 This is a Threatened Desert Tortoise (Gopherus agassizii) that researchers were fitting a telemetry transponder upon to be able to manage their recovery Why Save Endangered Species? For the last few years, I’ve been playing with the question: why should I care -here, in the United States-if a sparrow goes extinct in Sri Lanka (I just randomly choose a country distant to me but I also like the way a “sparrow in Sri Lanka” sounds- I don’t even know if they have sparrows)? I thought of this when working on building habitat for an endangered sparrow species in southern California. I was very dissatisfied with the answers I could think of: because all nature is connected and the loss of any species will tear apart the connections, that we don’t have the right to let species go extinct from our actions, and that humans will be directly affected by the loss of species. These answers are either subjective or far more nuanced, if not false universally. Biodiversity conservation and rare species conservation specifically is more challenging than other environmental efforts, like clean air and clean water efforts. However, there are great answers for biodiversity conservation and I’ve been collecting them over the years. While I don’t feel I have found or developed a solid, utilitarian (to humans), and universal answer, my notes below have put me closer. I’ve been collecting these answers in my readings and have even inserted them in several presentations but I am inspired to collect them like this now because of the recent op-ed in the Washington Post by Dr. Pyron. In We Don’t Need to Save Endangered Species. Extinction is Part of Evolution., Dr. Pyron brings up great arguments about why endangered species do not need to be saved. I disagree with his conclusions and even his rationale but he does bring up great conservation issues in general. Without going into it too much, the one paradox inherent in conservation is that it is trying to save species that are by definition 4-dimensional genetic expressions (occurring both in space but also in the billions-of-years lineage that they are). Dr. Eisenberg speaks to this when she says we are working save the trajectories of species and habitats, not how we perceive them at some arbitrary place and time of our choosing. Instead of responding to Dr. Pyron’s argument directly right now (I might do so soon), I figured I would share all the reasons why I should care about a sparrow in Sri Lanka. To start with I looked up all the reasons that the IUCN, the ESA, and the WWF give. They are all lame. One of the more succinct answers comes from the US Fish and Wildlife Service but it is still lame: “Congress answered this question in the preamble to the Endangered Species Act of 1973, recognizing that endangered and threatened species of wildlife and plants "are of esthetic, ecological, educational, historical, recreational, and scientific value to the Nation and its people."
Ok, so here is my list. It is a list-in-process though and I will continue adding and editing it. In all this, I haven’t incorporated Kellert’s typology of attitudes or Gorke’s entire book The Death of Our Planet’s Species, which deals with both the biological and philosophical issues of biodiversity conservation. I will try to address these in the next iteration of this post. Why does saving an endangered species matter?
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Bald Cypress and Loblolly Pine I visited the National Park next to my future study site this past weekend. The place is wild. It floods during rains, catches on fire during lightning, and is home to all kinds of animals. Walking through it deafening insects punctuated by Pileated Woodpeckers and Barred Owl raucous encompassed my ear space completely. It was so loud the entire time that it became a background hum – white noise. The place reminds me of The Princess Bride’s Fire Swamp. About 5 times a year it floods anywhere from 1 to 5 feet and moves sediment and nutrients throughout current and archaic riverbeds. The place itself is truly wild and is one of the last (If not the last – I’ve got to look into this more) bottomland hardwood forests remaining (in only the US, maybe elsewhere…more research is needed). This habitat was the habitat of the United States’ Southeast from Texas up into North Carolina. Not anymore. This last ~30,000 acres is about all that’s left. As unique as the habitat is the true characters of this place are the trees. The most idiosyncratic of which are the Loblolly Pines and the Bald Cypress (Taxodium distichum). The Loblolly Pines (Pinus taeda) here are some of the tallest trees in that country and the tallest this side of Rockies (basically everything except the Redwoods). They’re also super old. The have a thick trunk with Ponderosa-like bark, rough and scaly. The Cypress are crazy looking. They have super bloated trunks that narrow into the proper tree about 15 feet from the ground and shoot into the canopy about 80 feet above. The weirdest part are their ‘knees’ though: their roots pop out of the ground into these biotic stalagmites. This means that in an undisturbed and old Cypress stand you’ve got about 100 knees sticking out of the mud and leaf litter for every 10 trees. It’s like the maw of some swamp creature slowly devouring the fat trees in their way. Why do the Cypress have knees? No one knows. It is hypothesized that they provide stability for the tree or act as a type of ‘snorkel’ when it floods.  Loblolly Pine - pinus taeda  Bald Cypress - Taxodium distichum Experiment vs Observation
