What does wildlife conservation mean, these days?

[reddread]

I cant quite get a handle on what various popular concerns mean these days in terms of animal rights, abuse and conservation.
Maybe wildlife isnt the proper term for their particular goals.
I did have the special priviledge of learning what I could from Ray Dasmann in a few courses, and almost tripped to Malawi to study Hippoes with Ken Norris. For better or for worse, his health did not permit that expedition, and I am quite certain my survival depended on me not going there.
If it werent a hippo chewing me to bits, it would have been a lovely green or black snake giving me my last lecture me on LD50.

Wild animals are truly a gift to us all. We CANNOT sustain these creatures with captive propogation.
We can continue looking at shadows of an extinct species for a while, but we cannot recreate what we have destroyed.
Let us not go blithely into some low level darkness. Allow me to be one of the voices that said, albeit, far too late-
those genetic resources are worth more than Apple, Google, Lockheed Martin, the US GDP and both parties put together.

and that is not enough, is it?

What would it take, to preserve what is left of nature's bounty?

[Xipe Totec]

1. Taxidermy?

[reddread]

3. thank you

I do believe it is far too late, and if that is what you implied I sadly must agree.

[Scootaloo]

4. I feel bad for laughing, but that was grade-A snark

[reddread]

7. i think that entirely depends

on your point of view.
I detected none.

[Xipe Totec]

19. Gallows humor - Laughing to keep from crying. nt

[haikugal]

2. Everything and everybody has been commodified.

It would take intelligence and a different worldview to change that. It makes me very sad.

[reddread]

5. thanks.

there must not be much cash value to solidarity as Democratic posters rend each other here over so much less.

[HereSince1628]

6. Conservation means if you want to save raptors, you must first save the vole.

Modern conservation means getting people past their love the charismatic megafauna and into caring about the organisms that make biogeochemical cycling happen.

Life on earth probably doesn't need it's lovely megafauna as much it needs the unnoticed purple-bacteria. If you haven't noticed this you should...zoos do not get patrons to donate money to archive genetic stock of the bacteria.

If we lose the muck, the dutiful chemical cycling benthos, we lose LIFE. Our popular interests are in the wrong place.

[Scootaloo]

9. And to save the vole means to protect the field

And the forest verge next to the field. Which requires protecting that forest, too. And to protect the forest you have to protect the oaks and the blackberries as well as the squirrels and woodpeckers...

[HereSince1628]

10. Yes, that's the common view, but you must also save microscopic fungae and

archeobacters, bacteria, etc.

People really have to get beyond the cute things that populate the world visible to the naked eye, and into the realm of microscopic things that reduce, recycle, and make available for reuse the essential needs of life.

[reddread]

11. all dovetail under the rubric of habitat preservation

but the microscopic details are amazing indeed.

[HereSince1628]

12. Yes, if the habitat argued for protection is properly diverse

much of what humans want saved are things that have aesthetic appeal.

It's really the less than beautiful life in the miserable looking muck that we too often wish to remove from our sensory inputs that actually supports us.

Humans by and large don't really understand what their lives so much depend upon.

[reddread]

13. diverse meaning LARGE

It is extremely human, in America to have little or no understanding.
Hence the need for discussion, and the danger of censorship.
or, for some, the reverse.

[HereSince1628]

14. By diverse I mean composed of multiple things in quite varying different amounts.

as might be measured by the Shannon-Weiner idex. Stuff whose presence is revealled by biotic sampling at -many- levels of resolution, and for the argument I'm making, particularly at the microscopic level.

Life on the planet doesn't much depend upon a thousand or so types of mammals or even tens of thousands of fish. Mammals and fish mostly make their living in similar ways.

The glorious diversity we view desperately depends upon the survival/conservation of organisms that re-cycle essential things like, say oxygen.

The big beautiful stuff we love to see in nature preserves mostly transforms the really essential stuff into not so useful chemical moities that must be worked upon without celebrity.

