CHAPTER 31 ARE HUMANS CAUSING SPECIES HOLOCAUST? CHAPTER 31: TABLE OF CONTENTS Species Loss Estimates The Sinking Ark The Risks From Species Loss Knowing the Unknowable Discussing Matters with the Conservationists Conclusion Afternote on the Philosophy of Species Species extinction is a key issue for the environmental movement. It is the subject of magazine stories with titles like "Playing Dice with Megadeath," whose sub-title is "The odds are good that we will exterminate half the world's species within the next century." Species "loss" also is the focal point of fundraising for the environmental organizations. Congress is petitioned time and again for large sums of public money to be used directly and indirectly for programs to protect species and for "debt for Nature" swaps. And species preservation was the subject of major dispute among the nations at the "Rio Summit" in June, 1992. The World Wildlife Fund's fundraising letter frames the issue as follows: "Without firing a shot, we may kill one-fifth of all species of life on this planet in the next 10 years." The mass media repeat and amplify this warning. The Washington Post quotes a top Smithsonian official, Thomas Lovejoy, saying that "A potential biological transformation of the planet unequaled perhaps since the disappearance of the dinosaur" is about to occur. And the Post quotes Edward O. Wilson on this being "The folly our descendants are least likely to forgive us." The conservationists bludgeon the federal government for money and action based on their apocalyptic claims. In a fund-raising pitch from the World Wildlife Fund, president Russell E. Train describes in detail how the organization rallied support for reauthorization of the Endangered Species Act. The key element was informing Congress that "some scientists believe that up to 1 million species of life will become extinct by the end of this century" unless governments "do something" about it. "When we talk about the loss of 1 million species," Train says in his letter, "we are talking about a global loss with consequences that science can scarcely begin to predict...The future of the world could be altered drastically if we allow a million species to disappear by the year 2000." The recommendations that leading biologists and ecologists base upon these non-facts (as we shall soon show them to be) are very far-reaching. Edward O. Wilson and Paul Ehrlich actually ask that governments act "to reduce the scale of human activities". More specifically, they want us "to cease `developing' any more relatively undisturbed land" because "Every new shopping center built in the California chaparral...every swamp converted into a rice paddy or shrimp farm means less biodiversity." Science magazine applauds these calls for major governmental policy changes. These proposals -- slamming the brakes on progress -- are many ecologists hope to impose on the nations of the world. This is no small matter. The issue first came to scientific prominence in 1979 with Norman Myers's book The Sinking Ark. It then was brought to an international public and onto the U. S. policy agenda by the 1980 Global 2000 Report to the President. These still are the canonical texts. Unlike the story in chapter 9 about the loss of farmland scare, where the crisis has vanished instead of the farmland, the scare about extinction of species was not quickly extinguished when its statistical basis was shown not to exist in the early 1980s, but instead continued bigger than ever. The Global 2000 forecast extraordinary losses of species between 1980 and 2000. "Extinctions of plant and animal species will increase dramatically. Hundreds of thousands of species -- perhaps as many as 20 percent of all species on earth -- will be irretrievably lost as their habitats vanish, especially in tropical forests," it said. Yet the data on the observed rates of species extinction are wildly at variance with common belief, and do not provide support for the various policies suggested to deal with the purported dangers. Furthermore, recent scientific and technical advances - - especially seed banks and genetic engineering, and perhaps electronic mass-testing of new drugs -- have rendered much less crucial the maintenance of a particular species of plant life in its natural habitat than would have been the case in earlier years. The key questions are: What is the history of species extinction until now? What are the most reasonable forecasts of future extinction? What will be the results of extinctions (including any new species that come to occupy the niches of those extinguished) on species diversity? What will be the economic and non-economic impacts of the expected course of species diversity? Society properly is concerned about possible dangers to species. Individual species, and perhaps all species taken together, constitute a valuable endowment, and we should guard their survival just as we guard our other physical and social assets. But we should strive for as clear and unbiased an understanding as possible in order to make the best possible judgments about how much time and money to spend in guarding them, in a world in which this valuable activity must compete with other valuable activities, including the guarding of valuable aspects of civilization and of human life. SPECIES LOSS ESTIMATES The basic forecast for loss of species comes from Lovejoy: What then is a reasonable estimate of global extinctions by 2000? In the low deforestation case, approximately l5 percent of the planet's species can be expected to