Would you be able to rally behind the dung beetle as the face of endangered species? Highly unlikely. But you should. The dung beetle, other insects and many plants that are on the endangered species list (or didn't make the cut) could have a much more drastic effect if they were extinct than the poster child of the program, the polar bear.
Sure, the polar bear may be seen as smart, cuddly and one of the animals the world should save. This is true, but if the polar bear is gone, the only thing we lose is some eye candy. (Don't get me wrong, I highly support the movement to save the polar bear, but you'll see my point soon).
But if the dung beetle or insects like it either don't make it onto the endangered species list or make it on but don't get protected and become extinct, a drastic result will occur. The dung beetle, Sacha Spector's favorite animal, has a very important role to play in the world. (Sacha is the head of the invertebrate program at the Museum of Natural History). They roll up the feces of other animals, and bury it in the soil. This spreads seeds into the Earth and removes the feces from the reach of disease-carrying insects like flies. If the dung beetle becomes extinct, a lot of plants won't be able to reproduce and animals (including humans) would become a major target for diseases that may or may not have a cure.
Which brings me to the next "little guy." These are the members of the plant world who are becoming extinct due to expansions of cities, deforestation or natural causes. Many plants in the rainforest haven't even been documented yet, or studied. These plants may hold the cure to many of life's diseases. Sacha explains this because these animals don't have the brains or the brawn to fight off the surrounding environment like the much larger vertebrates. Plants (and insects) have to come up with natural defense mechanisms that will protect them. This is where we get a lot of our medicines, and there are still many diseases out there that need to be cured. So, all in all, not only are practices like deforestation destroy habitats and cause global warming, but they are taking away the opportunity for a better future where diseases like AIDS can be cured.
In the article where I started my research on this topic (http://www.newsweek.com/id/139455), there was an analogy that I loved. The ecosystem is like an airplane. An airplane can fly with losing a couple of insignificant parts, but if it loses too many or if a vital part is gone, the airplane will crash. The same is true for an ecosystem, but with species instead of parts of the plane. So let's try and preserve 99% of our world's animals in the invertebrates and the plant kingdom in order to save our ecosystem from crashing into the ground.
Thanks for reading and please comment/rate.
You are rolling a lot together under the heading of climate change.
I agree that we should care for eco systems and that we should not deforest rain forests.
But human impacts on ecosystems have a lot more to do with over-population then they have to do with climate change.
The climate is never constant. Over the course of human existence and for eons before that it has changed dramatically. It will continue to change. It will get much hotter like it has been in the past. It will get muich colder like it has been in the past. The content of the atmosphere may change radically to the point where it is poisonous like it has in the past.
But there is not a shred of evidence that humans have caused any climate change and I disagree with tying it together with other things that clearly are human impacts like deforestation. When we tie these things together we end up focusing on the wrong things and trying to control things over which we have nop control and not controlling things which we could control.
You are right that this blog doesn't really have much to do with the climate crisis. I was planning on tying it back to global warming more, but ran out of time and I felt that it did a good enough job by itself. Plus, the climate crisis blogs get the most reads on my blog so I figured it would be best to just keep it like this and get the message out.
And you are also right in thinking that this is mainly caused by overpopulation, which is definitely true. We need more land so we knock down habitats. However, the recent ethanol bust has caused a dramatic increase in the loss of Brazilian rainforests. Rainforests and any forests are the worlds largest storage centers for CO2 and when we knock them down, we send more CO2 into the air. Deforestation is one of the highest polluters of our world. And even if you don't believe in global warming (I've thrown so much evidence at you but you still say it is a cycle, which could be true, but you still should realize that we need to stop our way of life, either for the reason of global warming or one of the other thousand reasons), you should want us to retain these storage centers not only for the diversity of wildlife, but because CO2 in the air causes acid rain. Acid rain depletes nutrition in the soil, kills many plants, which kill many animals because of the food chain.
It is poor policy to continue our path of destruction in the world, and we need to stop it for the sake of our children, our animals and the world itself. Even if you don't believe it, an overwhelming majority do believe it and I would rather be caught on the wrong side towards global warming than on the other side. Now is the time that we have to act, before it is too late.
http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/nharris1032