I am getting closer to thinking like a scientist. The simple dichotomy between an experiment and an observation was made apparent to me this week. An experiment is something that you can control where an observation is simply that. I had never thought about the repercussions of that simple binary and what that means for developing theses, paradigms, and testing theories. My problem now, and I think indicative to conservation in general, is how to understand protection of species and habitats. So much of conservation is observation and so little of experimentation is relevant because it is so big. Conservation exists in a system. Observation leaves you watching species die and prairies converted into oil pipelines while you write a paper about it. On the other end, you can’t experiment on a system as large as the earth without intractable repercussions (I guess that’s called life). Qualitative research provides a middle ground with pragmatic research where you the researcher contribute to the outcome of your study with your engagement. Stewart Brand also recommends a similar caveat with his idea of the Vigilance Principle as opposed to the researcher’s maxim of the Precautionary Principle (if introduction of a new product or process whose ultimate effects are disputed or unknown should be resisted). Benevolence In philosophy we discussed agency, oppression, and deviance. One of the terms that came up was the idea of benevolence in regards to sexism. Benevolent Sexism is basically the idea that women need to be protected by men. Overtly, you can express that women are equal, that they deserve equal rights, etc but actions, behaviors, and policies are designed to protect them or provide for them more than men because they need it more. I wonder what Rhonda Rousey would have to say with this? The first thing I thought of though when understanding this term was the relationship to post-colonialism and environmental issues. Benevolence in Post-colonialism manifests itself a couple ways I think. First, the disfigured aide stemming from White Guilt to old colonies creates a dependent nationalism that actually inhibits independent growth and postmodern actualization (basically: let’s send a bunch of development loans to poor black and brown people because they just don’t know how to fend for themselves). Second, whenever we see videos of the Arab Spring, the vacuum created afterwards, or similar acts of civil disobedience, a group pity of their situation and sense of relief that we in the first world aren’t there takes over. From there, what do we do and how do we help runs through the collective unconscious: send troops, send bombs, send support? No, that’s too much – unless terrorists find that vacuum enticing. Well, that’s unacceptable. Enter the Faustian handshake of now caring for a people that cannot take care of themselves. I might be totally wrong but it gets messy and benevolence helps me to understand how seemingly good intentions of a first world populace can get mangled in the real world of geopolitics. Less clear to me and more insidious is how the concept of benevolence manifests itself in our relationship with the environment, environmentalists, and environmental projects. Zizek said ( I think in Violence but maybe in Desert of the Rea) that environmentalism will be co-opted by capitalism but that is the wrong path because you cannot solve the problem with the same mechanism that created the degredation. It took me several years to understand what that meant and I still don’t know If I agree with it. Environmental and Restoration Firms provide developers and municipalities with the appropriate tools to swerve through the hard fought regulations, sometimes the only biodiversity and land protection. I’ve seen how developers off-handedly say that they’ll ensure they’re in line with the regulations. Fast forward and land has concrete on it. I’m reminded of the scene in Jurassic Park when John Hammond’s dream of giving a vision of dinosaurs to kids is walked over by the lawyer who says they’ll have a coupon day. I see actual environmental success coming from productive relationships between industry and conservation. I really do. I believe that benefits from both can occur. But I am thinking that the concept of Environmental Benevolence is detrimental to this. Seeing environmental concerns as weak or something you have to tolerate only gets you crumbs because no one is invested. Dana White didn’t anyone wanted to see female fighters. Then he saw Rhonda Rousey fight and he thought of a huge market share of a female audience. Let her demonstrate to the UFC that female fighters are worth watching and both parties will make money. The same can be said for forests, wetlands, and prairies: activate their ecology and they will provide. This week I read some pretty heavy conservation theory. I want to share that but haven’t fully processed it yet so I don’t feel like I can share it fully. I did learn a few