[reddread]

15. so, diminshing diversity isnt a thing?

because those larger creatures require space to maintain actual diversity.
LARGE QUANTITIES of habitat.
then again, all that could be (will be?) handily superseded by ONE super bug.

[HereSince1628]

16. Of course species extinction is a concern...

it's an indication that the places they live are changing to not support them...

But the problem with popular notions about conservation is that people tend to worry about very limited types of species...like say Pandas or Sea Otters, the cute cuddly appearing things. The functioning of really big, fundamentally essential processes really doesn't depend on Pandas or Sea Otters. Which isn't to say that their absence wouldn't change things...

Humans are causing bio-simplification...loss of big species is part of that and because the species lost are big we notice... but much more essential to life is the functioning of microorganisms, and most people think of microorganisms only in terms of pathogens, which are ok to drive to extinction.

[reddread]

18. it still falls under habitat conservation

i think simplification is causing bio-simplification.
were I to go into detail, were I to even have those details, I could explicitly describe how the environmental threats facing mankind and nature were understood, THIRTY YEARS AGO, and how those threats were sublimated by UC Academic Senates in the mid 80's...
some of this is just too depressing to dig up...
I would ask you to carefully choose- WHICH humans did what.
I am sadddened to say I saw some of them doing just that, right in front of me.
"Interesting times"

global warming? well understood, THIRTY YEARS AGO.
the lying commercial media?
still a mystery to otherwise functional voters, today.

[HereSince1628]

20. and again...IF it's the right sort of habitat

we tend to support habitat of big charismatic things we don't depend upon while over-looking and dismissing the greater importance of tiny things our lives can't continue without.

We worry about cheetahs, while we don't worry much about yeasts and other microscopic fungi

It's not about saving a place so much as it is about saving the life-supporting functions.

But I suspect we are going to do another lap of this if we continue

[reddread]

22. well behind us as long as money rules

money doesnt acknowledge other worths.
I dont blame money.
we are well past the precipice and now little is left but the "I told you so's"

It was always a question of habitat preservation.
money buys an exemption, and now we have none of our own.

[GliderGuider]

17. If we're going to actually do anything we'd better hurry.

There's not much wildlife left to conserve.

[MineralMan]

21. Well, in Minnesota, it means

That I had to run from my car into an Ace Hardware in a major city to escape a wild Tom turkey from attacking me, while trying not to step in Canada goose poop from the dozen pairs on a neighboring lawn. It also means that I got to watch a doe and two spotted fawns walk behind my mother in law's town home, next to some wood duck nest boxes.

And that's in the city. When I'm out fishing, I keep being distracted by bald eagles and loons. Wildlife management varies from place to place, I guess.

[reddread]

23. what, no Northern Pikes leaping your way?

best part of that desolate wilderness right there.
And the first (totally badass) fish I ever caught by my lonesome on the Red River.
I wish like hell to repeat that experience.
(and Im sure those 57 Canadian geese my dog barked at brought their poop all the way from Fresno for you)

[MineralMan]

24. I often fish for Northerns.

Lots of fun. They all get released to grow larger. I've caught a few Muskies, too. Seriously, though, we have wildlife everywhere here. It's easy to forget that's not the case everywhere.

[reddread]

25. PIkes and Muskies are my most favorite of NA fish

and if you look very closely, you will find fish are my favorite things.
hence all the rest.

[Jackpine Radical]

26. My part of WI is still like that.

Turkey, deer, (occasionally) bear, sandhill cranes, pheasant, ruffed grouse, pileated woodpeckers, coyotes, fox, raccoons, etc. around the house. Although we do live in the country, quite a way from the nearest neighbor.

[MineralMan]

27. It's interesting that living in the City of St. Paul,

I've seen all of those except ruffed grouse, pheasants and sandhill cranes right in my neighborhood. A lot of animals have migrated into residential areas due to lack of predation. It's interesting to look out the window and see a pileated woodpecker on the big maple tree in my front yard.