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Appropriately, Lipotes Means Left Behind
The Chinese yellow river dolphin is now extinct, leaving only four freshwater dolphin species in the world. All of them are critically endangered.
I am not normally a politically active or environmentally concerned person; the extent of my contributions include switching to vegetarianism and donating $10 when I can afford it to the WWF (World Wildlife Fund), but this upsets me. My brother once asked what would happen if a species disappeared. He used the giant panda as an example, seeing as how it's one of the most visible of the endangered animals.
Truthfully, I was unable to give him a reason why it should bother me so much. If you think about it logically, it probably wouldn't make a difference. There'd be more plants, less oxygen being taken up, and unless it's a keystone species--which very few large animal species are--then the rest of the environment would not suffer. Moreso, one could point out that it is simply a matter of natural selection. The panda, relying on one major food source, and requiring large amounts of that food, would naturally die out faster than others who can easily adapt.
So why does it bother us? Pushing aside the alarmist nature of most environmentalists, what is there that we should worry about? Sure, future generations should be able to enjoy animals as we do, but have you, personally, suffered from the lack of the dodo? Have you felt a pang of remorse at not having ever seen a wooly mammoth?
The answer is that there really is no rational reason why endangered animals should be so important to us; why the preservation of seemingly inconsequential species should rile us. The final answer to the question of is there any lasting consequences to the loss of most endangered species is simply no.
When people ask me what good the liberal arts are, I have to explain that though they may seem inconsequential, the liberal arts are the key to civilization. Science would never advance if there existed no means of recording results and applying them to future situations. Taken on an individual basis, survival itself is dependent upon the written word. Observations are made about smallpox; tests are made, results recorded; a cure is made. A person who at some point might have died from smallpox is cured. Without the ability to write, that person would have died.
In the same way, the seemingly inconsequential loss of a species is monumentally important to the human race. If not for anything else, the loss of a species shows our own inability to maintain the survival of a thing we deem important. The baiji died because of pollution, overfishing, and boating that interfered with the almost totally blind dolphin's ability to hunt.
So why does this matter? Why do we care, when rationally, we shouldn't?
I don't have an answer. I can't figure out logically any serious social or economic ramifications--besides the potential loss of any number of medicines and scientific advances--of losing a species.
But it still makes me overwhelmingly sad to think that there is one less species on Earth that I am going to study when I perform my graduate research, one less dolphin species swimming and hunting in a river.
I am not normally a politically active or environmentally concerned person; the extent of my contributions include switching to vegetarianism and donating $10 when I can afford it to the WWF (World Wildlife Fund), but this upsets me. My brother once asked what would happen if a species disappeared. He used the giant panda as an example, seeing as how it's one of the most visible of the endangered animals.
Truthfully, I was unable to give him a reason why it should bother me so much. If you think about it logically, it probably wouldn't make a difference. There'd be more plants, less oxygen being taken up, and unless it's a keystone species--which very few large animal species are--then the rest of the environment would not suffer. Moreso, one could point out that it is simply a matter of natural selection. The panda, relying on one major food source, and requiring large amounts of that food, would naturally die out faster than others who can easily adapt.
So why does it bother us? Pushing aside the alarmist nature of most environmentalists, what is there that we should worry about? Sure, future generations should be able to enjoy animals as we do, but have you, personally, suffered from the lack of the dodo? Have you felt a pang of remorse at not having ever seen a wooly mammoth?
The answer is that there really is no rational reason why endangered animals should be so important to us; why the preservation of seemingly inconsequential species should rile us. The final answer to the question of is there any lasting consequences to the loss of most endangered species is simply no.
When people ask me what good the liberal arts are, I have to explain that though they may seem inconsequential, the liberal arts are the key to civilization. Science would never advance if there existed no means of recording results and applying them to future situations. Taken on an individual basis, survival itself is dependent upon the written word. Observations are made about smallpox; tests are made, results recorded; a cure is made. A person who at some point might have died from smallpox is cured. Without the ability to write, that person would have died.
