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| quote: | Originally posted by DigiNut
Other species protecting "endangered" The simple fact is that we know nothing about why species go extinct, and we know nothing about the real consequences of a species going extinct. Politicians with hard-ons for land-use control insist that it's because we're destroying their habitats and it will lead to a "biodiversity crisis", but documented cases of this are few and far between and there are millions of species that have already gone extinct (many before we ever inhabited this planet or started developing the land).
There have been something like 2000 species listed under the ESA (most being insects, of course, would really hate to lose those) and less than 50 have been de-listed. That's not a good sign that our efforts to "protect" them are meeting with any real success. But even better, of those 50, only about 15 of them were actually considered recovered; the others were taken off either because they went extinct (blue pike, dusky seaside sparrow, Tecopa pupfish - whoops) or because they should never have been listed in the first place (Tunamoc globeberry, Indian flap-shelled turtle, spineless hedgehog cactus - double whoops).
Of the ones considered "recovered", there are 3 types of kangaroo (which aren't even native to the region), the Alligator (was never really under much threat), a goose which was saved by hunting restrictions (not land use restrictions), a couple of birds which were supposedly saved by the DDT ban (a widely disputed conclusion, but either way you can't credit the ESA), the gray whale (which has been naturally recovering since they stopped whaling in the 1950s), and some birds in Palau that turned out to be under-counted.
Oh, and then there was the Spotted Owl, the most colossal of all fuck-ups, which turned out to be both under-counted and capable of surviving in 2nd- and 3rd-growth forests, but instead of delisting it and hanging their heads in shame, the ESA bureaucrats decided to keep it on the list and ban logging in those forests too.
Several of the other species that were de-listed, downlisted, or intended to be one or the other, like the gray wolf, the environmentalists kicked and screamed and wrote threatening letters about for weeks. The only reason for putting the polar bear ON the list was not because the bear is in any real danger, but due to a tacit acceptance of global warming effects in the region that have never been conclusively proven. In other words, what we want to do there might be bad for the environment and therefore might be bad for some of the animals there, so let's just throw them on the Endangered Species list to force them not to do anything. Even though they're not actually presently in any danger.
"Endangered" species are a load of shit. The track record with them is almost as bad as the War On Drugs. Not only do we not have a "responsibility" to "protect" species which are "threatened" (determined by a completely subjective analysis), but so in the 30+ years of practice, there's scant evidence to suggest that we're even capable of doing so.
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We all know that species naturally can go extinct, BUT other species can also evolve and take their place and new species can emerge, too - thats a no-brainer. BUT, however, with humans around, there's no room for more species, only extinction. Its getting really hard to provide enough room for leisurely living and good times for the growing human population. Right now species are becoming extinct at a rate unprecedented since the time when dinosaurs were becoming extinct!
Rainforests alone are home to over a quarter of ALL life on Earth, provide half of our fresh oxygen, yet every minute 10 football fields of the world's rainforests get cut down. And there's the reason for high CO2 emissions ... given that, its really hard to nature to "adapt" and "evolve" when we destroy the habitat. You drive fish out of the water and it will die too. Overfishing is another concern, too. Just finished reading "The Empty Ocean" book, very striking.
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