​In just this past week here are some of the biodiversity headlines discussing the path toward biodiversity extinction:
 
Malaysia seizes 337kg of pangolin scales worth nearly $1 million:
Polar bear skin, 14,000 dead seahorses seized in illegal animal trade bust:
North Atlantic's greatest survivors, Right Whales, hunted once more
German court: Ancient forest can be cleared for coal mine:
Alberta poison program kills more wildlife than wolves
 
None of these headlines represent behavior necessitating human survival but rather human greed and exploitative behavior. This behavior is destructive and unnecessary but in a recent Washington Post Op-Ed, Dr. Pyron tells us the opposite, simply stating: “We don’t need to save endangered species. Extinction is part of evolution.” Dr. Pyron is misguided not only in his assessment but also his rationale.
 
As a biologist Dr. Pyron was courageous enough to share his provocative perspective regarding the morality of biodiversity extinction that runs counter to orthodox conservation biology. Further, he brings up terrific points about the purposes of conservation as a pursuit generally and the need to ensure a “stable, equitable future for the coming billions of people.” His prescription can be seen as reasonable as well:
 
“The solution is simple: moderation. While we should feel no remorse about altering our environment, there is no need to clear-cut forests for McMansions on 15-acre plots of crabgrass-blanketed land. We should save whatever species and habitats can be easily rescued (once-endangered creatures such as bald eagles and peregrine falcons now flourish), refrain from polluting waterways, limit consumption of fossil fuels and rely more on low-impact renewable-energy sources.”
 
I can respect this mostly (minus his egregious disregard for the years of hard work by conservation professionals to delist the eagles and falcons directly in the face of a predominant culture of exploitation) and I don’t want to offer my rebuttal to his perspective as a tit-for-tat argument. His thoughts about the proper relationship between humans and the non-human world is a great discussion and not one which has been solved yet by humanity. There is still much to figure out about this relationship and the purpose and trajectory of human efforts are at the center of much of this argument. As a conservation social scientist, this is similar to the question I have about biodiversity conservation as well: what are we trying to achieve as humans? What I want to do, even though I am diametrically opposed to his perspective, is further the discussion to help co-create good answers and I want to do that by pointing out some flaws in his logic as well as offering comprehensive alternative prescriptions. Before I do that though, I want to discuss the paradigm he uses.
 
I disagree with Dr. Pyron on a basic foundation of his argument, seeing the planet we share and have evolved integrally within from an anthropocentric viewpoint rather than a biocentric or holistic viewpoint. Innate to his perspective is a disregard for the worth of any individual plant or animal, let alone species, inasmuch as it doesn’t serve the human. This is a dangerous utilitarian approach that much civic injustice has been historically based upon (slavery, women’s rights, etc.) but also other historical (and current) environmental fights, such as establishing how “clean” air needs to be (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-environment-adviser-air-too-clean-pollution-good-health-pruitt-phalen-a8033881.html), how much do humans need a river to not catch on fire in Cuyahoga, and what level of DDT is acceptable. We forget that these same utilitarian arguments were made against cleaning air and water. As much as I see the evidence for the holistic viewpoint that I happen to share with many others, I can see the other side, that conservation from an anthropocentric view would see that “[t]he only reason we should conserve biodiversity is for ourselves, to create a stable future for human beings.”
 
What is unacceptable though are the clear logical fallacies, cognitive dissonances, and unsound science to get him to the conclusion that “[t]he world is no better or worse for the absence of saber-toothed tigers and dodo birds and our Neanderthal cousins, who died off as Homo sapiens evolved.”
 
Dr. Pyron’s argument follows rationales that exhibit fatal incongruities that are not new to conservation professionals:

1. The naturalistic fallacy
2. Conflating cancerous consumerism with human survival
3. Removing species indiscriminately dismisses the teachings of basic systems theories and risk management by limiting path dependency
4. A repressive desire to release guilt

 
The naturalistic fallacy says that you can’t automatically get an “ought” from an “is” – just because something is or has been a way doesn’t mean it should be that way. This is very clear in other venues: just because males are on the average physically larger than females does not mean that men are allowed to abuse women or should be socially dominant; just because humans have evolved tribally does not mean that violent conflict based on arbitrary tribal preferences is necessary; and just because humans have a predilection for high calorie, sugary foods, let alone opioids or other drugs, doesn’t mean we should have them. Because extinction has happened, because extinction is required for speciation doesn’t mean that we as humans should indiscriminately contribute to the 6th great extinction. What this shows us is that we are humans, not mere apes, and we have the choice to choose how we live, we get to choose how we develop our humanity. 
 
