science/ http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/04/060418-chernobyl-...
- fireattack 8y agoBut is the "recovery rate" in Chernobyl significantly better than normal conservation sites? My point is, why "strictly forbidden to enter" if conservation areas are successful enough?
- baxtr 8y agoThat’s a very good question. I don’t know the answer. My experience is though that some rules have to be very strict, because the freedom will be invaded step by step. First just a small road, then maybe a visitor center, then some tour rides etc.
- drb91 8y ago> My point is, why "strictly forbidden to enter" if conservation areas are successful enough? Why allow humans in at all? We have plenty of room, and no need.
- jhauris 8y agoOne reason may be that for most people to care about conservation they need an opportunity to see or experience what they're conserving. It's the reason most conservation funding in the US comes from hunters.[0][1] 0: (PDF) https://www.fishwildlife.org/application/files/3615/1853/8699/The_State_Conservation_Machine-FINAL.pdf https://www.fishwildlife.org/application/files/3615/1853/869... (page 9) 1: https://www.npr.org/2018/03/20/593001800/decline-in-hunters-threatens-how-u-s-pays-for-conservation https://www.npr.org/2018/03/20/593001800/decline-in-hunters-...
- burfog 8y agoWell, the non-city people don't want endangered species. Reintroducing wolf packs has ruined elk hunting, made pets unsafe, made kids unsafe, and caused problems for livestock. Since city people tend to love wolves, it looks like we have a win-win solution here. I have a feeling though, that city people will have a change of heart upon walking into a subway restroom and suddenly facing a wolf pack.
- devoply 8y agoWe should farm and eat endangered species to save them. That's the only way of incorporating endangered species into our economic system. We can export wolf meat to the Chinese. Imagine a chain of restaurants selling endangered meat because of the ecological benefits of eating organic AAA grass-fed endangered meat and maybe it's even low in saturated fat as a bonus.
- beaconstudios 8y agothat would help to prevent the animals from going extinct but it wouldn't replace the ecological effect that the wild animals had. Having a wolf farm (to the extent you could even domesticate them) would not help with the deer population explosion from lack of wolves.
- pvaldes 8y agoLets suppose that our endangered species is a screw. Just a normal screw. The cheapest one. We could mass produce screws, coate it with gold and put them under a glass bell in our main hall. This would assure that everybody knows what kind of screws we had in the past, but they are just curious useless pieces of metal at that state. The real problem is that this screw was doing something in a bigger machine, and if we remove random pieces in a machine there is a fair possibility that the entire system will crash until we return all the pieces again in its correct place. But ecosystems aren't your common kind of machine. They are alive flexible machines and they will try to regenerate aiming for the next lower point of equilibrium available, much like a rock falling a few meters from a mountainside. Having lost a part of its "potential energy", the machine will start producing different things. Typically fewer and of lesser value, often noxious or defective products: They could start producing fireforests, dust storms and thorns por example instead water, fruit and wood. Ecosystems don't care. Even worse, at this point there aren't more slots that could fit again our screw. The machine has mutated and will spit its former spare-parts. Can't be reversed unless you burn huge lots of money and invest thousands of years on it. If you find that the new situation is bad for you (as often is), you are screwed for the rest of your life, and also your sons and grandsons.
- Dolores12 8y agoGeorge Carlin on saving the planet https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeSMPESpxdA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeSMPESpxdA
- frereubu 8y agoI agree with the part about people who worry about everything. But the bit Carlin misses is that what's troubling is the increase in the rate of extinctions[0]. Of course species go extinct on a regular basis, but when so many are going extinct in such a short space of time, it creates issues like a reduction in biodiversity, which in turn leads to a higher risk of a disease outbreak in a dominant species being catastrophic for an ecosystem. I agree with Carlin about most things, but like Bill Hick's blind spot about smoking, I think he's wrong here. [0] https://www.britannica.com/science/conservation-ecology/Calculating-background-extinction-rates#ref272668 https://www.britannica.com/science/conservation-ecology/Calc...