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Response to a question

about “2007 Red List-Extinction Crisis Escalates”

by Harry Noyes

When a conservation colleague saw a report on the global extinction crisis, she asked several of her friends these questions: “It occurred to me to tell local leaders about this, but how can people act locally when they don’t know what this has to do with their own county or region? Do we know enough about endangered, threatened, and almost extinct species in our region to make this information local? If not, why not? And how can we change that? If so, can we piggyback on this to get some more citizens involved and to inform our public officials and elected folk?” Here is my response:

In my experience the biggest challenge here is not to inform people about endangered species (they already know, sort of) but to make them care. Too many respond, "Good. The sooner those damned animals are all dead, the sooner the feds and the tree-huggers will leave us alone to do what's really important... turning everything on the planet into cash."

Our challenge is to show how endangerment of plant/animal species constitutes a physical threat to local people and their children. And that's difficult, not because it isn't true but because the most powerful arguments are too subtle, sophisticated and far away to move most local people.

There are global mineral cycles that could be disrupted with catastrophic results if certain small creatures went extinct (or if they exploded in population because their predators went extinct). But people either cannot grasp the science or refuse to believe anything that awful can occur in their lifetimes.

On the other hand, stories that are easy to grasp, while abundant, are rarely local. In some ways the blessings of America ARE the curse of America...our environment is being degraded but it is much healthier than a lot of places and that makes it really hard to sell people on the existence of a problem.

Even American stories may be of little interest if they are in another state. A great ecology story relates to fishers, a weasel relative that lives in the Pacific Northwest. About 1900, fishers were extirpated. Result: almost a collapse of the lumber industry. Say what? It seems fishers are about the only predators that eat porcupines. No fishers = too many porcupines = lots of girdled trees. We had to import Canadian fishers to restore the population and save the timber. Another example: lack of sea otters causes house destruction on the Pacific Coast. How? Otters eat sea urchins. No otters = urchin explosions. Urchins eat kelp holdfasts, destroying kelp forests that attenuate wave action, allowing rough waters to erode beaches and undermine sea cliffs. But how many Texans care?

Truly local stories seem to have less direct impact on people and thus elicit shrugs. E.g., why do we have too many deer and coyotes? Answer: we killed off Texas wolves and decimated the cougar and bear populations. But just try selling that to the scaredy-cat wimps who now live in the "Wild West"!

One local argument that is effective (but doesn't directly involve an endangered species) is pointing out how much money free-tail bats save Texas farmers with their free pest-control services. Likewise, we can argue that snakes save money and lives by controlling rodent populations. But again, that doesn't directly relate to animals listed as endangered locally.

Our endangered species are mostly cave invertebrates and salamanders (bring them up and watch people either curse or yawn) and birds (best argument here is ecotourism statistics). As for overseas species, there is one powerful local connector: medicine. (This may be why Americans seem to care more about the rainforest than they do their own wetlands.) Anyone who has survived Hodgkins disease or lymphoma, or has a loved one who did, may owe that survival to a drug from the rosy periwinkle, an endangered Madagascar plant. One of the rainforest groups ran a wonderful ad a few years back that said. "Got cancer? Better hope the drug to cure it is in here" (followed by a photo of intact jungle) "and wasn't in here" (photo of clearcut). I also recommend the movie "Medicine Man" with Sean Connery that makes the same point.

I think all we can is keep hammering away with stories like this, educating as many people as we can and never giving up. But frankly, it's a slow, tough slog. A faster, wider road to selling conservation locally is demonstrating the profitability of intact habitat (water conservation/quality, air purification, soil conservation, ecotourism and other wilderness recreation, storm attenuation, etc.), rather than anything related directly to species endangerment.

I don't see any benefit in approaching local politicians or business leaders about endangered species per se under current circumstances. (I actually did raise these issues with my Congressman some years ago and all I got was a bunch of bull about how the Endangered Species Act had totally stopped all economic growth in South Central Texas! If only he had been right!!!)