Why should humans take responsibility for endangered animals?

[heartless]

It may be a stupid question, but it's real, and I can't come up with any good reasons to why should we save endangered animals. Any ideas?

F.ex, Would anything important happen if there were no grizzly bears?

 

[Hootenanny]

It may be a stupid question, but it's real, and I can't come up with any good reasons to why should we save endangered animals. Any ideas?

We should save all the species that we, as humans, have made endangered either directly (hunting / detroying habitat) or indirectly(upsetting ecosystem). All others (very small number) we should allow nature to take its course.

 

[Pengwuino]

How do we know nature is only accounting for a small number? What are the percentages?

 

[Hootenanny]

How do we know nature is only accounting for a small number? What are the percentages?

Sorry, I would imagine it to be a very small number. I think penguins are one of the only species we have not had an effect on ; although there is still time...

 

[heartless]

Yes, but seriously, Hootenanny, do you have a good reason to why save?
And wait, let me ask you another silly question? What's the importance of animals in our environment?

 

[Hootenanny]

Yes, but seriously, Hootenanny, do you have a good reason to why save?
And wait, let me ask you another silly question? What's the importance of animals in our environment?

Well for one, if we have endagered their species, surely it is upto as a humans to do whatever we can to sustain their species? And for two all animals (except insects and arachnids) are beautiful and magestic. I for one would be sad to see them go. Do you have a good reason for not saving these species?

 

[Bladibla]

Well for one, if we have endagered their species, surely it is upto as a humans to do whatever we can to sustain their species? And for two all animals (except insects and arachnids) are beautiful and magestic. I for one would be sad to see them go. Do you have a good reason for not saving these species?

Well, some beautiful ones tend to be quite killy as well, large cats, etc.

 

[Hootenanny]

And wait, let me ask you another silly question? What's the importance of animals in our environment?

All lifeforms are integral to our environment as a whole. You remove / add one species and that could unbalance an entire ecosystem. The point was emphisied when rabbits were introduced into austrailia.

 

[Hootenanny]

Well, some beautiful ones tend to be quite killy as well, large cats, etc.

I still would rather save them than see them disappear from the face of the earth.

 

[heartless]

Well for one, if we have endagered their species, surely it is upto as a humans to do whatever we can to sustain their species? And for two all animals (except insects and arachnids) are beautiful and magestic. I for one would be sad to see them go. Do you have a good reason for not saving these species?

I'll see whether I have good reasons for why not to save them if I get the good reason for saving them because as of now, my knowledge of environmental science isn't too high, and the reason I'm thinking about may be just empty piece of words without truth in itself.
OK, so your reason is beauty and their unique existence?

 

[Hootenanny]

I'll see whether I have good reasons for why not to save them if I get the good reason for saving them because as of now, my knowledge of environmental science isn't too high, and the reason I'm thinking about may be just empty piece of words without truth in itself.
OK, so your reason is beauty and their unique existence?

And RE post number 8, every lifeform is integral to an ecosystem. But surely beauty alone is a sufficent reason as any.

 

[heartless]

Ok, let me ask another question, which animals do you think are not beautiful?

 

[Astronuc]

. . . why should we save endangered animals.

Because it's the right thing to do! That's good enough for me.

 

[Hootenanny]

Ok, let me ask another question, which animals do you think are not beautiful?

As a said before, arachnids, as I have arachnidphobia and certain insects.

 

[heartless]

Because it's the right thing to do! That's good enough for me.

and how do you know saving them is a right thing to do?

 

[Omega_6]

and how do you know saving them is a right thing to do?

Because many ecosystems will break down if certain animals become extinct...isn't that enough?

...and the golden rule #2 of course: Treat animals as you would want to be treated. ;)

 

[samh]

Animals such as tigers and owls are intelligent, living things like you and I and thus some would argue that to kill them unnecessarily is evil. It would follow that if your people had a part in almost annihilating that animal's entire species then it would only be right to at least make an attempt to reverse the damages you've caused. If a species is naturally dying out (i.e. without human intervention) then I suppose the only reason someone would want to save them would be just for the sake of having them around. There may also be repercussions having to do with the food chain etc. but you'd have to ask a biologist about that since I'm not very familiar with the subject.