be lost. In the high deforestation case, perhaps as much as 20 percent will be lost. This means that of the 3-l0 million species now present on the earth, at least 500,000-600,000 will be extinguished during the next two decades. That statement summarizes a table of Lovejoy's which shows an estimated range of between 437,000 and l,875,000 extinctions out of a present estimated total of 3-l0 million species. The basis of any useful projection must be some body of experience collected under conditions that encompass the expected conditions, or that can reasonably be extrapolated to the expected conditions. But none of Lovejoy's references contain any scientifically-impressive body of experience. The only published source given for his key table is Myers's The Sinking Ark. The Sinking Ark Myers' 1979 summary may be taken as the basic source: As a primitive hunter, man probably proved himself capable of eliminating species, albeit as a relatively rare occurrence. From the year A.D. l600, however, he became able, through advancing technology, to over-hunt animals to extinction in just a few years, and to disrupt extensive environments just as rapidly. Between the years l600 and l900, man eliminated around seventy-five known species, almost all of them mammals and birds--virtually nothing has been established about how many reptiles, amphibians, fishes, invertebrates and plants disappeared. Since l900 man has eliminated around another seventy-five known species--again, almost all of them mammals and birds, with hardly anything known about how many other creatures have faded from the scene. The rate from the year l600 to l900, roughly one species every 4 years, and the rate during most of the present century, about one species per year, are to be compared with a rate of possibly one per l000 years during the "great dying" of the dinosaurs. Since l960, however, when growth in human numbers and human aspirations began to exert greater impact on natural environments, vast territories in several major regions of the world have become so modified as to be cleared of much of their main wildlife. The result is that the extinction rate has certainly soared, though the details mostly remain undocumented. In l974 a gathering of scientists concerned with the problem hazarded a guess that the overall extinction rate among all species, whether known to science or not, could now have reached l00 species per year. [Here Myers refers to Science, l974, pp. 646-647.] Yet even this figure seems low. A single ecological zone, the tropical most forests, is believed to contain between 2 and 5 million species. If present patterns of exploitations persist in tropical moist forests, much virgin forest is likely to have disappeared by the end of the century, and much of the remainder will have been severely degraded. This will cause huge numbers of species to be wiped out... Let us suppose that, as a consequence of this man- handling of natural environments, the final one-quarter of this century witnesses the elimination of l million species--a far from unlikely prospect. This would work out, during the course of 25 years, at an average extinction rate of 40,000 species per year, or rather over l00 species per day. The greatest exploitation pressures will not be directed at tropical forests and other species-rich biomes until towards the end of the period. That is to say, the l990s could see many more species accounted for than the previous several decades. But already the disruptive processes are well underway, and it is not unrealistic to suppose that, right now, at least one species is disappearing each day. By the late l980s we could be facing a situation where one species becomes extinct each hour. We may extract these key points from the above summary quotation: (l) The estimated extinction rate of known species is about one every four years between the years l600 and l900. (2) The estimated rate is about one a year from l900 to the present. No sources are given by Myers for these two estimates. (3) Some scientists (in Myers's words) have "hazarded a guess" that the extinction rate "could now have reached" 100 species per year. That is, the estimate is simply conjecture and is not even a point estimate but rather an upper bound. The source given for the "some scientists" statement is not a scholarly article by an expert but a staff-written news report. It should be noted, however, that the subject of this guess is different than the subject of the estimates in (l) and (2), because the former includes mainly or exclusively birds and mammals whereas the latter includes all species. While this difference implies that (l) and (2) may be too low a basis for estimating the present extinction rate of all species, it also implies that there is even less statistical basis for estimating extinction rates among lesser known species than there is for birds and mammals. (4) This guessed upper limit in (3) of 100 species per year is then increased and used by Myers, and then by Lovejoy, as the basis for the "projections" quoted above. In the Global 2000 Report the language has become "are likely to lead" to the extinction of between l4% and 20% of all species before the year 2000. So an upper limit for the present that is pure guesswork has become the basis of a forecast for the future which has been published in newspapers to be read by tens or hundreds of millions of people and understood as a scientific statement. The two historical rates stated by Myers, together with the yearly rates implied by Lovejoy's estimates, are