Conservation is a social construct that is housed in the realm of values stemming only in the most basic of ways from what is necessary for human survival and sustainability. The answer of why and how we should appropriately interact with non-human species is not an answer found in biology (even conservation biology) but rather in philosophy and the social sciences, informed by the natural sciences. EO Wilson calls this consilience. In this consilience do we figure out how groups of humans should behave. If we left that exclusively to biology we would be able to excuse any behavior (racism, sexism, class struggle, etc.) arbitrarily as we cherry-pick examples in nature as “natural” as has been done many times in the past.
 
Dr. Pyron makes his second logical fallacy when he conflates human survival with excessive consumption. While he does speak to the dangers of McMansions in the Amazon, he doesn’t speak to cancerous deforestation in the Amazon, for example, to allow the cattle industry to feed the world’s unregulated demand for cheeseburgers. Survival and corpulence are not the same. Dr. Pyron asks us for moderation and I would ask the same but a moderation of his definition of necessity.
 
This is similar to a “moving the goal-post” error: if we decide that it is appropriate to extinguish the species we are now because it is necessary for human “survival,” what happens when we push that boundary through our consumption and new species and habitats fall within our crosshairs and rationalizations? This cycle, justified by the conflation of survival with greed, is perpetual. The corollary to the “moving the goal-post” error is the shifting-baseline syndrome: we get accustomed to what we experienced previously and romanticize that previous, arbitrary baseline. Going forward, we think that baseline is what we should attain but continue the destructive behavior throughout, instead of focusing on what we want to achieve as humanity.
 
Excusing other species’ extinction through the necessity of human survival is not only a rationalization of extinction but also a rationalization of excessive consumption.
 
This rationalization leads to another of Dr. Pyron’s major incongruities: the drive to discharge guilt. There are several other errors in his article, including: misreading Soule’s seminal paper, misinterpreting the history of human interaction with their environment as non-stewardship, and underestimating the sliver of favorable conditions within which the Holocene has provided us. However, the fact that his article hinges on the concept of whether we should feel bad or not is quite telling. Consciously or not, he identifies a main driver behind human behavior and asks us to dismiss the guilt we feel. This is sociopathy. We do feel guilt and we need to figure out why. As much as all of us want to survive and thrive, we don’t want to contribute to a genocide. Without a critical examination of the behavior that leads to one feeling guilt, the drive to discharge guilt without integrating our understanding of the behavior is repression. And repression is not the way to virtue.
 
Pyron is telling us that we don’t need to feel bad. And, actually, I agree: we don’t need to feel bad for existing in a world where no other species is looking out for survival; we’ve done well to harness the scary world and create us our home. The problem is when “not feeling bad” excuses destructive behavior and allows future maladaptive behavior. This is an issue of guilt and Freud has said that “such people [those experiencing guilt] allow themselves to do any bad thing which promises them enjoyment, so long as they are sure that the authority will not know anything about it or cannot blame them for it; they are afraid only of being found out. Present-day society has to reckon in general with this state of mind.” Pyron’s attempt to assuage and release guilt is all too blatant an attempt of trying to discharge the feeling of guilt rather than incorporating and dealing with the exploitative behaviors that cause the destruction of habitats and the genocide of species.
 
Dr. Pyron’s greatest contribution in his Washington Post Op-Ed is pushing the question of how to achieve a sustainable human future through the lens of human and non-human relationships. This is not an unprecedented question, as it can be traced back to Malthus and further, but the scholarship has been steadily increasing in the last couple decades. The most recent thinker to approach this question innovatively is the economist Kate Raworth through her recently published book, Doughnut Economics.
 
Kate Raworth takes the work of systems thinking in conservation and the 9 Planetary Boundaries developed by the Stockholm Resilience Center and compiles them with sustainable development goals of the United Nations to create Doughnut Economics. The Doughnut Economics idea, and the book she published in March 2017 of that name, gives us our ceiling and our floor; or, “the safe and just space for humanity” within the middle of the doughnut. The twelve social components that create the floor are derived from the United Nation’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals as identified in 2015.
 