 

[Astronuc]

and how do you know saving them is a right thing to do?

Because I am part of the interdependent web of all existence. It is a matter of stewardship.

 

[heartless]

As a said before, arachnids, as I have arachnidphobia and certain insects.

OK, but don't you think that once 90% (more or less) of girls become really beautiful, all of them somehow lose their beauty on its own and become ordinary girls, and their look starts too be judged not after beauty anymore but after ugliness? I think similar is with animals, when most of them are beautiful, they aren't somehow special, and rather the importance to the environment should be the criteria and not the beauty. Because how would it change the environment if every arachnid were substituted with a lion?

Because many ecosystems will break down if certain animals become extinct...isn't that enough?

Yes, but if the species are already endangered, and the environment still exists, then total extinction of a species, wouldn't further break the environment (only I think). And again as above, how would the environment break down, if there were no grizzly bears or sea cows?

 

[JasonRox]

How boring would this planet be with just humans!?

That's good enough for me.

Your question is similar to asking why stop if a pedestrian starts to walk across the road? It won't affect us if that person dies. Might as well not stop and just hit the person.

 

[Moonbear]

Because many ecosystems will break down if certain animals become extinct...isn't that enough?

There are a lot of emotional reasons, but this is the primary one. Particularly when a species is endangered because of our reckless killing of it, it has a trickle-down effect on entire ecosystems...their predators also die off, their prey have a population explosion, that impacts the vegetation (even crops), all the way down to insects and disease.

Take for example farmers killing off snakes because they don't like them or are worried for their livestock. The natural prey of the snakes, small rodents, have a population explosion, and not only do they feast on the crops, but also carry diseases back to the humans...rabies, Lyme disease, etc. If those snakes become endangered, helping them recover is the only way to restore balance to the ecosystem. It would be different if we were relying on them to survive ourselves, because there would be a natural check to our own population if we depleted too many of an animal we needed to survive, but since we don't need them to survive and just kill them indiscriminately, we break the loop that keeps everything balanced.

 

[heartless]

Wow, I've just became enlightnened. What a nice feeling when it happens.
Thanks JasonRox.
The only necessary reason for saving the endangered animals, is simply to let and help them live.

Thank you all.

 

[Omega_6]

Wow, I've just became enlightnened. What a nice feeling when it happens.
Thanks JasonRox.
The only necessary reason for saving the endangered animals, is simply to let and help them live.

Thank you all.

Did you not read moonbear's post? Even endangered species have an effect on the ecosystem...so they must be protected to preserve the ecosystem as well. While the effects of them being endangered is already being felt, the effects will increase if they do become extinct. As humans, it is necessary to try and let things happen as naturally as possible (as in, the rise and fall of different species), some things we won't be able to fix.

 

[heartless]

Actually, I've noticed it just now. It appeared when I was writing my last reply. Ok, now I know all I wanted to know. Previously I thought that endangered species don't have any effect on the already existing environment, well, they do have an effect, that's also a very important reason - to preserve the existing environment, keep it stable, and don't let it be overloaded with exploding amounts of preyed population.
Thanks Moonbear

 

[Mk]

I once posted this question. The same viewpoints have been presented again here, and with one of my posts I repost, all the answers inlie. Tell me what you think.

I'll get nailed to a cupboard for saying this but, my question is "why not?"

Frankly I don't care about that monstrosity that rolls in mud and eats grass all day that much, and if an enormous population of people like doing something that's not hurting other people, I'd love to have them do that.

https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=83564&highlight=animals

As I later posted:

All life is precious and deserves to play it's part in nature.

What about the protozoan Malaria parasite, Plasmodium? Or polio, smallpox, influenza? I think the world did just fine without polio and smallpox.