In the same way, the seemingly inconsequential loss of a species is monumentally important to the human race. If not for anything else, the loss of a species shows our own inability to maintain the survival of a thing we deem important. The baiji died because of pollution, overfishing, and boating that interfered with the almost totally blind dolphin's ability to hunt.
So why does this matter? Why do we care, when rationally, we shouldn't?
I don't have an answer. I can't figure out logically any serious social or economic ramifications--besides the potential loss of any number of medicines and scientific advances--of losing a species.
But it still makes me overwhelmingly sad to think that there is one less species on Earth that I am going to study when I perform my graduate research, one less dolphin species swimming and hunting in a river.
no subject
You may get the impression from the media that science knows a whole lot more about ecology, or the interaction of all these species, than it does.
Without going into the political ramifications of why this soothing lie happens, this is simply not true.
The dolphins may have been rare, but they were a very large predator at the top of their food chain. We know what's happened when we lost wolves in the continental US--for one thing, the coyotes got bigger as they filled up that niche, and the deer have been overgrazing.
The San Diego zoo has a couple of specimens of a large rattler-size venomous snake from the Ming Mountain in China which they are frantically studying because it was only described scientifically in 1990. Nobody from outside the area had any idea it was there.
The good news is that many of these systems can recover surprisingly well if they aren't pushed too far, and if they're protected from further disturbance for long enough.
Folks who are far from alarmist estimate huge numbers of undescribed insects and fungi and minor plants live in areas like Indonesia that are losing all their timber. I see this in in documents such as aquarium magazines discussing damage in areas where fish and plant species were originally collected to be described.
In far too many cases we have *no* idea what impact the loss might have. We haven't studied the ecosystem they come from, we have no idea what happens to the microorganisms that have lost a home when that species dies, we have no idea what pests it was suppressing with its natural predation or that of its associated species.
no subject
Plant growth actually means that we would have more oxygen, and plants are generally fairly easy to get rid of (as seen by the destruction of entire rainforests).
There would be some major ecosystem balancing to be done, no doubt. The same river the Chinese river dolphin used to live has lost 1/10 of its fish population thanks to pollution, which is what killed the dolphin. Take out a large predator, you have a growth of prey, but even that would eventually balance out as the food source for it left.
It would, eventually, balance out. That's why when we lose a large species like the wooly mammoth or several species of tigers, we don't really notice an impact.
I think that, on a whole, animal species are much less important than we seem.
BUT.
I want them around. If not for the fact that we could learn so much from studying animals, to the very simple pleasure of watching them. There's no way that I would even want to live on a planet without animals.
I love forests, I love animals, I love walking outside and breathing without ruining my lungs with pollutants. I believe in public transportation, turning out the lights, conserving energy and planting trees. My future house is going to be covered with plants and I hope to make it a haven for any number of birds and deer and what have you.
And as a biologist, I really can't express how sad it makes me feel to know that we're so self-centered, we can't cut back production and pollution to save an entire species. In a weird way, that's why I'm so against the Kyoto Protocol.
I think that environmentalists are pushing in the wrong direction. We should be pushing forward, not stopping altogether. If you stop altogether, as the Kyoto Protocol would pretty much guarantee, you not only bring the economy (and scientific advancement) to a crashing halt, but you let developing countries like China and India pollute more than developed countries.
I mean, if you think about it, we're actually moving in the right direction. I just watched a show about a building in Manhattan that actually cleans air and releases it back into the atmosphere, collects rainwater, and uses a natural cooling system.
And if we push forward, maybe we can use hydrogen and biofuel in a way that's better than gasoline.
I know a lot of people misunderstand what I'm saying, or misinterpret my intentions, but I'm just as environmentally conscious, perhaps more so, than most people. I just have a different opinion on how to get there: and I think that by looking at things plainly, we'll be more affected.
If people are saying "This will happen", and then it doesn't, you tend to mistrust them. If you say, "This is the worst case scenario", such as there being no animals, people might step back and think, "I don't want that." It's not dire to our survival, but it's a luxury. And if the civilized world knows anything about anything, it's luxury.
afkslafj. My, but I did ramble on. I'm sorry.
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.... But wouldn't that suck, if we were left with only bugs?