The combination of both the social and biogeophysical global boundaries is the first comprehensive discussion that applies practical and objective metrics. If we are searching to assuage our guilt, we should do it by examining our behavior through a comprehensive lens, we need to do it using a tool like Raworth’s Doughnut.
 
Further, there is not only systems prescription but also a proposed trajectory. Astrophysicist Nikolai Kardashev says there is only one general linear progression for a civilization: use of energy. Proposed in 1964, the Kardashev Scale identifies three sources of potential energy and labelled their corresponding civilization a ‘Type’: Type 1 Civilization: the use of energy that hits the earth from the sun; Type 2 Civilization: the use of energy of the sun; Type 3 Civilization: the use of energy of the host galaxy. Kardashev further explained that we are currently at a Type .8. That transition from a Type .99 to a Type 1.1 will be the most difficult because it will require a paradigm shift that will disrupt all aspects of society (psychological, economic, cultural, etc.) because previous modes of thinking will be inadequate. However, making that transition will necessitate equitable energy access, universal basic needs development, and a sustainable future with more security for more people and non-human species.
 
But let us use Dr. Pyron’s warranted and critical examinations of the relationship between the human and non-human world to create us a world of human survival, true human survival. Let’s get us to a place where the human species can feel proud not only of our masterful accomplishments of harnessing an environment indifferent to our existence but also proud of the very pinnacle of humanity: our capacity to create beauty and express compassion as we grow. This is not done through mindless destruction as an planet-killing asteroid would do. This is not achieved through deadly expansion as a non-sentient virus would do. As much as we are a powerful species with survival needs, only one species of millions, we are a sentient species that has the choice of how we proceed in our adaptation.
 
We haven’t figured out how to appropriately cohabitate with our planet’s other species, habitats, and biogeophysical properties. It is through dialogues such as this with Dr. Pyron that I hope we will get ever closer to that goal. But, we cannot excuse our genocidal behavior in the process 

​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."

• Benefits of natural diversity
• Contributions to medicine
• Biodiversity and agriculture
• Environmental monitors
• Ecosystem services
• Other economic values
• Intangible values “

 
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?
​

1. Point of no return
   1. Extinction is irreversible
2. Natural sciences
   1. Ecological
      1. Island Biogeography- at some point there is a non-linear tipping point and this is exemplified by islands but from a global perspective, every habitat is it’s own island to some degree
      2. Ehlrich’s Rivet theory – there is a tipping point where too many rivets out of the airplane is too much
         1. amendment: some rivets are big and more important, some small, and others are nodes what are more dependent on others
      3. Ecosystem strength – we just don’t know the full impact of lost species because the results are skewed by the buffer of other species, lost in the complexity, or not recognizable for other reasons
      4. An extension of Taleb’s Antifragile idea
   2. Geology
      
      1. Our ecosystem is only spaceship earth for the period of the Holocene and that is a very short time, we don’t know our home outside of the narrow parameters of our time-frame
   3. Genetic
      1. Unique nonreplicable material
   4. Evolutionary:
      1. “Today’s ecologically trivial species could be tomorrow’s keystone species” Kareiva and Levin
3. Human psychology
   1. EO Wilson’s biophilia
   2. David Quammen – monsters of god: we lose a major part of our psyche when we lose the real world components that helped to create our psyche.
   3. Not fair to future humans, to next generations to lose them
4. Utilitarianism
   1. Money
      1. Habitat protection for saving us money (shoreline stabilization, reducing zoonotic disease, cleaner air and water reduces medical expenses, etc)
      2. Habitat protection for allowing continual harvesting (for food, shelter, medicine, etc).
   2. EcoTourism
   3. Human Safety
      1. Impact on Intensity and Spread of Zoonotic Disease - Quammen
   4. Removing utility from future humans, to next generations to lose them
5. Deontological (obligation, duty)
   1. Every species has an inherent worth and a right to existence
   2. Exceeded the planetary boundary (1 of 9)
   3. Kant’s categorical imperative
      1. As the most powerful and successful species, it is our duty to save non-human species
   4. Stealing from future humans, from next generations that will not have them
6. Morality
   1. A human value of them: we choose to allow them to flourish
   2. Hume’s Naturalistic Fallacy: there is no ought from is, so it is our responsibility to create good “oughts”
7. Aesthetics
   1. Truth in beauty
   2. Subjective beauty
8. Poetic Naturalism
   1. Our purposes in the moment determine the best way of talking
   2. Biodiversity and species preservation are important enough to warrant talking
9. Speciesist/Object Oriented Ontology
   1. A species has an innate right to exist and it is not within another species’ right to make it extinct
10. Information Theory
    1. Harari: dataism – how are species relevant to data and information – similar to how modern westerners treat those they’ve displaced -how we treat animals now is how superhumans and the next evolution will treat us
    2. Justice: Species are genetic information, information to defy evil (Roman (I think) – but then using Deutsch’s maxim: all evil is insufficient knowledge)
11. Other:
    1. Ashley Dawson: species preservation is the only way to empower third world countries through their agency
    2. Altruism: choosing to save non-human species demonstrates the best capacities of humanity (this might be me but with influences from Frans de Waal or others)