plants though. Beautiful flowers. Those, Constraint Theory, and Keystone Threats. Plants This week I learned new plants. I actually learned about 50 but I remember about 7 and am only sharing these three crazy looking, yet extremely common flowers to this area. These three plants are native and so common that they are found all through the Americas and even into Europe and Africa. I have never even heard of the Families though! The California Floristic Province contains one of the most biodiverse floral regions and I grew up 10 miles from the most biodiverse spots of that area as it is where the CFP, the Sonoran Desert Province, the Colorado Desert subregion, and the Mojave Desert Province all meet. And plants are my thing – more than birds or reptiles or whatever. Sometimes I let my hubris get a hold of me and am surprised when I am surprised about things I should know. I should know common plants in North America. I should at the very least know common families in North America. I suppose the journey of the naturalist is never-ending and I am grateful for that. The three that I learned are beautiful and infinitely strange. Below are their common and latin names as well as a couple photos I pulled from the internet:
Keystone Threats Instead of Keystone Species, which are species in an ecosystem that have a disproportionate effect on the system, one of my advisors edited a book and in it he identifies the Keystone Threats idea in one of his chapters. This idea is similar to EO Wilson’s biodiversity threats of HIPPO (human development, invasive species, human population, pollution, and overharvesting); guns, nets, and bulldozers from the new Nature article(https://www.nrdc.org/onearth/biggest-threats-biodiversity-guns-nets-bulldozers); and somewhat related to the Stockholm Resilience Center’s 9 Planetary Boundaries. Focusing on the threats to a particular habitat, Dr. Baldwin shows that there are particular threats that when removed assuage disproportionately the impact on the habitat. It’s like the Keystone Species Theory in reverse: when you add wolves back to the Yellowstone habitat you get elk moving which gets trees growing again and rivers changing course. I suppose that a corollary to this could be two impacts related to Keystone Species: Trophic Cascades and Mesopredator Release. Trophic Cascades are basically top-down (like the wolf example above) or bottom-up as in when you remove the primary producer (plants, algae, etc) that herbivores feed on. Mesopredator release is when mid-level predators are allowed to run rampant because they have nothing keeping them in check (i.e. a wolf outcompeting and predating upon coyotes or foxes). Mesopredator release has been theorized as one of the drivers for an inordinate impact upon bird, rodent, and small mammal populations. The idea is that while wolves don’t eat bird eggs, raccoons do and if wolves keep their populations in check then birds can have a more robust population. Keystone threats might work indirectly in such a way. The biggest threat is development. Once you build a strip mall that land is gone forever and the open space adjacent to it is now affected by the human presence. I would imagine that removing the development (or threat of such) reclaims the land, reduces edge effects, allows species that are less reclusive to pioneer away from the Core, and thereby reducing pressure on other species. In essence, it’s a pressure release valve allowing all species more space and agency. This inordinate removal of pressure is greater and has more indirect impacts than say noise pollution from a nearby airport or snowmobile access. The latter are both legitimate threats that require attention but far less a priority than a Keystone Threat. Constraints Theory Discussing what motivates people to conduct recreation (of any kind - adventure backpacking to table tennis), my professor discussed Constraint Theory. This theory identifies three basic constraints to participation:
Basically, this is a strategy to organize barriers and identify specifically what discourages engagement. I am a big believer in “what gets measured can be managed” and this is the measurement part of that. Once you identify the Constraints you then apply the appropriate methods for removing those restraints. Where this gets fun is when one constraint is masked as another or so heavily dependent linearly on one constraint that the other constraints fall away. An example would be someone not feeling confident in their abilities to swim but really they just don’t have the money to get to the pool enough to practice. Once you remove that constraint by providing free swim class afterschool or a free bus route to the beach, the perceived intrapersonal fear can fall away and the challenge looks exciting. Technically, as it relates to leisure, this is called the Hierarchical Model of Leisure Constraints. When I was trying to do my own research I looked up Constraints Theory and it, apparently, is its own legitimate theory in Industrial Management. I found this equally as interesting as it provides a terrific framework to not just expect constraints (in commercial production) but also a very useful strategy to then adaptively manage a complex situation to still achieve successful metrics.
