303
IUCN summary lists, like Boeseman’s rainbowfish, the Asiatic wild ass, Haleakala
silversword, the Madagascar fossa, the Apollo butterfly, Axolotl, Wyoming toad,
Addax, Jamaican iguana, Ploughshare tortoise, Bastard quiver tree, Iberian lynx,
and Celebes crested macaque.
Most humans will never hear about, let alone witness any of these spellbinding
taxa. Which is a loss to humanity, but a practical consolation in terms of preventing
that national park procrustean syndrome in which too many people can love a place
or species to death. A Faustian bargain made with the best of intentions. We need all
the diverse biological acquaintance we can muster, if we are to have a significantly
redemptive hand in the genetic rallying cries of biophilia. But non-intrusiveness and
non-violent methodologies for conservation are critical components of any effective
strategies.
There is little latitude for restorative mistakes. In many cases of those referenced
species like iguanas and quiver trees, their numbers are relatively few.
5
At least
16,306 species are globally endangered, within the IUCN Red List.
6
The data gaps,
as have earlier been discussed, are enormous, further hampering clear, long-term
tactics. Real-time genetic changes among some species under intense pressures
continue to come to light. Moreover, the ethical suasion of even one species’ impact
on modern human psyches is unaccountable. We recall the Biblical premise, one
salient line upon which the human problem is laid bare. Psalm 115:16, “The heavens belong to Yahweh, but the earth He gave over to man.”
7
Herein lies a complete
puzzle antithetical to egalitarian ecological philosophy, given that so much of our
bio-historical biases are derived from thinking about fossils. Upon this anthropic
tentacle, at least one paleobiologist has asserted that our burden is not merely the
consideration of early organisms, but the “evolution of thinking about the world
before animals.”
8
Now that such thinking has pervaded all of the natural sciences,
infiltrating every responsible metaphysic concerned with the fate of the earth,
human dominion is working against us at every level (Fig. 33.2).
Before the Cambrian explosion of biodiversity, or long afterward, when Thoreau,
writing of the birds he communed with at Concord, said, “…sometimes one hears
quite a new note, which has for back-ground other Carolinas and Mexico’s than the
books describe, and learns that his ornithology has done him no service.”
9
The scientific record, while assiduous in its task to describe all of nature, is everyday confronted with the unknowable, reduced to extrapolations from what is unknown (the
definition of a paradoxical outcome, when starting from any given point of thought
5 See https://endangeredlist.org/continent/. Accessed March 26, 2020.
6 See “Endangered Earth,” produced by Craig Kasnoff, https://www.endangeredearth.com/
7 Cited in The Natural History of the Bible – An Environmental Exploration of the Hebrew
Scriptures, by Daniel Hillel, Columbia University Press, New York, 2006, p. 243
8 Darwin’s Lost World – The hidden history of animal life, by Martin Brasier, Oxford University
Press, Oxford, UK, 2009, p. 177
9 Thoreau On Birds, Selections from his writings, compiled and with commentary by Helen
Cruickshank, Foreword by Roger Tory Peterson, McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York, 1964,
p. 264.
33.1 Conservation Success and Failure
IUCN summary lists, like Boeseman’s rainbowfish, the Asiatic wild ass, Haleakala
silversword, the Madagascar fossa, the Apollo butterfly, Axolotl, Wyoming toad,
Addax, Jamaican iguana, Ploughshare tortoise, Bastard quiver tree, Iberian lynx,
and Celebes crested macaque.
Most humans will never hear about, let alone witness any of these spellbinding
taxa. Which is a loss to humanity, but a practical consolation in terms of preventing
that national park procrustean syndrome in which too many people can love a place
or species to death. A Faustian bargain made with the best of intentions. We need all
the diverse biological acquaintance we can muster, if we are to have a significantly
redemptive hand in the genetic rallying cries of biophilia. But non-intrusiveness and
non-violent methodologies for conservation are critical components of any effective
strategies.
There is little latitude for restorative mistakes. In many cases of those referenced
species like iguanas and quiver trees, their numbers are relatively few.
5
At least
16,306 species are globally endangered, within the IUCN Red List.
6
The data gaps,
as have earlier been discussed, are enormous, further hampering clear, long-term
tactics. Real-time genetic changes among some species under intense pressures
continue to come to light. Moreover, the ethical suasion of even one species’ impact
on modern human psyches is unaccountable. We recall the Biblical premise, one
salient line upon which the human problem is laid bare. Psalm 115:16, “The heavens belong to Yahweh, but the earth He gave over to man.”
7
Herein lies a complete
puzzle antithetical to egalitarian ecological philosophy, given that so much of our
bio-historical biases are derived from thinking about fossils. Upon this anthropic
tentacle, at least one paleobiologist has asserted that our burden is not merely the
consideration of early organisms, but the “evolution of thinking about the world
before animals.”
8
Now that such thinking has pervaded all of the natural sciences,
infiltrating every responsible metaphysic concerned with the fate of the earth,
human dominion is working against us at every level (Fig. 33.2).
Before the Cambrian explosion of biodiversity, or long afterward, when Thoreau,
writing of the birds he communed with at Concord, said, “…sometimes one hears
quite a new note, which has for back-ground other Carolinas and Mexico’s than the
books describe, and learns that his ornithology has done him no service.”
9
The scientific record, while assiduous in its task to describe all of nature, is everyday confronted with the unknowable, reduced to extrapolations from what is unknown (the
definition of a paradoxical outcome, when starting from any given point of thought
5 See https://endangeredlist.org/continent/. Accessed March 26, 2020.
6 See “Endangered Earth,” produced by Craig Kasnoff, https://www.endangeredearth.com/
7 Cited in The Natural History of the Bible – An Environmental Exploration of the Hebrew
Scriptures, by Daniel Hillel, Columbia University Press, New York, 2006, p. 243
8 Darwin’s Lost World – The hidden history of animal life, by Martin Brasier, Oxford University
Press, Oxford, UK, 2009, p. 177
9 Thoreau On Birds, Selections from his writings, compiled and with commentary by Helen
Cruickshank, Foreword by Roger Tory Peterson, McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York, 1964,
p. 264.
33.1 Conservation Success and Failure