http://www.time.com/time/video/player/0,32068,1549187328001_2111411,00.html
This is great news. I've been to Indonesia (Borneo) before, so beautiful. Spectacular. These poaching rules ought to be extremely serious, in all nations, and penalties and extensive jail time must be enforced 100% of the time.
Some thoughts also come to mind protecting biodiversity:
(1) Animals are fascinating, and our brothers and cousins on this planet. (I.e., saving them for their own sake is the right thing to do.)
(2) Many species/plants hold medical uses and cures for human disease. Many, maybe most, of these uses and cures have yet to be discovered. (I.e., saving other species helps save us.)
(3) Some species, such as frogs, are 'indicator species.' Defined: 'A species whose presence, absence, or relative well-being in a given environment is indicative of the health of its ecosystem as a whole.'
By extension, loss of species is indicative of the relative non-well-being of the ecosystem as a whole. How many species can we lose until our turn approaches on the gangplank? (I.e., saving other species helps save us.)
This is great news. I've been to Indonesia (Borneo) before, so beautiful. Spectacular. These poaching rules ought to be extremely serious, in all nations, and penalties and extensive jail time must be enforced 100% of the time.
Some thoughts also come to mind protecting biodiversity:
(1) Animals are fascinating, and our brothers and cousins on this planet. (I.e., saving them for their own sake is the right thing to do.)
(2) Many species/plants hold medical uses and cures for human disease. Many, maybe most, of these uses and cures have yet to be discovered. (I.e., saving other species helps save us.)
(3) Some species, such as frogs, are 'indicator species.' Defined: 'A species whose presence, absence, or relative well-being in a given environment is indicative of the health of its ecosystem as a whole.'
By extension, loss of species is indicative of the relative non-well-being of the ecosystem as a whole. How many species can we lose until our turn approaches on the gangplank? (I.e., saving other species helps save us.)
(4) Removing a single species can profoundly and adversely affect the entire ecosystem (E.g., removing predator = bad for system http://today.duke.edu/2001/11/guri1101.html ; http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/awetzler/wolves_good_for_antelopes_for.html ). This of course relates to #2 also. There's the removal by people of an island's predator - which people thought was a good idea. But the monkey population exploded, the monkeys started overeating tree fruit, bird populations went down, vegetative cover went down, and the whole ecosystem was moving toward collapse - just because man would be clever. "Trophic cascade." See first link above.
Better, as John Muir said, is to realize, "When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it
hitched to everything else in the Universe." Better to respect the functioning of our harmonious system as vigilantly and honestly as possible. Let's keep it whole, let's keep it functional. Or consider, for example, an equal folly, such as thinking we could remove certain atoms from a molecule, and expect it to function the same.
(I.e., saving other species helps save us.)
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