Extinction

Dealing with extinction is difficult. All this was written because of my despair over the extinction of the frogs at El Valle, yet most of the writing dances around the actual issue. As the second trip approached, my dread at seeing Rio Maria without frogs increased. As a scientist the response is often to study the problem. Take for example cancer researchers that start a career because someone close to them is affected. Describing the science is like working harder to avoid thinking about the death of a loved one, it is ducking the fact that the frogs will never been seen in nature by people again.

The harsh reality, to me, is that most people do not care much about extinction of other species. In my introduction to biology course I ask a class of 80 students about this issue. I describe a local species that is going extinct, a small fish that is spiny and non-descript (the Topeka Shiner). I ask the class to raise their hand if they think the fish should be saved. Most of the class puts their hand up. Then I tell them to leave their hand up if saving the fish would be worth it if it required some personal expense to them. Over half the people in the class put their hand down.

A man has a business that removes gravel from some of the streams where Topeka Shiners still remain. He argues, in public hearings, that he is strongly against listing the species as endangered. He thinks that his right to make a living one particular way is greater than the right of that species to exist. He asks the crowded room, “what is more important, people or fish?” Many in the room nod in agreement with his arguments.

How willing are people to actually pay to save species? Is the life of a single person more important than the existence of an entire species? Is there a monetary value to a species? In a recent paper I wrote with my students we attempted to answer this question. The US requires recovery plans to be filed when species are listed as endangered. The average recovery cost was $732,000 per year. Some species cost much more to replace. Tens of millions of dollars have been spent on recovery of the black footed ferret. Total costs of recovery for the California Condor are in excess of $35 million over the last half century. Clearly some species are thought to be very valuable. However, putting a monetary value on species is dangerous. This sets up a situation where somebody could simply pay to be allowed to do an activity that threatens or causes extinction of a species.

Evolution is slow and mutation is random so that once a species has gone extinct, there is essentially zero probability it will ever return. The potential exception to this in the future is the technology for sequencing and synthesizing DNA is growing so rapidly that we might be able to completely recreate a species if the sequence of its entire genome is known. Scientists have already done this for bacteria. It is possible because bacteria have very simple genomes. It is not completely impossible that a complete genome could be synthesized and inserted into an egg of a similar species, allowing for recreation of an entire species. That is not possible for most species now, and probably for decades it will not be possible. For now, extinction is forever.

Current rates of extinction are thousands of times greater than rates of evolution of new species. It has taken 3.5 billion years for life to reach its current level of complexity. Over half the existing species are predicted to be gone in most of our lifetimes. Extinction is one of the major global environmental trends occurring during our lifetimes. We are living in unusual times where one species, us, can influence the entire planet. For the majority of species, we are a disaster. The reasons for this global trend and others are described more fully in my book, “Humanity’s Footprint”.

The fate of most species is to go extinct. As a scientist, I know that 99% of all species that ever existed on earth do not exist now. That fact does not make me feel better about humans destroying over half of all species on earth now.

In Douglas Adams’s science fiction novel “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” the planet Earth is destroyed to make way for an intergalactic bypass. The lead character escapes right before the destruction. He laments the loss of his entire planet but nobody from other planets seems to care much. The lack of interest by most people in extinction is similar; people who care about the plants and animals of the earth and are educated as to what is actually happening to them have a difficult time conveying the urgency of saving species. So many issues are deemed more important by most people, that preserving species ends up very low on the list.

I have dedicated my entire scientific career to studying ecology because I have always been fascinated by the natural world. I am a tree hugger. It is deeply saddening, both intellectually and emotionally, to know these losses are occurring.

It is curious to think about why people grieve. When a close loved one is lost, the feeling is physical. It is such intense emotion that it sweeps all else away. Yet, we know that people are dying all the time around the world, of hunger, disease, violence, and it has almost no emotional effect on most people. I think grief has deep evolutionary roots and leads to people protecting those who are related to them. That is why grief is so physical.

Little evolutionary advantage has existed for our species to protecting other species from extinction, just as there has been little evolutionary advantage to protect people we do not know well. Grief over loss of other species is intellectually driven emotion. Still, it is grief.

Utilitarian arguments for conserving diversity are good ones; species are the glue that holds ecosystems together. The next cure for cancer or some other disease may be found in an exotic organism or in the mold that grows in the dirt under your feet. Still, someday we could cure cancer some other way or find replacement species to keep ecosystems working in ways that provide benefits to humans. The ability to engineer ecological systems to perform functions for humanity does not, in my mind, make the extinctions acceptable.