This week I went to a couple lectures outside the normal and learned about Red Wolves and their conservation, big cats and their behaviors, and photo elicitation from my advisor. This last one proved to be way more interesting and meaningful to my work than I thought it would be.

Red Wolves
About 45 Red Wolves exist today. They are threatened with a few things but right now they are threatened by poor management and loud anti-wolf voices. A Defenders of Wildlife speaker came to campus this last week and described the Red Wolf situation. I knew they were in a rough spot but I remember reading about them a couple years ago and I remember the take-away being that the numbers aren’t great but they’re improving and the population has been steadily increasing for the past couple decades. Apparently I didn’t misremember too poorly: they were doing fairly well and on the right trajectory two years ago. However, two years ago some significant changes started occurring. The major changes were: the USFWS (the Federal agency in charge of the wolf) terminated the Red Wolf position and divvied up the responsibilities amongst an already stretched workforce, they reduced the necessary range for a healthy population by 89%, and they started under-enforcing poaching. Given the information is from a fairly pro-wolf biased source but it is also one of the only organizations looking out for the wolves and also a source I trust.
The last piece of news that does not bode well for the Red Wolf conservation is something that I was aware of but not its implications. This summer genetic analysis came out saying that the Red Wolfs are genetically indistinguishable from wolf/coyote hybrids and do not constitute a separate species. On the surface of this it could potentially eliminate the Red Wolf from Endangered Species Act Protection. The DOW has good arguments stating why this would be silly including the fact that they are still ecologically relevant, morphologically dissimilar, and that the genetics do not fully account for separate species. The best argument however is that the only reason that they are hybrids are because their numbers are so low and so they have had to mate with only coyotes for the past half a century. Their argument actually uses this genetic information as stating that the only way to save what’s left of the Red Wolf genetics is to save what’s left of the Red Wolf
They summarized the talk saying that if current trends continue it will be impossible for the species to beat extinction by 2025. I was unaware the Red Wolf situation was so dire and I would imagine this is news to most people.
 
Cheetahs and Lions, Jaguars and Ocelots
Another speaker came by school this week on her way to presenting at The Wilderness Society’s conference. Dr. Marcella Kelly of Virginia Tech spoke about her work on carnivores in Africa, Madagascar, Borneo, and Central America. Her hour long lecture was captivating and had gems quite relevant to carnivore researchers, ecologists, and conservationists alike.
Two of the topics that I think are interesting to everyone though are the relationships she discovered between some big cats. Her work in Africa showed that as lion numbers increase, cheetah numbers decrease. The reason why is both logical and mystifying. Lions apparently are kleptoparasitic upon cheetahs and steal cheetah kills – this is the logical part to understanding why cheetah numbers go down. Just based on this though you would think that cheetahs and lions would set up a mutual benefit relationship or something. However, lions are also known to eat cheetah cubs – this is the mystifying part. Why would lions kill cheetahs that provide them with food? Wouldn’t you want cheetahs around to provide more free meat for you?
            The central American Jaguar/Ocelot relationship is the opposite. As Dr. Kelly was describing her team’s work of trekking through the impossible rainforests full of dense trees, muddy roads that eat rental cars, and armed locals, she shared decades’ worth of data tracking big cats and mesopredators. Based on her Africa work she expected to find that wherever jaguars roam, ocelots would decrease. However, the relationships were constant and ran parallel with each other – where one succeeded, the other did. This has yet to be explained and the causality may or may not be there either.
 
