should we forget about the pandas?
As many comedians and social commentators have noticed, human efforts to save animals on the verge of extinction are rather biased towards cute, furry things that probably aren’t going to harm us. One of those cute bundles of fur that almost always receives conservationists’ adoration is the panda. This is why when one of them said that maybe the pandas can’t be saved and we should focus on other species instead, it was pure heresy in the eyes of many. However, as cold and cruel as it may seem, he brings up a very good point. Just how far should we go to save animals who seem to have very little chance of surviving the modern world? Are we tampering with natural selection and holding back the pace of evolution to feel good as the self-appointed custodians of the environment? Are we successfully atoning for our sins or just making things worse?
One unfortunate fact about evolution is that species go extinct on a regular basis. Over 99% of all species that ever walked, crawled, swam, burrowed or grew in our world’s history, are dead and gone. Not only that, but we are actually going through a mass extinction known as the Holocene Event. It began before modern humans appeared and it will continue into the foreseeable future. It’s not all bad though. Extinctions of species A is an opportunity for species B which can grow and diversify for eons afterwards. The Permian extinction allowed a small group of lizards to become the dinosaurs and the Cretaceous’ asteroid assisted massacre unleashed the mammals, which along the line diversified into us. Like all things in nature, extinctions aren’t always only good or only bad. When one happens, there are losers and winners.
But here come we on a mission to save a creature on the way out, saying that since we invaded its habitat, or cut off its food source, or hunted too many of them, we’re directly responsible for their population declines and must make amends. And in some cases, that’s true. After laying off of some species in the wild, their numbers sprang back. With others, the situation hasn’t been so great and we had to start breeding programs in zoos to boost their numbers, though ultimately these programs haven’t really helped all that much. To keep investing time and effort into hauling a species on the brink of extinction back to life, might by excessive. Could it be that their time is up and they’re just an evolutionary dead end that would’ve withered anyway? And by keeping them alive by any and all means necessary, could we block another organism’s chances?