On the scientific side:
All species of flora and fauna are interconnected in some way. Whether it be fertilisation, food or a myriad of other possibilities. Species are going extinct as we speak: "Levin's column noted that on average, a distinct species of plant or animal becomes extinct every 20 minutes."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0109074801.htm

Extinction is a natural phenomenon; it is estimated that 99.9% of all species that have ever lived are now extinct. Through the laws of evolution, new species are created by speciation — where new organisms arise and thrive when they are able to find and exploit an ecological niche. Species become extinct when are no longer able to survive in changing conditions or against superior competition. Conditions on the Earth are always changing, and dramatically is not rare. It is not something new, caused by humans. Termite mounds, beaver dams, and coral reefs all change their environment dramatically, affecting many other creatures. Are they interferring with nature?

the possibility of a catastrophic breakdown in the global food chain resulting in a LOT of bad things happening.

We may not care much about what we do to this planet but it's our future generations that will curse us for our short-sightedness.

Yellowstone Park, the first wilderness to be set aside as a natural preserve anywhere in the world, was called a National Park in 1872, by Ulysses Grant. No one had ever tried to preserve wilderness before, they assumed it would be much easier than it proved to be.

When Theodore Roosevelt visited the park in 1903, he saw a landscape teeming with game. There were thousands of elk, buffalo, black bear, deer, mountain lions, grizzlies, coyotes, wolves, and bighorn sheep. By that time there were rules in place to keep things the way they were. The Park Service was formed, a new bureaucracy whose sole purpose was the maintain the park in its original condition.

Within 10 years, the teeming landscape that Roosevelt saw was gone forever. The reason for this was because of the Park rangers, they were supposed to be keeping the park in pristine condition, and had taken a series of steps that they thought were in the best interest of preserving the park.

The Park Service mistankenly believed that elk were becoming extinct, they tried to increase the elk herds within the park by eliminating predators. To that end, they shot and poisoned all the wolves in the park, of course not intending to kill all of them. They also prohibited local Native Americans from hunting there, even though Yellowstone was a traditional hunting ground.

Totally protected now, the elk herd population exploded and they ate so much of certain trees and grasses, that the ecology of the park began to change. The elk ate defoliated trees that the beavers used to make dams, so the beavers vanished. That was when manages found out that beavers were vital to the overall management of the region. When the beavers vanished, meadows dried up, trout and otter populations receded, soil erosion increased, park ecology changed even further.

By the 1920s, it was clear there were way too many elk, os the rangers shot them by the thousands. The change in plant ecology seemed permanent; the old mix of trees and grasses did not return.

It also became clear that Native American hunters had exerted a valueable ecological influence on the park lands by keeping down the numbers of elk, moose, and bison. This recognition came as a part of a general understanding that the Native Americans strongly shaped the untouched wilderness white men thought they saw.

North American humans had exerted a huge influencee on the environment for thousands of years, by burning palins grasses, modifying forests, thinning out specific animal populations, and hunting others to extinction - capitulation to a superior species.

The rule forbidding Native Americans from hunting was seen as a mistake, but it was just one of many that continued to be made by the Park Service. Grizzlies were protected, then killed off, Wolves were killed off, then brought back. Radio collars research was halted, then resumed. Fire prevention policies were instituted, with no understanding of the regenerative effects of fire. When the policy was reversed, thousands of acres were burned so hotly to the ground that it was sterilized, and forests did not grow back without reseeding. Rainbow trout were introduced in the 70s, that species killed off the native cutthroat species. And on and on and on and on.

It is a history of ignorant, incompetent, intrusive interveintion, followed by disastrous attempts to repair, followed by attempts to repair damage caused by repairs. Just as dramatic as any oil spill or toxic waste dump, but in these ones there are no evil awful big corporations, or fossil fuel economy to blame. These are disasters caused by environmentalists, the very people who wanted to protect the environement, who made one mistake after another.

