#extinc

Excerpt from this Grist piece:

The report largely frames this impending loss of biodiversity in terms of the impact it will have on humans, such as the disappearance of medicines, fuels, and crucial crops. Andrew Deutz, director of international government relations for The Nature Conservancy, contends that we got to this point because “our economic model doesn’t value the things nature provides for free, even though they’re essential for life.”

But land use expert Linus Blomqvist, of the Breakthrough Institute, argues that keeping consequences human-centered can be a limitation in assessing the value of various species. “I think it would be hard to argue that we’d materially suffer if there were no tigers, at least in any substantial way,” he said. “But society still finds lots of reasons to conserve tigers — for cultural and ecological reasons, and spiritual and aesthetic appreciation of wildlife.”

In other words, Earth could lose a lot of species and humans would still be fine — but that’s not a reason to allow biodiversity to collapse. Rich, healthy ecosystems should be allowed to exist for reasons independent of their economic value to humans.

But just to give so-called “unnecessary” species their fair due, some animals’ ecological value becomes clearer after they’re actively protected, because they’re considered an “umbrella species.” Tigers, for example, need huge, untouched spaces to thrive — as many as tens of thousands of square kilometers of forest and grassland and what have you — and therefore efforts to protect them can end up conserving the many other living things within those vast habitats.

‘ i find over the course of our human existence, one thing consists of consistence - and it's that we're ALL battling fear. ’

MOONSPELL 2015