Endangered Species

My father was in agriculture most of his adult life, and I heard him complain about restrictions on chemicals, and not being able to expand orchards and vinyards because of the kangaroo rat and other endangered species. he just didn't get it. His whole motivation was making money for his company, not saving species from extinction. We never saw eye to eye on this, and I never understood why he valued profit over ecology
 
Omega said:
Do you also have kids write papers on how genocide and racism's OK?
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Ya' know someone made that comment too. Which brought around another conversation of how people hold different values on "human" vs "non-human" life. And that in the case of genocide it usually (not always) is stemmed by one group not valuing the other as totally human, as defined by the attacking group that is. Which brought around another discussion of how is that any different than what we do to other non-human organisms - all the way down to using antibiotics on biotic organsims. So the question became, where and why to we draw a line for some organisms and not others. Gee, I wish I would have recorded it.

Now, I should interject that this is an advanced/gifted science class, so they have been taught how to debate and argue without attacking or being offensive. It was well thought out, researched and moderated. The next day was interesting as the students were able to talk to their folks also. The emails I received were all positive.

In the end I think the students came away with a broader perspective and yet where much more environmentally conscience- which was the point. You cannot turn a blind eye to the oppositions view point or ear to their argument. A truly intelligent person can see and understand both sides.
 
sorry... I had a few typo's - it was much too early. :)

opposition's and conscious
 
Another thing...

Some people say there's no "natural balance" in nature.

Meaning, animal populations are always in a drastic, constant state of flux, with human intervention or not.

I say that's nonsense.

What do you all think?
 
Omega said:
Well, I don't know about that. It certainly teaches kids to think outside the box and debate, but at the same time it reaffirms terrible values. I mean, there's always two sides to everything, but usually one of those sides is wrong.
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And it's usually the side the other guy is on... I think I'm actually ok with extinction due to natural causes. A volcano destroys a unique biotope with it's unique life forms. Mother nature's gonna crank out some new ones. But when it comes to development and expansion. Well, people are a commodity we have too many of as it is. Personally, I'm afraid some of the adaptations nature is making to our developments could come back to bite us.
 
Malefic23 said:
And it's usually the side the other guy is on... I think I'm actually ok with extinction due to natural causes. A volcano destroys a unique biotope with it's unique life forms. Mother nature's gonna crank out some new ones. But when it comes to development and expansion. Well, people are a commodity we have too many of as it is. Personally, I'm afraid some of the adaptations nature is making to our developments could come back to bite us.
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I'm OK with them becoming extinct due to natural causes too, but on the flip-side, Mother Nature just doesn't crank them out. It takes millions of years for evolution to recoup the lost biodiversity, which isn't in our species lifetime. For humans, once biodiversity is gone, it's gone, because we're not going to be around to see it come back.
 
Omega said:
I'm OK with them becoming extinct due to natural causes too, but on the flip-side, Mother Nature just doesn't crank them out. It takes millions of years for evolution to recoup the lost biodiversity, which isn't in our species lifetime. For humans, once biodiversity is gone, it's gone, because we're not going to be around to see it come back.
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It's actually starting to look like that's not the case. I can't find the article I read this in, check discovery or scientific american, but here's the jist. New species emerge on a daily basis in areas where a niche has not been filled. I'm sure this actually takes generations of adaptation, but that adaptation is going on in every new generation of every currently existing species that's alive. So when a gap opens up, there's often something avaliable that can fill it fairly quickly. Say, within a century or so, instead of hundreds or thousands of years. The evidence suggests an explosion of diversity shortly after every major extinction in this planet's history. If the fossil record only records one percent of avaliable species, we're talking a huge number of sucessfull mutations.

The down side is, when the evironmental changes are rapid and artificial, natural life may not have anything avaliable to fill in the gaps. This is especially true of pollution and human by products like garbage and sewage. Moths adapt to airborn pollution by darkening to match ash stained bark, but trees only filter so much ash...
 
Do i think that humans are the cause of most of the worlds endangered species? no, but it's a sure handy excuse when people wanna point fingers. now, to say we arent responsible at ALL, that would be silly.

I think that unless we humans can PROVE beyond any miniscule SHADOW of a DOUBT that the danger some species are in is caused SOLELY by us and NO OTHER REASON, we need to keep our meddling hands out of it.

Fixing a problem because we are the definite cause with no other influence is one thing. but if it's happening by the hands of mother nature, then we need to let it be, because everything happens for a reason.

Sure, anyone can say that everything can be linked back to humans, but most of that comes without solid proof.
 
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