This was an article that I wrote on behalf of the Endangered Species Coalition for newspapers in Oregon. The Eugene Weekly ran it and I copied it below Earlier this year, Governor Brown signed a bill affirming the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife’s decision to remove wolves from the state Endangered Species Act and essentially block judicial review. Although the delisting decision and subsequent passage of HB 4040 dealt wolf recovery a blow, the wolf conservation and management plan ultimately determines the fate of this keystone species.
Eight years ago there were no wolves in Oregon. Twenty five years ago there were no wolves in the west. There are currently not just wolves in Idaho, Washington, and Oregon, but in Northern California as well. Ecologically wolves have been described as ecosystem engineers, keystone species, and natural “vaccines” for disease spread. Through their predation of deer and elk they decrease browse time which allows appropriate plants to grow, they increase the available scavenger food source for a wide variety of other animals, they decrease the abundance of destructive mesopredators (raccoons, coyotes, skunks, etc), and they thin otherwise healthy herds of elk and deer of chronic wasting disease. Ecologically, wolf conservation is smart. In extrapolating how much time, energy, and money I spent in the past couple years trying to photograph wolves in the wild, I imagine conserving this species makes economic sense as well. The argument that wolves are devastating livestock operations and harming humans doesn’t stand the test of time. Sure, there are some livestock losses and in those rare instances that they occur, ranchers are compensated. However the depredation of livestock does not outweigh the benefits wolves bring to our ecosystem. It’s baffling to me that the “big bad wolf” myth is still perpetuated and ultimately creating more fear and anger. The modern human and wolf interaction is novel. With the policies we enact and the support or opposition we provide we collectively decide how we want to live with other species and within our ecosystem. Wolf protection and management is an experiment for future large carnivore recovery in this country and globally. For the last ten thousand years humans have done a terrific job of killing the monsters of our nightmares: saber-tooth cats, mastodons, short-face bears, and American lions -- all the way up to the wolves. I’m pleased to see that as a society we’re investing in wildlife and fostering recovery for the many predator species we nearly wiped out: grizzly bears, wolverines, jaguars, and mountain lions. We can continue to deny protection or we can use these interactions as opportunities to learn how to cohabitate better. Wolves embody not just the image of wilderness but the definition of a natural system working. If we make decisions that give them that chance, we are not only supporting the natural resources of Oregon but also contributing to the legacy of our state. The wolf question needs to be answered but constructive and mutually beneficial results do not occur from removing their protection and ultimately, the species.
