“Conservationists argue that humans need to save species in order to save ourselves. The truth is we could survive without wild species — but they canʼt survive without us, and the moral argument for protecting them and the beauty they bring to the world is overwhelming.”
Carl Safina — naturalist, ecologist and author of books about humankind’s relationship with the natural world — set the cat among the pigeons, proverbially speaking, in an essay last week for Yale Environment 360 magazine, aka Yale E360, in which he argued that we can survive without endangered species, but they can’t survive without us.
The case for saving tigers, elephants and blue whales matters, not because we can’t survive without them as many conservationists insist, but because it’s our moral, social and ethical duty to keep them around. The Kirtland’s warbler, named after Ohio doctor and amateur naturalist Jared P. Kirtland in 1851, was down to just 200 pairs when the Endangered Species Act took effect in 2008. The songbird’s population has since grown more than tenfold, “not because we needed Kirtland’s warbler, but because we understood Kirtland’s warbler needed us,” Safina wrote in E360. “We understood our moral responsibility and commitment to keep a tiny bird in the world with us.”
The world — “us” “we” — has done fine without the dodo, last seen in 1681, give or take a decade; the passenger pigeon, last seen in September, 1914; and the Tasmanian tiger, officially declared extinct on Sept. 7, 1936.
The world hasn’t lost a step since — or so goes the argument.
I would argue that there is one species that humankind can most assuredly not do without, and that’s just off the top of my head. I’ll save that one for the end.
First, though, back to Kirtland’s warbler. In just the past fortnight, the Kirtland’s warbler, also known as the jack pine warbler, has come off the endangered species list — in part, Safina argues, because the Endangered Species Act decides that when species need us, we go to their aid, not the other way round.
The argument over whether the Endangered Species Act is itself endangered, with the present US administration in power, is a debate for another day.
Safina argues instead that we live in a sacred miracle, and for that reason alone we should act accordingly. It’s not about practicality. It’s about morality.
“For decades, some conservationists have been trying to sell a clumsy, fumbling appeal to self-interest: the idea that human beings need wild nature, need wild animals, need the species (that appear) on endangered lists. ‘If they go extinct, we’ll go extinct,’ is a common refrain. The only problem: It’s false.
“We have endangered species not because what is bad for them is bad for us, but because the opposite is true: What is bad for them has fuelled the explosive growth and maintenance of human population and technology.”
Put in simpler terms, there are too many of us, and we leave too heavy a footprint. Bigger, faster, more. The world is running out of space to sustain it all, and natural species — the most vulnerable first, the others later — can’t cope. Human beings have thrived by destroying nature. “Annihilation comes easy to Homo sapiens,” Safina wrote. “What’s of little interest for us is coexistence.”
The Endangered Species Act, when it’s applied in good faith — the key phrase — works. “It works because of something many environmentalists have forgotten, most average people never think about, and most politicians are incapable of learning: It works because it doesnʼt ask a species to prove its usefulness, what theyʼre good for, or how much money theyʼre worth.”
Which is all true.
“There is no species whose disappearance has posed much of an inconvenience for civilization, not a single wild species that people couldnʼt do without, fewer whose erasure would be noticed by any but a handful of die-hard conservationists or scientists,” Safina continued.
Well, I can think of one.
Everything is connected. The things that are bad for land, water and air eventually are bad for people, too. A breakdown of the world’s living systems will eventually led to a breakdown of the human economy and, ultimately, society itself.
“Claiming that people depend on wild nature is nice,” Safina noted, “but dependence on wild nature ended generations ago. What keeps most people going is farming, felling, pumping, and mining.”
Which is true, to a point. For most people.
What keeps all people going, though, is having enough to eat. And more and more, we’re learning that what we eat depends on pollination. And pollination depends on — bees.
If bees should go extinct, and the population has crashed of late, the whole “We don’t need them” argument will be put sorely to the test.
©David Mark-Pixabay