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Endangered species: Why Bother Part 2

© Kate Staron

Last month we discussed two main reasons why everyone should bother helping endangered species. Both Economic and medical reasons abound for helping them. But there are other reasons as well. The first is ecologically, how plants and animals, including man relate to one another, second is the social responsibility we have to our world, and the third is a much more immediate response of aesthetics.

Ecological Reasons:

Plants and animals rely on each other for survival. A wolf eats a deer that eats leaves, that gather food from light. A wolf cannot eat the leaves to get food and the deer cannot get food from light. Without the deer the wolves would die and without the plants, the deer would die. Now a wolf may be able to switch to rabbit and the deer may be able to switch to grass, but many animals get most of their food from one type of source. The panda eats bamboo almost exclusively, and monarch caterpillar only eat milkweed, and roost only in certain trees in Mexico. Take away the bamboo and there will be no pandas. Take away the milkweed or Mexican trees and there will be no Monarch butterflies.

But what if you take away the panda? The bamboo may overtake the area, choking out other plants and killing off the small insects, reptiles and mammals that eat the plants the bamboo is choking out. Many of those animals may not be able to digest the bamboo. So the bamboo takes over so nothing is left but bamboo. No plants for the insect that the reptile ate. No reptiles for the small mammals to eat and finally nothing left for the predator of the small mammal, all because the panda disappeared.

Now this idea was just that. It could happen, or the bamboo might just grow normally, leaving the other plants alone. But when the food chain/web changes due to the impacts of man there is always the possibility that some thing like this may occur. Any species that creates major ecological effects if it is lost is called a keystone species. Scientists have made guesses as to what species are keystone species, but often we can't be sure until the species is lost and by then it is too late.

Social Responsibility:

Better known as ‘If you broke it, you fix it.' Much of the decline we see in animal and plant populations are a direct result of building cities, using pesticides, herbicides, or releasing toxic waste into the environment.