 A book to inspire and empower conservation professionals and a book for non-professionals to enjoy and understand easily would be a difficult book to write. EO Wilson has managed that several times over (Future of Life, The Social Conquest of Earth, The Meaning of Human Existence, etc) but he's had almost a century of practice, and he's, well, EO Wilson. David Quammen is also a rockstar in this field with his Song of the Dodo and Monsters of God and I would put Joe Roman's Listed in there too but there are few others that have really knocked my socks off. Enter Dr. Eisenberg with her smooth prose and natural-born educator approach to explaining the history, concerns and theories of conservation biology. She chose the lay audience to speak to the reasons why the field of habitat and biodiversity conservation is important and she directs her final chapters of creative problem solving toward the conservation technician. The best part is that with her pithy aphorisms and hair-raising anecdotes of the potential dangers of studying wolves in Yellowstone make all parts of the book accessible to anyone interested in the field. I am personally very interested in her concepts about the meta-theory of what conservation is all about. For instance, on page 166 she helps us understand what we're doing when we work on habitats and what we are trying to create: "...ecological restoration is the process of assisting the recovery of an ecosystem that has been degraded, damaged, or destroyed. However, in any act of restoration it is never possible to return exactly to what once was; one can only move forward. This means recovering a natural range of variation of composition, energy flow, and change, bringing a system back to its historical trajectory. Historical trajectories are only that, since we cannot predict the future. We can only work with what we think will optimize adaptability, resilience and productivity. The past is not a blueprint for the future, but we can assess these historical trajectories and think about management for future change. This calls for restoring to landscapes as much of their functional diversity as possible, which often means including top predators. Restored systems ideally be self-sustaining and resilient, exchanging energy with interconnected ecosystems and migratory species. The system should contain all functional groups (plants, herbivores, predators) and should support reproducing populations of the species necessary for their continued development and resilience." These words are as poetic as they are helpful. I needed to take notes while reading her book. I have included them below if you want to check them out before picking up her text. In putting together a lecture on biodiversity conservation I have found several new websites that have been of particular help. (Click on the images below to take you to the sites) The first two are Scientific American's blog called Extinction Countdown by John Platt. I have been regularly checking his site for the latest in ES news since finding it.
The second site I found is a remarkable site studying the entire phenomenon. Of particular interest is a list of all of the 709 species that have gone extinct in near history due to humans. This site is incredible and is run by a Dutchman named Peter Maas. 
Here is a portion of the list of extinctions he has compiled: 
And, finally, here is a great article written by 
 The American Lion is an extinct megafauna species of southern California. A giant predatory cat, it relied on other large mammals (deers, sloths, horses, bison, mammoths, etc) for food. There is evidence that early North American people contributed to its extinction. To slow or even stop current human-caused extinction, we need to learn about our interactions with rare animals. **A friend and enviro-artist, Alicia Murphy, asked me to write an article for a zine that was to be released for a show she was doing. It was my honor and I wrote about endangered species. You can find info on the zine and her music here: aliciamurphymusic.com. Below is the full article with photos... ** There are 450 of them. They used to follow giants to wait for their carcasses to open up and share their rancid muscular tissue. They fly thousands of feet in the air throughout the Southwest. There are between a thousand and two thousand of them. Each can fit within a small coffee mug and they look exactly like beach sand. When they move in a group, it looks like the entire dune has shifted. There are a little more than 2,500 of them. They use tools, they like to hang out with each other and they like to argue. They are constantly in cold water, are not fish and have no thick layers of fat to keep them warm. There are, well, no one knows how many there are. But they travel from Alaska to Patagonia seemingly on a whim and have been doing that with their six cousin species for about 100 million years. Two birds, a mammal and a turtle. These animals are what are known as Endangered Species and they share that dubious distinction – and protection- with about two thousand other plant and animal species in the United States. Of the 2,000 nationally, there are about 130 animal species and about 180 plant species federally listed in California. They are either listed as Endangered or Threatened and about 75% of them have Recovery Plans that are publicly accessible repositories of knowledge of the specimen’s life history, taxonomy, threats, and conservation actions with associated costs. The people studying them can tell you how much it will cost to recover these animals and when that will occur. But what they cannot do is tell you why you should want to or why you should care at all. If you make the effort to search them out, I think you will get a better understanding though.  