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I am probably just a horrible person, but I just don’t care about the extinction of such specific species. Often a member of one species is practically impossi

• brundolf 5y ago
  What's important is biodiversity. Diverse biological life is more resilient, and it takes a really long time in human years for that diversity to come about in the first place. So if we're destroying it faster than it develops naturally, ecosystem health as a whole declines. I think that's a valid point though about "how often does this naturally happen?" Surely a certain amount of extinction is natural, and we have little frame of reference for what the magnitude of that is (at least we as laypeople; maybe even scientists, I don't know)
• burnished 5y ago
  These living creatures can't be brought back. Do you have the wisdom to tell which creatures are pillars of their biome? Further, do you alarm when the match is lit and the flame is spreading or do you wait until your home is already aflame? I don't think you are a bad person. I suspect you and I grew up in a time where species dieing out is the norm as opposed to the exception, so it simply doesn't stick out for you. Its just how the world works to you. But it is recent, and I'd argue we're making a poor trade as a species, trading bio-diversity for.. frequently, strip malls or strip mining.
  • exporectomy 5y ago
    They're mostly on islands so it's very unlikely they matter at all outside of their island. If Hawaii had never been discovered, we wouldn't have to worry about losing them. I live in a country filled with endangered "native" species but after I grew up, I learned that many of them are basically the same as common species in nearby countries, so similar that even the experts keep disagreeing on whether they're the same species or not. If their numbers are already extremely low for a long time and everything else is doing fine, it's unlikely they're "pillars of their biome".
    • burnished 5y ago
      Do you believe that the process will slow? You seem to think that losing a couple species is fine. Have you thought about where this leads to, unchecked? Like, you don't lose 'crows, fucking all of them' except by losing a subspecie at a time.
      • exporectomy 5y ago
        I think it's already slowed. We've stopped completely disregarding conservation and now it's a factor in any major works project that might disrupt the environment.
• gotostatement 5y ago
  > made the world better (in someone’s point of view) for Homo sapiens The capitalist ideological trick is: "are you happy houses were built? Do you enjoy the convenience of modern living? Then don't get mad at us for the tradeoff." Don't forget that there have always been better ways to accomplish these goals - more equitable, safer for the environment - but they were not done because they did not achieve maximum profit for the individual who, through various historical factors not related to their merit or wisdom, could control the capital necessary for the project.
• throwaway09223 5y ago
  Yes, I agree. Counting species is a terrible metric. We discover something like 15,000 new species every year. We really have no idea how many species are vanishing each year, because we're only examining a tiny percentage. Another way to frame this is to ask: How many new species are created each year? Well, we don't really know-- but we do know that a new species can form in just two generations [1]. There may be thousands of species being created and destroyed every year for all we know. Not a useful metric. A more useful metric is how common a species was before extinction. Using an example from the article, the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker was very common before its extinction. Native Americans used its skulls as decoration and currency. Its eradication is a pretty big deal - BUT - I see some other HN comments lamenting how much things have changed "in my lifetime" and I think people may be unaware that these extinctions basically occurred approximately 200 years ago. There have not been sizable populations of this species for a very long time [2]. Again, the presentation of data and metrics appears to be painting a misleading picture. [1] https://www.princeton.edu/news/2017/11/27/study-darwins-finches-reveals-new-species-can-develop-little-two-generations https://www.princeton.edu/news/2017/11/27/study-darwins-finc... [2] https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Ivory-billed_Woodpecker/overview https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Ivory-billed_Woodpecker/...
• ogaitnas 5y ago
  This is the type of proud indifference that is going to lead us down the path of no return in no time. The world is not made better by shrinking biodiversity especially in the long term. But screw posterity right? I hope you don't have kids.
  • ApolloFortyNine 5y ago
    Personal attacks do not belong on hacker news.
    • ogaitnas 5y ago
      How is what I said a personal attack? I sincerely hope that someone with such little regard for the environment and therefore the future of this planet isn't someone who is willingly bringing more humans to it. That isn't a personal attack but rather my personal belief on the matter.
      • exporectomy 5y ago
        That's called bigotry. And yes, it was a personal attack.
    • fleddr 5y ago
      How absolutely pathetic is it that the above 3 comments, all showing care and empathy for non-human life, are massively downvoted? The state of this community.
      • exporectomy 5y ago
        Conservation absolutely is nothing to do with care and empathy for non-human life. The proof is that one of the main tools of conservationists is mechanical and chemical killing machines to help them kill and even exterminate all the non-human life that they deem unworthy. Please don't confuse caring about life with caring about the environment. The two feelings are in direct conflict.
      • 5y ago
• kevmo 5y ago
  It is true that some sub-species are always going extinct. That said, we're in the middle of a man-made mass extinction event. Scientists and systems thinkers have been warning about ecological collapse, particularly in the oceans. I recommend you start caring.
• anonAndOn 5y ago
  Those narrowly defined species might be the only thing keeping other species alive either directly (eg, pollinators) or indirectly (eg, biome creators). When individual species disappear, we often lose much more as collateral damage.
  • exporectomy 5y ago
    This seems to the basic understanding most people have. At school, they teach you about food webs and how breaking one link can ruin everything. That's an enticing idea but is it really true? I'm sure there have been some known cases or it wouldn't be in the text books, but is it common enough to get worried about every obscure species?