Passive protection, leaving things alone, doesn't preserve the status quo within a wilderness any more than it does in your backyard. The world is alive, things are constantly in flux. Species are winning, losing, rising, falling, exploding, bottlenecking, taking over, being pushed back. Merely leaving it alone doesn't put it in a state of supsended animation. Its like locking your son or daughter in their bedroom and expecting them not to grow up.

Humans do care what happens to the environment in the future, and try hard. Humans just don't know what they are doing, period. We haven't made an action that only had postive consequences yet - banning DDT, Solar panels, Water recycling systems for homes, abolishing CFCs.

Why are we interferring with the course of nature? Why do some try to keep it the way it is? Why do some blame humans for changing it? It will change for better or for worse, if we are here are not here. If humans were in this state of development before the last ice age, we would blame each other for causing it.

 

[Bystander]

Because I am part of the interdependent web of all existence.

... the only way to restore balance to the ecosystem.

... we break the loop that keeps everything balanced.

Let's not give the ID crowd ammunition.

The Earth's ecology is a dynamic system: species emerge: species disappear; niches appear; niches disappear; existing species compete for existing niches; species displaced from vanished niches displace other species or disappear. There ain't no balance. There ain't no interdependent web of life. Life is opportunistic. Populations boom. Populations crash. Ranges expand and contract.

Why save the grizzlies? Because you will miss them when they're gone. Why save the cane toad? Got me. Mosquitoes, ticks, lice, bindweed? Got me again.

Why not prune the ecology down to people, grass, and cows? BSE, and who knows how many other headaches arising from a too limited set of metabolisms, and the metabolic enzymes breaking down proteins to be recycled. The "closed cave" ecology the Israelis(?) found? Half dozen new species --- going to be a hundred or more before they've catalogued it completely. Truly closed? Gonna have to wait on that --- dollars to doughnuts, they're going to find an energy source percolating in with the groundwater.

 

[Schrodinger's Dog]

Because many ecosystems will break down if certain animals become extinct...isn't that enough?

...and the golden rule #2 of course: Treat animals as you would want to be treated. ;)

The golden rule does not apply to animals unless your a vegan because I certainly don't want to be eaten in a red wine sauce with pomme frites. Nor do I want to be kept in an almost permanent state of preagnancy so that I always produce milk, or have Peter Davidson with a glove go poking around in my nether region for signs of some gastric complaint while a semi literate farmer straight from farmers cliche weekly says things like 'willnt she be right vetnary' as if all farmers speak like yokels and chew straw. Anyway can I get any assurances from venomous snakes, big cats or flesh eating spiders that they'll respect my right to be breathing after they've finished with me? Works both ways surely

Animals should be preserved on the off chance that there's something usefull we can use them for some day, pay things forward I say, besides zoos are fun done properly.

 

[Chi Meson]

Why save them?

Because I want them.

The unspoken part of your query is that "saving" the endangered species stands in opposition to something. Why NOT save them? Because it will get in the way of someone's accuisition of wealth. Why is it assumed that the only thing that should determine whether something should be saved, accumulated, or manufactured is whether or not it contributes a quantifiable, monetary, or otherwise capitalistic gain to certain individuals?

If it is my form of pleasure to look at grizzly bears in a wild setting, or scuba dive near coral reefs, or simply know that there are still rhinos walking the plains of Africa, this should not be dismissed simply because it prevents somebody from profiting.

For many, the idiom "pursuit of happiness" does not equal the pursuit of wealth. About two years ago I saw a condor; this was during a 3 week vacation in the SW US. I went subsequently to Sedona, Grand Canyon, Zion plus other neat places, but the sight of the condor was the highlight of the whole trip (and it wasn't even close up!). When I heard that the ivory billed woodpecker might have been sighted (thereby making it NOT extinct) I nearly cried.

Fortunately I am not alone in this belief, and it is a credit to our quasi democracy that people without wealth can still band together to interfere with the limitless accuisition that is, for some other people, their form of "pursuit."

Ultimately, what is so valid about "I wish to make money" ?

Why does "I wish grizzly bears to exist in the wild" not have the same validity?

 

[Bladibla]

How boring would this planet be with just humans!?