The release of 3 highly endangered California Condors at Vermillion Cliffs, Arizona in September 2014. The event gathered about 100 people and it was celebrated by kids, cub scouts, birders, politicians, and USFWS representatives. The first on the list above is the California Condor and it is not a pretty bird. Ugly and nasty, it soars with a wingspan about as big as most garage doors searching for large dead animals. The second animal is the Western Snowy Plover and it took all of the cuteness from the Condor plus some. The third is the highly intelligent Sea Otter and the last is famous for its role in Finding Nemo as Squirt, the Pacific Green Sea Turtle. I choose them not for their looks or their benefit to humans but because you can spend a Saturday morning searching them out and still be back in downtown Los Angeles for dinner. You can be your own Jacques Cousteau or Crocodile Hunter and find an animal that is so rare and special that you can go to Federal Prison if you touch them (don’t touch them). I recommend making the small effort to get to Santa Barbara for the Plover or to Long Beach for the Turtle because they are on the razor’s edge of whether they will exist in abundance or if they will be gone from our planet forever within the next 20 years. They are the Mona Lisas, the Rodin sculptures, and the Gutenberg Bibles of the natural world. Endangered species are even more precious and unique however for at least three critical reasons: they are the living, breathing evidence of 3.8 billion years of trying to make life work; they are creating themselves anew constantly; and they have no viable replacement. It is as if the Mona Lisa painted its own self over four eras to look perfect within the Louvre’s lighting while simultaneously creating replicas of itself that are all slightly different from the original but live within adjacent galleries. This metaphor may be a scientific stretch but it gives you a glimpse of the rarity of what we are looking at when we see an Otter scream and belch while wrapped in seaweed.  The Western Snowy Plover is an endangered bird that nests and plays on the dunes of southern California. Endangered species are plants and animals that were already occupying a (mostly) small specific niche, filling a critical role within their ecosystem until generalists came in (due to almost exclusively human reasons) and did better than them. To stretch another analogy, a generalist is like a Walmart or a McDonalds: they adapt - they have the ability to. But the endangered species is the café down the street from you or the small architecture office that knows your neighborhood well and can design the most appropriate building for that vacant lot. Genetically, they care about the community they’re in. Don’t get me wrong, endangered species, like all species, would become generalists in a heartbeat and devour what they could without hesitation. But they don’t and there are reasons why. Why do they care about the niche they are in, what relationships do they have that we can learn from? How do they interact with the nearby marketable foodcrops? What kind of disease resistant fungi are they utilizing, depending upon or pointing to? What genetic capacities have they uniquely expressed over the past several eras of their own evolution? We have an opportunity to figure out why these special and specialized taxa have ‘decided’ to express themselves in the way they have. If a species disappears, the ancient genetic lineage dies with it and so does the future of any further evolution from that source. What that means is that no more unique representation of life can occur from that taxon and that is the only way life exists at all: through myriad and rich representations. Life isn’t the static snapshot of what exists at a single moment but the potential within any given range of time to flourish anew. Extinction stops life now and the capacity for future life. The animals listed above I chose because you have a good chance of seeing them and they are captivating enough to make the travel worthwhile. But California is a biological treasure trove and there are special plants and animals all over the place. Outside of Hawaii, California has the highest biodiversity in the United States, some of the most endemism (meaning they can’t be found anywhere else), and southern California in particular is considered one of twelve biodiversity ‘hotspots’ on the planet. So, short of a coral reef or the Amazon, you’re living in a place chock-a-bloc teeming with life. With so much life it only makes sense that we would also have higher than normal levels of special plants and animals – and we do. Beyond the endangered ones, we also have individual Bristlecone Pine trees that were born when Jesus was, Creosote and Spiny Lobsters that are theorized to be immortal (except by predation), and the Ocotillo (an oddly majestic, almost-cactus plant species) that might be one the newest species on earth. Searching for the rare species will