plotted together in Figure 31-1. It is clear that without explicitly bringing into consideration some additional force, one could extrapolate almost any rate one chooses for the year 2000, and the Lovejoy extrapolation would have no better claim to belief than a rate that is, say, one hundredth as large. Looking at the two historical points alone, many forecasters would be likely to project a rate much closer to the past than to Lovejoy's, on the basis of the common wisdom that in the absence of additional information, the best first approximation for a variable tomorrow is its value today, and the best second approximation is that the variable will change at the same rate in the future that it has in the past. The uncertainty about the definition of species only adds to the confusion. Figure 31-1 -- Species Extinction Projected change in the amount of tropical forests implicitly underlies the difference between past and projected species-loss rates in Lovejoy's diagram. But to connect this element logically, there must be systematic evidence relating an amount of tropical forest removed to a rate of species reduction. Against the theory, Ariel Lugo details the situation in Puerto Rico, where "human activity reduced the area of primary forests by 99%, but, because of coffee shade and secondary forests, forest cover was never below 10 to 15%. This massive forest conversion did not lead to a correspondingly massive species extinction, certainly nowhere near the 50% alluded to by Myers." All this implies that there is no basis to prefer as an estimate a) Lovejoy's huge projected rates of extinction, rather than b) very modest rates continuing about the same as in the past. And on this estimate depends the decision to implement or not to implement large-scale national policies. (I repeat, I do not suggest that no protection policies should be undertaken. Rather, I suggest that other sorts of data to estimate extinction rates are needed as the basis for policy decisions.) During the 1980s there was increasing recognition that the rate of species loss really is not known. As of 1989 Myers wrote, "Regrettably we have no way of knowing the actual current rate of extinction in tropical forests, nor can we even make an accurate guess." And Paul Colinvaux refers to the extinctions as "incalculable." One would think that this absence of knowledge would make anyone leery about estimating future extinctions. Nevertheless, Myers continues, "We can make substantive assessments by looking at species numbers before deforestation and then applying the analytical techniques of biogeography...According to the theory of island biogeography, we can realistically reckon that when a habitat has lost 90% of its extent, it has lost half of its species." This is mere speculation, however. And as noted above, Lugo found disconfirming evidence in Puerto Rico. Yet the conservationists go right on pressing for expensive policies on the unproven assumption that the number of species being extinguished is huge. It is hard to grasp the abstraction of all species taken together, so some data on birds may be useful in fixing one's thoughts. Although we cannot know which then-unknown species were made extinct, there is some information on bird species, which have long been rather well-known. In 1600 there were estimated to be 8,184 species of birds in the world. As of the 1960s, 94 of them were thought to be extinct, only six of which had ever lived in North America either exclusively or on that continent and elsewhere, and not all in the U. S. And as of the 1960s there were estimated to be 400 species in the world that did not exist in 1600 - a net gain of about 300 species during the period of vast population growth and settlement of land. Easterbrook, Gregg, A Moment on the Earth (New York: Viking, 1995). Easterbrook (1995, p. 82) obtained data from the National Audubon Society on trends since 1966 in the numbers of birds of the species Rachel Carson saw as going extinct: "Scorecard: of 40 birds Carson said might by now be extinct or nearly so, 19 have stable populations, 14 have increasing populations, and seven are declining". The species that are supposedly little known but at great risk of extinction are insects. But recent research on fossils has shown "low rates of extinction" for insects over millions of years, which implies that insects are very resistant to extinction. This squares with recent experience of how hard it is to extinguish an insect such as the mosquito or the Mediterranean fruit fly ("Medfly") in California. Starting in the early 1980s I published the above critical analysis of the standard extinction estimates. For several years these criticisms produced no response at all. But then in response to questions that I and others raised, the "official" IUCN (the World Conservation Union) commissioned a book edited by Whitmore and Sayer to inquire into the extent of extinctions. The results of that project must be considered amazing. All the authors - the very conservation biologists who have been most alarmed by the threat of species die-offs - continue to be concerned about the rate of extinction. Nevertheless, they confirm the central assertion; all agree that the rate of known extinctions has been and continues to be very low. I will tax your patience with lengthy quotations (with emphasis supplied) documenting the consensus that there is no evidence of massive or increasing rates of species extinction, because this testimony from the conservation biologists themselves is especially