    • ogaitnas 5y ago
      Planting seeds of doubt about established science are we? I thought HN was pro-science and environment??
      • exporectomy 5y ago
        Big difference between science and popular emotion-fueled mischaracterizations of science.
    • anonAndOn 5y ago
      How about vanilla going extinct in the wild? Any real vanilla you have ever had was likely hand pollinated (and probably not from Mexico) because the bee that pollinates the vanilla orchid is thought to be extinct and the orchid that depended on it is now on its way out.[0] [0]https://phys.org/news/2013-12-professor-vanilla.html https://phys.org/news/2013-12-professor-vanilla.html
• cmpb 5y ago
  >we Homo sapiens outcompeted them and made the world better (in someone’s point of view) for Homo sapiens I think what's coming into focus for a lot of people nowadays (i.e. the last 50ish years w.r.t eco conservation) is the idea that we are actually making the world worse (for humans) - that actually making the world better for ourselves necessarily includes limiting or reversing our out-competition of other life. While it may not be noticeable to humans that a single species has been driven out (even just out of a region and not necessarily to full extinction) over the course of 10 or 50 or 500 years due to human activity, that does still represent a change to the established biodiversity, which (many people believe) is likely to be net-negative for humans. Reasons for these beliefs likely vary according to people's experience and interaction with the physical world. Personally, I find great joy experiencing wildness and nature, and I worry that my daughter will not have that. Others might be concerned that the loss of species incurs the loss of some aspects of nature from which we might be able to learn - that there was an opportunity to better ourselves that is now gone forever.
• asdff 5y ago
  In this case its a good proxy for understanding what's going on with ecosystems in response to change. Caring about crows as a whole will probably mask the point. You might see that this year there are 1% less crows in an area and think all is well, maybe that's within your measurement error. If you noticed however that all crows are doing fine, but efitz’ southeastern marble crested crow numbers have declined significantly, then you have some evidence here. Maybe you look at the particular ecological niches that efitz’ southeastern marble crested crow occupies, whatever they might be, and see that there is something bad affecting that particular niche that you would have not had enough statistical power to see if you considered all the crows in one big bag.
• wittycardio 5y ago
  Yup you said it best, you are indeed horrible
  • exporectomy 5y ago
    No. You've been indoctrinated to believe that environmentalism is like a religion so that you're a bad person for being an infidel and must not question the flimsy claims that the authorities make.
    • ogaitnas 5y ago
      So much bigotry and ad hominem in this comment yet you have the gall to accuse me of the same. Environmentalism is nothing like religion - it's science based on empirical evidence and not on blind faith. I struggle to see what is so flimsy about the findings of this article.
      • exporectomy 5y ago
        No, science doesn't show us that efitz is a horrible person.
    • wittycardio 5y ago
      Yes I've been indoctrinated into the horrible belief that the lives of other living things on this earth matter.
      • exporectomy 5y ago
        The horrible part is not the believing, but the condemning of non-believers.
        • wittycardio 5y ago
          Yes non believers who believe that no life matters but their own. Very important to let them continue to destroy the world
• fleddr 5y ago
  You're indeed a horrible person, but at least an honest one. Seeing planetary scale habitat destruction and the wiping out of the complex web of life that took hundreds of millions of years to evolve, all in a single century, really is quite a win indeed. Besides individual extinctions, most of the 2 millions or so other species are in deep decline. The IUCN's most positive status for a species is "least concern", really quite telling. You'd have somewhat of point if a reasonable quality of life would only be possible at the direct expense of other species and habitats, which is not the case. We sacrifice the world's jungles and its massively complex and old wildlife systems for palm oil. Which is absolutely not an essential requirement for human life at all. Most other forests are sacrificed to plant crops. Not for us, to feed cattle. So that we can eat beef, the least efficient food. There are alternative meats, less eating of meat, or none at all. We scrape the ocean floors, use electricity or even dynamite to fish in such a way that collateral damage is off the charts. We spread our filth (plastics) across the world, it's now found at the poles and even at the bottom of the deepest oceans. We do trophy hunting on already rare animals for superstition or a quick profit. None of the above things are required for us to have a reasonable or good quality of life. They are short-sighted, careless and aggressive profit optimizations with disastrous and irreversible consequences. And even if you still don't care, those profits won't end up in the workers pocket or in yours. No, wildlife habitats do not have to be stripped bare or otherwise we'd go hungry. It's bullshit.
• bliteben 5y ago
  Splitting is a known tool of conservationists, would you agree that all the prairie chickens that live in Texas aren't important because we have them in other states? The lesser prairie chicken is probably the best example I can think of to what you're arguing, but honestly the splitters while maybe somewhat dishonest seem to have good intentions. Another example might be the Gunnison Sage grouse, both of these are kind of the case of us as a culture not valuing desert landscapes. I really can't think of a case like you are mentioning where its just egregious splitting that serves no purpose, most of the time its to make a case to preserve the habitat of a bird in a specific place. You do seem like you might be on the side against the spotted owl since the barred owl is just a better adapted equivalent that due to changing fauna of the great plains was able to migrate west and displace the native spotted owl. I do agree with one part that you seem to be harping on that sometimes species are sometimes split for seemingly inane purposes, often probably to promote someone's career, but I don't think that is really the case when it comes to conservation, often these are last ditch efforts for landscapes that nobody is paying attention to or caring about since they aren't charismatic. Notice nobody has to split up the resident orcas to get support for them.