Photo Elicitation
My work is qualitative work. I am trying to understand the social interactions and implications of conservation. This is partially because I believe that conservation is a social act and a social value (as opposed to an ecological or biological decision) and partially because my mind does not work very well quantitatively. In trying to understand quantitative methods and processes we learned about Photo Elicitation this past week. I was skeptical reading the readings and looking into it. However, the moment my advisor/professor explained it I immediately recognized the benefit it could pose to conservation.
Basically photo elicitation is art theory. On another level it flips the power structure of the objective/subjective and the interviewer/interviewee. How this method occurs is by having the subject either take photos of something meaningful to them, share photos meaningful to them, or review photos they are involved in somehow. From there, you get the interviewee to then explain the photo and their responses. This takes the ‘known’ knowledge (the objective, the positivistic knowledge) out of the hands of the researcher and puts it in the hands of the subject. The subject holds all the information and the researcher is absorbing it from the subject. The power of this technique is that it gives communication to something that does not have language or does not readily open itself to description.
One of the examples used was of a researcher trying to understand what “old” meant in a community and why it was valued. However, if you were to ask someone valued old buildings the data received did not hold much substance. In essence, people don’t know why they value ‘old’ things. But, if you give them a camera and tell them to take photos of things in their community/city that they hold dear and are special to them they will take photos of old things and then you can get them to describe them according to a rubric you develop. From here you can track trends and code similar responses. The whole time, throughout the whole process you never have asked the question “why do old things matter” but have instead allowed it to come out of the objects presented by interviewees authentically.
I thoroughly believe that we do not know why conservation matters. I mean this in a few ways, one of them being that the general public cannot explain it. Another reason being that even the most knowledgeable and well trained people will give you either local answers or subjective morality answers – both of which are unsatisfying to me. I do think conservation matters both objectively and subjectively and we are closer than ever to figuring it out. I also think that we haven’t created the language to explain it. I think a technique like photo elicitation can help me give words to a value that we cannot explain.

1. Panda Uplisted from Endangered to Threatened: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2016/09/04/giant-panda-no-longer-endangered-species-say-conservationists/
2. Dakota Access Pipeline Fight: http://www.vox.com/2016/9/9/12862958/dakota-access-pipeline-fight
3. The world has lost 10% of its wilderness in two decades: http://e360.yale.edu/digest/world_has_lost_10_percent_wilderness_since_1990s/4800/
4. Banning Ranch Wetlands in Southern California Saved by Coastal Commission: http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-banning-vote-20160906-snap-story.html
5. California SB 32 to reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions to pre-1990 levels by 2030: http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-jerry-brown-signs-climate-laws-20160908-snap-story.html
6. 9 of 14 populations of Humpback Whales taken off ESA: http://www.sciencealert.com/most-of-the-world-s-humpback-whales-have-now-been-taken-off-the-endangered-list
7. Obama and China agree to unprecedented Paris Climate Accord: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/09/03/u-s-and-china-just-ratified-the-paris-climate-agreement-which-could-be-bad-news-for-donald-trump/
8. Central Africa’s Eastern Gorilla are now Critically Endangered: http://time.com/4480968/endangered-species-panda-gorilla-iucn/

​

​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. 

In building the filtered biodiversity table on my Eco page I have tried to find the most accurate sources for the numbers of plants and animals around the world. The purpose behind the exercise is to make the numbers to make sense. If there are a certain numbers of mammals in one area that information doesn’t tell me much when it is not compared to another site. Does the area I am studying have a high percentage mammal species comparatively and how does that affect the local ecosystem similarly? What I am really searching for when exploring the numbers however is how many special status species a site has. This information helps me understand whether a particular habitat is a biodiversity hotspot or an indicator of conservation need. The information is both quantitative and spatial according to what I know best:  southern California.

The Atlas of Endangered Species has done this exact exercise creatively and effectively. Through a mature geo-referenced aesthetic, the book compiles terrific data of the most rare and sensitive species globally. Focusing on taxonomy before spatial concerns, the Atlas explores the bird, reptile, and other animal and plant species that would benefit from conservation prioritization.

As a tool it helps me build context to develop meaning for understanding what it is occurring on all the continents and in our seas. The book doesn’t answer critical questions of value but it helps to create a constructive trajectory of discussion. I would recommend this book as an addition to the conversation of what we’re dealing with in biodiversity work. For a simple snapshot of where we are at, the Atlas is a great tool. For something larger and more complex I still haven’t found the tool to help develop the need and the engagement for rare species engagement but this book takes a great first step.

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 Mitchell Friedman about basically the list above. He adds some powerful photos to the list though.

**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.

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.