convincing; furthermore, if only shorter quotes were presented, the skeptical reader might worry that the quotes were taken out of context. (Even so, the skeptic may want to check the original texts to see that the quotations fairly represent the gist of the the authors' arguments.) On the subject of the estimated rates: ...60 birds and mammals are known to have become extinct between 1900 and 1950. It is a commonplace that forests of the eastern United States were reduced over two centuries to fragments totalling 1-2% of their original extent, and that during this destruction, only three forest birds went extinct -- the Carolina parakeet (Conuropsis carolinensis), the ivory-billed woodpecker (Campephilus principalis principalis), and the passenger pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius). Although deforestation certainly contributed to the decline of all three species, it was probably not critical for the pigeon or the parakeet (Greenway, 1967). Why, then, would one predict massive extinction from similar destruction of tropical forest? IUCN, together with the World Conservation Monitoring Centre, has amassed large volumes of data from specialists around the world relating to species decline, and it would seem sensible to compare these more empirical data with the global extinction estimates. In fact, these and other data indicate that the number of recorded extinctions for both plants and animals is very small... Known extinction rates are very low. Reasonably good data exist only for mammals and birds, and the current rate of extinction is about one species per year (Reid and Miller, 1989). If other taxa were to exhibit the same liability to extinction as mammals and birds (as some authors suggest, although others would dispute this), then, if the total number of species in the world is, say, 30 million, the annual rate of extinction would be some 2300 species per year. This is a very significant and disturbing number, but it is much less than most estimates given over the last decade. ... if we assume that today's tropical forests occupy only about 80% of the area they did in the 1830s, it must be assumed that during this contraction, very large numbers of species have been lost in some areas. Yet surprisingly there is no clear-cut evidence for this.... Despite extensive enquiries we have been unable to obtain conclusive evidence to support the suggestion that massive extinctions have taken place in recent times as Myers and others have suggested. On the contrary, work on projects such as Flora Meso- Americana has, at least in some cases, revealed an increase in abundance in many species (Blackmore, pers. comm. 1991). An exceptional and much quoted situation is described by Gentry (1986) who reports the quite dramatic level of evolution in situ in the Centinela ridge in the foothills of the Ecuadorian Andes where he found that at least 38 and probably as many as 90 species (10% of the total flora of the ridge) were endemic to the `unprepossessing ridge'. However, the last patches of forest were cleared subsequent to his last visit and `its prospective 90 new species have already passed into botanical history', or so it was assumed. Subsequently, Dodson and Gentry (1991) modified this to say that an undetermined number of species at Centinela are apparently extinct, following brief visits to other areas such as Lita where up to 11 of the species previously considered extinct were refound, and at Poza Honda near La Mana where six were rediscovered. ... actual extinctions remain low...As Greuter (1991) aptly comments, `Many endangered species appear to have either an almost miraculous capacity for survival, or a guardian angel is watching over their destiny! This means that it is not too late to attempt to protect the Mediterranean flora as a whole, while still identifying appropriate priorities with regard to the goals and means of conservation.' ... the group of zoologists could not find a single known animal species which could be properly declared as extinct, in spite of the massive reduction in area and fragmentation of their habitats in the past decades and centuries of intensive human activity. A second list of over 120 lesser-known animal species, some of which may later be included as threatened, show no species considered extinct; and the older Brazilian list of threatened plants, presently under revision, also indicated no species as extinct (Cavalcanti, 1981). Closer examination of the existing data on both well- and little-known groups, however, supports the affirmation that little or no species extinction has yet occurred (though some may be in very fragile persistence) in the Atlantic forests. Indeed, an appreciable number of species considered extinct 20 years ago, including several birds and six butterflies, have been rediscovered more recently. And here are some comments from that volume on the lack of any solid basis for estimation: ...How large is the loss of species likely to be? Although the loss of species may rank among the most significant environmental problems of our time, relatively few attempts have been made to rigorously assess its likely magnitude. It is impossible to estimate even approximately how many unrecorded species may have become extinct. While better knowledge of extinction rates can clearly improve the design of public policies, it is equally apparent that estimates of global extinction rates are fraught with imprecision. We do not yet know how many species exist, even to within an order of magnitude. ...the literature