Why is it worthwhile for people to save plant and animal species that are endangered?

Question

Why is it worthwhile for people to save plant and animal species that are endangered?

Answer 1

How would you feel when your grandchildren ask you to tell a story and you tell them a story about a tiger and they ask what is a tiger like and you cannot show it to them (even in a zoo)? Would you be embarassed with their next question or would you just shrug it off? If you are the one who shrugs it off then conversation is not for you. If you are the embarassed, then this scenario is good enough for you. :D

Answer 2

did you ever think maybe the planet is forever evolving and maybe, just maybe, some species on the planet need to evolve also?

some disappear while others take a stronger foothold and populate a given area until something else comes along to push that species aside...or maybe disease wipes out an entire culture/society in order that the environment can make necessary adjustments to survive in the future...

think about it.

Answer 3

We humans are part of the worlds Eco systems and depend on them for our survival

just because you cannot see the connection or the importance does not make it any less

some people say they don`t like mosquitoes .lets kill them all

Well they tried that on the banks of the Danube and all of the life in the wood disappeared,the mosquito's being near the bottom of the food chains of many animals

just think what all eats mosquito's and their larvae

birds ,toads ,frogs ,lizards ,fish ,other insects like dragon flies,then think what all eats those things ,foxes,other birds,weasels,snakes,etc.

and then what eats all who eats them .

Now with the bees disappearing in many places there are huge problems with crops not being pollinated .

Endangered species also play their parts ,in eco systems that have been fine tuned for millions of years .

the more species become endangered ,the more endangered we will become our selves .Because we are on the top .

Apart from that what kind of world do you want the children to inherit???

Our generation and the ones before us have managed to destroy more in a hundred years that all of Humanity in the history of the planet

Somewhere along the line should be the sense of responsibility

Are we guardians of the lands we occupy during our life time and during the seconds of the lands existence ,as Native Americans believe ,(they do not think of themselves as owners )

But we do ,

so do we have the right to wipe it all out in the brief moment that we are here or is the land also meant for those who come after?????????

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But could we save animals even if we wanted to and for how long??

LOSS OF HABITAT & EXTINCTION

Of the earth's estimated 10 million species, 300,000 have vanished in the past 50 years. each years, 3,000 to 30,000 species become extinct.

A lot of human activity is speeding that up since we tend to overpower all the other species in one way or another.

Some reasons why animals are being wiped out ,in the forests are:

The hunting of exotic species for the consumer market

only about 10% of the animals caught survive

The hunting of animals for food by settlers

Forest fires ,that have started because of slash and burning of forest ,to clear the land for farming, had gotten out of control

The loss of Habitat because the conditions have changed ,e.g less humidity because of the surrounding farmlands ,or over pumping of rivers for human use(farming and utility)

Because of contamination of the waters ,

Expanding farming ,that has to keep pace with the expanding populations are very strong forces that encroach upon the rainforest's,

clearing them for farming and settlement areas .

In Mexico is a famous jungle that the Media has been trying to save for years

the Naturalists ,and the government ,keep watch .laws are made for protection the wild and to forbid logging.

TV put out a series of documentaries

there are campaigns in the News papers

and all of this has not made the slightest difference

Rainforest's always are in third world countries and always in third world countries corruption and the need for money s highest

The jungle gets smaller by the day

more and more farmers move in .and burn the trees

It is an impossible situation

as long as there is poverty in these regions the destruction will continue

And the Animals will continue to be trapped ,as long as people keep buying the exotic animals

we must look for ways to improve economic situations on the edges of Nature .

The only way to preserve the forest is to develop Eco tourism under strict control that has limited access ,and use the local people in the concept as guides ,hotel staff and get them to start home industries of artifacts .

Eco tourism is the only concept that profits by a healthy back ground with out harming it

Trees are coming down all the time ,

in My town trucks loaded with huge logs of exotic timber leave the mountains with permits bought from corrupt officials almost nightly

We can only guess at the exact amount but from my house we can see many bare patches on the mountains and the river is constantly muddy in the last 3 years ,because topsoils, without the protection of the forests , is washed into the rivers ,

This is just one place and this is happening all over Mexico ,the Market for the wood being the USA.

The Indians or local people would cut everything down and burn the forest to replace it with harmful short term farming killing the soil in no time.

CLIMATE CHANGE

And now many animals are becoming sick because of changes in temperature ,And Big changes at micro biotic levels that affects all the follows in the food chains ,first the insects so much follows the insects in the food chains ,that we can expect a lot of changes in the environment .

Vital links are disappearing affecting other species further along in the chain

90% of the feral (wild) bee population in the United States has died out.

Recent studies in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands have shown that bee diversity is down 80 percent in the sites researched, and that "bee species are declining or have become extinct in Britain." The studies also revealed that the numbers of wildflowers that depend on pollination have dropped by 70 percent.

If bees continue to die off so would the crops they support and with that would ensue major economic disruption and possibly famine.

Bees are not the only pollinators but if these things are happening to bees we can bet on it that other insects are also in trouble ,on top of this many people are spraying for mosquito`s ,with drastic effects .

only time will tell what is in store for us ,and that time is running now .

everything is happening so fast it is not possible to monitor events any more

Eco tourism,is one way

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;...

Private game reserves is another

Stricter hunting laws ,not totally effective

Don`t buy animals products works in Europe

people cannot walk the streets wearing fur coats anymore they will be accosted by the public.

But many countries do not have the same sentiments

in Mexico ,China ,India ,USA people buy exotic pets or exotic medicines often for aphrodisiacs

there is also a large trade in exotic plants.

governments are getting stricter but they cannot be everywhere ,and the demand will buy at any price this is a big temptation for the traders .

In the end the most effective way is education starting from kinder garden teaching kids to love and respect nature and showing them the beauty ,and importance of the Environment to our own existence.

But it will still be downhill for the Natural world ,Now that global warming has joined up.

Answer 4

The code words are : biodiversity and curiosity.

biodiversity means that as species disappear the complete ecology becomes more fragile, and can crash, each species is important for the maintenance of a viable ecosystem. so by preserving endangered species we help conserve the ecosystem in which we live, and could not survive without.

It's like a set of dominos, that are arranged so once the first falls, all the others follow, we never know which dominoe will start a landslide of extinctions.

biodiversity also means that lost species might contain something that could become useful, but once they are lost we will never know about it.

Curiosity is our interest in the many species there are, and each lost species is like a lost treasure

Answer 5

Whether we accept the position or not, we are stewards of the planet.  From the clinical perspective, animals can serve as bioindicators of the environment, providing humans with a global alarm clock that tells us conditions are degrading, our own lifestyles, our very lifes, may be imperiled.

From the scientific and land managers perspective, the genetic material that has taken 10's of thousands or millions of years to develop is gone forever.  It may indicate that the management of an area is soft and lacks vision.  Acquiring habitat and habitat links is critical for allowing ecological island populations to exchange genetic material to keep the remaining populations viable.

And in the big picture, you'll be able to look St. Peter in the eye, to say, "I tried," to which he may well respond, "Not hard enough."

It says something about us as a species if we don't try.  Some species would leave the planet within our lifetimes without our influence, but most would not.  Even zoos and museums contributed to extinctions in the 19th and 20th centuries, trying to get a species in their collection before it vanished.  But sometimes we try to save the condor, or the bald eagle, or some plant 98% of the population never heard of.  We do it because of the interrelationships, the lack of complete understanding of those relationships, and because we should.