find these other specialists as well. Beyond experiencing the wonder of them and beyond enjoying the biological world we live in, endangered species study and conservation is downright revolutionary. In his book Listed, Joe Roman wrote that endangered species represent a pivotal point for us as a species. He elegantly wrote that the Endangered Species Act is “an unprecedented attempt to delegate human-caused extinction to the chapters of history we would rather not revisit: the Slave Trade, the Indian Removal Policy, the subjection of women, child labor, segregation. [It] is a zero-tolerance law: no new extinctions. It keeps eyes on the ground with legal backing – the gun may be in the holster most of the time, but it’s available if necessary to keep species from disappearing. I discovered in my travels that a law protecting all animals and plants, all of nature, might be as revolutionary—and as American—as the Declaration of Independence” (emphasis added).The legislation is revolutionary and when he says ‘unprecedented’, he means not only unprecedented in environmental work but unprecedented as a species. It is an unprecedented, revolutionary piece of cultural expression for our species (any species) to care significantly about species not our own. The truly weird part of that statement is that Roman is not being cavalier or sensational. It is possible to figure out culturally how to stop the sixth great extinction that is occurring right now and the only one occurring due to a species (us) and not a geological cataclysm. There are good examples of how humans have fixed this. Go to any California beach and you will see California Brown Pelicans that were on the verge of extinction in the ‘70’s. Drive up near Hearst Castle and you will see giant Elephant Seals that were hunted down to 2 animals in 1892. On the downtown skyscrapers of Long Beach, Los Angeles, and San Diego you will find the west coast subspecies of the Peregrine Falcon- the fastest flying bird in the world- that recovered from only a handful of chicks 40 years ago. All of these animals have been removed from the endangered species list by humans working diligently to do so. It is possible to save these animals, to pull them from the brink of oblivion. In most cases professionals know how to but for the average person, we don’t know why we should.  This is an endangered Green Sea Turtle in San Gabriel River. The photo is by Kathryn Boyd Batstone and my company partners with the Los Cerritos Wetlands Land Trust to lead educational tours of this species. In Long Beach, I help lead education tours to share the Green Sea Turtles with the public. I have been criticized for doing so under the rationale that the less people that know about them, the less threat there will be to the turtles. This runs counter to the whole point and purpose of education. The legislation for saving Pelicans and Peregrines needed voter support, it needed an educated and passionate constituency. The more that we as a society choose to learn, the more we choose to value and prioritize. This is why I encourage you to visit these endangered species: visit them, learn about them, share your experience with your friends, give money to organizations working on them, vote for them, and be vocal in your support of them when necessary. More than is probably healthy, I am a pragmatist and so I always ask myself why something deserves my attention or energy. Endangered species have confused me because I have no great, all-powerful answer to why I should care about them. Nevertheless I do and the unsatisfying yet implacable answer, the one I can never get away from, is that I get the opportunity to care about them. I recommend you take that opportunity as well and visit some of the places I have listed below or on my website and I hope the experience is as empowering to you also. For more information: taylor@tidalinfluence.com TidalInfluence.com PracticePraxis.org/ecology.html Green Sea Turtles Long Beach, California Los Cerritos Wetlands Land Trust LCWLandTrust.org California Condors Big Sur, California Ventana Society ventanaws.org/wildlife_sanctuaries/ Western Snowy Plovers Santa Barbara, California UC Santa Barbara coaloilpoint.ucnrs.org/SnowyPloverProgram.html Southern Sea Otters Morro Rock Morro Bay, California (you can also visit them at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach) When I was working on a habitat assessment report back in 2011 and documenting how many birds and other animals we had, it occurred to me that I had very little to reference the numbers I was finding to. How many bird species are there in the world? How many snake species exist in California? How many marine mammals are there right off the shore and how many of all them are protected under the Endangered Species Act? I didn't know and I thought it would be great to put that in the report I was writing. But I found it way too difficult to pull those numbers together. So, after some starts and stops and losing and gaining focus since then, I got pretty far after finding NatureServe. The image below has my first compiled draft of this work but it is woefully inadequate. I still need to fill out many more cells, explain some of the information I do have, and cite everything. But, in the meantime, here is what I have pulled together for biodiversity:  |
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