addressing this phenomenon is relatively small... Efforts to clarify the magnitude of the extinction crisis and the steps that can be taken to defuse the crisis could considerably expand the financial and political support for actions to confront what is indisputably the most serious issue that the field of ecology faces, and arguably the most serious issue faced by humankind today. The best tool available to estimate species extinction rates is the use of species-area curves. ... This approach has formed the basis for almost all current estimates of species extinction rates. There are many reasons why recorded extinctions do not match the predictions and extrapolations that are frequently published... This specific observation from the Foreword to that volume is illuminating: The coastal forests of Brazil have been reduced in area as severely as any tropical forest type in the world. According to calculation, this should have led to considerable species loss. Yet no known species of its old, largely endemic, fauna can be regarded as extinct. (Holdgate, Martin W., "Foreword", pp. xvi- xix in Whitmore and Sayer), p. xvii THE RISKS FROM SPECIES LOSS Many biologists agree that the extinction numbers are quite uncertain. But they go on to say the numbers do not matter scientifically. The policy implications would be the same, they say, even if the numbers were different even by several orders of magnitude. But if so, why mention any numbers at all? The answer, quite clearly, is that these numbers do matter in one important way: they have the power to frighten the public in a fashion that smaller numbers would not. I find no scientific justification for such use of numbers. One window on the risks we run from species loss is to look backwards and wonder: What kinds of species may have been extinguished when the settlers clear-cut the Middle West of the United States? Could we be much the poorer now for their loss? Obviously we do not know the answers. But it seems hard to even imagine that we would be enormously better off with the persistence of any hypothetical species? This casts some doubt on the economic value of species that might be lost elsewhere. Ecologists draw far-reaching conclusions and call for strong actions based on their beliefs about the rate of species extinction. One "plan to protect North American biodiversity calls for nothing less than resettling the entire continent." ...the project calls for a network of wilderness reserves, human buffer zones, and wildlife corridors stretching across huge tracts of land - hundreds of millions of acres, as much as half of the continent...the long-term goal of the Wildlands Project is nothing less than a transformation of America from a place where 4.7% of the land is wilderness to an archipelago of human-inhabited islands surrounded by natural areas...The science is pointing in this direction largely because of a growing conviction among conservation biologists and other scientists that native species, especially big carnivores such as wolves, grizzly bears, and mountain lions, need enormous amounts of space to survive. Giving animals that space can be viewed as the logical extension of laws such as the Endangered Species Act, which mandates that biodiversity must be saved no matter what the cost. The framers of the plan want to remove roads, because they "expose animals to the hazards of traffic" and "act as funnels for exotic plants." A justification of the plan is to "prevent a mass extinction event". The boosters of this plan are not "extremists"; rather, a person such as Edward Wilson calls himself an "enthusiastic supporter." The biologists want us to write a blank check, as society would never do for anything else. Nobody would go to Congress and ask for money to give food to hungry children, or put guard rails on highways, without any idea about how many people are at risk. The biologists justify behaving differently in this case on the grounds that we who are non-biologists cannot understand these matters. Some have said: But was not Rachel Carson's Silent Spring an important force for good even though it exaggerated? Maybe so. But the books are not yet closed on the indirect and long-run consequences of ill-founded concerns about environmental dangers. And it seems to me that, without some very special justification, there is a strong presumption in favor of stating the facts as best we know them, especially in a scientific context, rather than in any manipulation of the data no matter how well-intended. Still, the question exists: How should decisions be made, and sound policies formulated, with respect to the danger of species extinction? I do not offer a comprehensive answer. It is clear that we cannot simply save all species at any cost, any more than we can save all human lives at any cost. Certainly we must make some informed estimates about the present and future social value of species that might be lost, just as we must estimate the value of human life in order to choose rational policies about public health care services, such as hospitals and surgery. And just as with human life, valuing species relative to other social goods will not be easy, especially because we must put values on some species that we do not even know about. But the job must be done somehow. We must also try to get more reliable information about the number of species that might be lost with various forest changes. This is a very tough task, too. Lastly, any policy analysis concerning species loss must explicitly evaluate the total cost of