Endangered Species

In June of 1987, newspapers across the nation carried reports of the death of a bird. The bird was a dusky sparrow. It was the last of its kind alive on the earth. Another species had become extinct.

Well, so what? The planet is home to nearly 9,000 species of birds. What difference does it make if one (or even a few dozen) of those species dies out? You will not have less food on your table, fewer clothes to wear, or less interesting television programs to watch.

In fact, many people are probably wishing that some species would become extinct. We might be able to do very well without, for example, tse-tse flies, mosquitoes, and other insects that transmit disease. You can probably find people who would be happy if alligators, rattlesnakes, or gophers could be eliminated from the earth.

The question these attitudes raise is which species are really expendable. Would the world really be as well off without some of its worst pests (like mosquitoes)? If so, what other "pests" can we also do without? How and where do we draw a line between those species we need to preserve and those we are willing to give up?

That question has become a common one in modern society. Highway builders begin construction on a new freeway, only to discover that a rare garter snake lives in its path. A town approves plans for a badly needed new school building, only to learn that a delicate, endangered wildflower grows in the middle of the proposed school yard. Developers apply for a permit to construct new housing on a mountainside, only to find that the area is home to the last remaining colony of the nearly extinct Mission Blue butterfly.

The style and pace of modern life is such that many animal species are now threatened with extinction, In 1985, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service listed 271 domestic species and 461 foreign species as being endangered. The list included mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, snails, shellfish, and insects. It includes such animals as the Tasmanian wolf, the Australian banded anteater, the Arabian oryx, and the Asiatic cheetah.

In almost every case it has been a single animal -- Homo sapiens -- that is responsible for the threatened extinction. Literally hundreds or even thousands of species may have to be sacrificed so that humans can continue to live the kind of life they have established for themselves on earth.

Threats to animal life from human activities come from many directions and in different forms. Leopard, sable, mink, and panther skins have long been highly cherished by women for fur coats, capes, and stoles. The demand for alligator skin for purses and shoes once endangered a form of animal life that has otherwise survived for millions of years.

The annual slaughter of baby seals in Canada to provide furs for articles of clothing is often defended as an "economic necessity" for the men who work in this occupation. If so, it may just be true that the price of economic progress is the elimination of some certain other forms of animal life, such as the seal.

A second kind of threat comes from a most unexpected source: animal lovers. The family that has a pet ocelot, a coatimundi, or a sulfur-breasted toucan may be contributing to the extinction of the very species it has adopted as part of its family. The survival rate among animals who are trapped, transported, and sold in pet stores is terribly low. In many cases, only one out of ten "pets" survives the trip from jungle to human home.

The growing popularity of open-air, "natural" wildlife parks is a similar case of the perils in our love for wild animals. Catering to the public's curiosity about exotic forms of wildlife, private owners attempt to transport all forms of animal life from equatorial Africa, South America, and Asia to newly built animal reserves in temperate parts of the United States like New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

But sometimes, this practice almost begs for trouble. Health problems among animals in these artificial parks are often enormous. If we want to argue that zoos and wild animal reserves are the only place (and may be the only way) to preserve leopards, panthers, grizzly bears, pandas, and their endangered cousins, our present practices may be defensible. But in too many cases, the motivation for these parks is not concern for the species, but desire for profit.

Sport hunting represents yet a third threat to some species. At one time the passenger pigeon was so common in the United States that trees where they roosted were bent down with their weight. But over a period of years, this beautiful bird became extinct at the hand of sport and commercial hunters, who were less concerned with the survival of the pigeon than they were with their own pleasure or profit.

The same story is being repeated today with many species in many places. Hunters continue to seek out trophies of elephant tusks, lion heads, or panther skins, although the death of just one of of these animals brings the whole species one step nearer to extinction. Nearly every African nation has laws protecting these animals, but it turns out to be all but impossible to enforce those laws.

The only change in human hunting instincts over the past hundred centuries may have been the efficiency with which we work. Cave people used clubs and early Europeans used arrows. But modern sportsmen and women have the advantage of such inventions as low-flying airplanes and helicopters. With these they can pursue their game across plains or over ice fields.

Hunters have often defended their forays against wildlife by arguments that some animals are "bad," and the world would probably be better off without them. Many people believe, to one extent or another, that no possible harm could come from the total elimination of mosquitoes, alligators, rattlesnakes, and grizzly bears. That argument may or may not be true.

Perhaps the best example of this feeling has been our battle against the wolf. As far back as Greek and Roman times there were campaigns to eliminate wolves. The belief was that they served no earthly purpose and, in fact, were probably "evil." One effect of that campaign has been the almost total elimination of wolves in Europe.

This labeling of wildlife as undesirable has often been tied with yet a fourth reason for the human threat to our animal cousins. The competition for food and space, the expansion of human agriculture, is probably the single most important factor in our threat to plants and other animal life. Our destruction of jungles, forests, savannahs and other natural areas badly upsets the habitat of many other species.

To return to the wolf, one species, the red wolf, has almost disappeared from its natural habitat in Texas and Louisiana because ranchers viewed the animals as a threat to their livestock. A program sponsored by the United States Bureau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife took care of that problem by paying for the slaughter of 27,646 red wolves over about a decade. The red wolf population in the region was reduced to about 200 to 300 animals. Similar stories can be told for many other predators throughout the United States.

As humans expand the areas they want to live in, build in, plant on, or graze animals on, they come into conflict more and more often with other forms of wildlife. As housing developments are constructed on filled-in wetlands in Massachusetts, around the Everglades in Florida, and on mountaintops in California, the natural homelands and food supplies of ducks, alligators, bald eagles, and countless other species are disturbed. And the price of human progress is the death or endangerment of yet one more handful of our animal cousins.

Those who are concerned about endangered species often act from an important basic assumption, namely that all species have a right to survival on the earth. Humans do not have a special priority that allows them to use other animals and plants completely at will. The way humans use nature must take into consideration the rights of all other organisms, these people say.

That philosophy is easily extended beyond the animals and plants that are in danger, that is, those which are officially classified as "threatened" and "endangered." It also applies to all other species, including those that are common and abundant.

For example, do humans have the right to hunt other animals purely for the sake of sport? Are we justified in raising and killing animals solely for the fur and hides they yield? Should we give any thought to the "rights" of animals that are used in scientific research? Do researchers have the right to experiment on stray rats and dogs that would be destroyed anyway? And what about mice, rats, guinea pigs, and chimpanzees that are bred, raised, and used solely as research animals? Do these animals have any "right" to survival? The concept of "animal rights" obviously presents difficult ethical choices in many areas of modern life.

created by: Debbie Anholt
updated: 5-5-2000
contact me: anholt@lclark.edu