That's good enough for me.

Your question is similar to asking why stop if a pedestrian starts to walk across the road? It won't affect us if that person dies. Might as well not stop and just hit the person.

You're logic is good and all, except that:

1. Pedestrians, at least the ones I know of, Don't have sharp teeth and eat Humans if need be.

I want to put it like this: If you are in threat with a Tiger trying to eat you, and you don't want to defend yourself because 'its beautiful'; if that's you're logic, you're right, And I'm wrong. Fortunately, most people, And I doubt even animal conservatives (or whatever the heck they are called) would want to be food willingly.

Don't get me wrong. If an animal doesn't harm humans, I got no beef against it and I mind my own buisness. However, if threatened, I will, given the chance, shoot it so I can survive. Simple. It so happens that many of these dangerous species are endangered (guess why) I couldn't care less about beauty or anything so philosophical If the subject of such affection is going to eat me tear me limb from limb. Bring me a shotgun..

 

[Omega_6]

The golden rule does not apply to animals unless your a vegan because I certainly don't want to be eaten in a red wine sauce with pomme frites. Nor do I want to be kept in an almost permanent state of preagnancy so that I always produce milk, or have Peter Davidson with a glove go poking around in my nether region for signs of some gastric complaint while a semi literate farmer straight from farmers cliche weekly says things like 'willnt she be right vetnary' as if all farmers speak like yokels and chew straw. Anyway can I get any assurances from venomous snakes, big cats or flesh eating spiders that they'll respect my right to be breathing after they've finished with me? Works both ways surely

Animals should be preserved on the off chance that there's something usefull we can use them for some day, pay things forward I say, besides zoos are fun done properly.

I wasn't being serious about the golden rule #2. I am also not saying that we should stop species from dying out naturally. I just feel that we have an obligation to try and save any species that we have been destroying. The way we cause animals to become extinct doesn't seem to be natural and therefore has consequences that nature can not make up for right away. I think that we should allow the Earth to play out its cycle of life and evolution with as little interference as possible (unless something is threatening our existence). We should take and kill only enough so that it still can be replenished.

 

[kant]

I think it is very a selfish thing for us/ one people , in a single generation to wipe out the amazing diversity, and beauty that is suppost to belong to all generations and all people. There is this unprovable way of thought. I can not prove it to you. It is asserted that each of us( individual) has the responsibility to make the world a better place, and save guarding it so that the next geneation may take their natural inheredence.

 

[shmoe]

It so happens that many of these dangerous species are endangered (guess why)...

I'll guess- people somehow think that shooting a bear from a safe distance with a high powered rifle, then displaying it's carcass in their living room makes them more of a man. My second guess is people think grinding up the bears testicles and using it as a topping for their sunday will make them more of "a man". I would expect that self defence falls a fair bit lower on the list, though I haven't bothered to look for any numbers (I have much less of a problem with self defence).

Because how would it change the environment if every arachnid were substituted with a lion?

More guessing on my part-this would result in a horrible disaster. I wouldn't get to see it though, I would have several lions in my apartment if this plan went into action and I'm not very close to the door (not that the hallway would be lion-free). These lions would likely be hungry as well, they've just been eating tiny bugs all day.

 

[Mk]

I'll guess- people somehow think that shooting a bear from a safe distance with a high powered rifle, then displaying it's carcass in their living room makes them more of a man.

It is also living in the Alaskan wilderness, waiting for days, rubbing deer urine on your boots, setting your stake, being totally quiet, the one-shot-kill (I don't know if this is true for bears), patience, determination, endurance. I'm not a hunter, but I would guess that has to do with it.

My second guess is people think grinding up the bears testicles and using it as a topping for their sunday will make them more of "a man".

Some people also think they taste good. I wish mine would taste better

 

[shmoe]

I wish mine would taste better

Have you tried a mint sauce?

 

[Ivan Seeking]

The natural order of things is that we will be one of the 99.9% of extinct species.

For those who think we should just let nature run its course...