protective actions -- for example, the cost of not logging or not building roads in an area. And such a total cost estimate must include the long-run indirect costs of reduction in economic growth to a community's education and general advancement. Maintaining the Amazon and other areas in a state of stability might even have counterproductive results for species diversity, according to a recent body of research. Natural disturbances, as long as they are not catastrophic, may lead to environmental disturbance and to consequent isolation of species that may "facilitate ever-increasing divergence," as Colinvaux tells us. Colinvaux goes on to suggest that "the highest species richness will be found not where the climate is stable but rather where environmental disturbance is frequent but not excessive." This is another subtle issue which must be taken into account. KNOWING THE UNKNOWABLE The argument that even though we do not know how many species are being extinguished, we should take steps to protect them, is logically indistinguishable from the argument that although we do not know at what rate the angels dancing on the head of a pin are dying off, we should undertake vast programs to preserve them. And it smacks of the condemnation to death of witches in Salem on the basis of "spectral evidence" by "afflicted" young girls, charges that the accused could not rebut with any conceivable material evidence. (Indeed, the entire story of Salem is sharply reminiscent of various anti-scientific warnings of environmental apocalypse heard today, as Starkey, the author of an excellent book on the witch scare noticed many decades ago. Indeed, the Salem witch incident was inflamed, Starkey notes, by a then- current best-seller, Michael Wigglesworth's Day of Doom. Verily, there is nothing new under the sun with respect to human nature and the vagaries of our mentalities.) Perhaps a more apt analogy is to child abuse or racial discrimination. We know that people exist who might be abused, and that some abuse exists. But in the absence of solid information, it would be folly - and considered entirely unscientific - to say how much. If something is unknowable at present but knowable in principle, then the appropriate thing is to find out. This does not necessarily mean finding out by direct observation only. A solid chain of empirical evidence can lead to a reasonable conclusion. But there must be some reasonable chain of evidence and reasoning. If something is unknowable in principle, at least with contemporary techniques, then there is no warrant for any public actions whatsoever. To assert otherwise is to open the door to public actions and expenditures on behalf of anyone who can generate an exciting and frightening hypothetical scenario. An interesting aspect of the species-preservation issue is that people who refer to themselves as scientists -- for example Paul Ehrlich -- and who even denounce others for their apparent lack of scientific knowledge (as Ehrlich frequently does; see chapter 00 on economists), themselves actively and proudly engage in such non-scientific argumentation. DISCUSSING MATTERS WITH THE CONSERVATIONISTS In articles in the mid-1980s in the well-known New Scientist magazine, in newspapers, in book form, and at conferences, Aaron Wildavsky and I documented the complete absence of evidence for the claim that species extinction is going up rapidly, or even going up at all. No one has disputed our documentation. Nor has anyone adduced any new evidence since then that would demonstrate rapid species extinction. Instead, the biologists who are shouting up the species extinction scam simply ignore the data that falsify their claims of impending doom. Why is there such an enormous gulf in what you hear from the conservationists and what you are reading here? And why is there no interchange between them and their critics? Let's consider some of the possible reasons. 1. In the case of species extinction, as with many other public issues, there is a tendency to focus only upon the bad effects, and to exclude from consideration possible good effects of human activities. For example, Lugo notes that "Because humans have facilitated immigration [of species] and created new environments, exotic species have successfully become established in the Caribbean islands. This has resulted in a general increase in the total inventories of bird and tree species." In tropical Puerto Rico where "human activity reduced the area of primary forests by 99%", as great a reduction as could be imagined, "seven bird species...became extinct after 500 years of human pressure...and...exotic [newly resident] species enlarged the species pool. More land birds have been present on the Island in the 1980s (97 species) than were present in pre- Colombian time (60 species)." Perhaps conservation biologists make mention of the extinctions but not of the newly-resident species because, as Lugo notes, "there is a clear aversion to exotic [newly resident] species by preservationists and biologists (in cases such as predatory mammals and pests, with good reason!)." This aversion to transplanted species may derive from the belief that humankind is somehow artificial and not "natural." Consider the language of Myers, who has played as important a role as any person in raising the alarm about species extinction: "[W]hereas past extinctions have occurred by virtue of natural processes, today the virtually exclusive cause is man." One should distinguish, of course, between the extinction of an indigenous species found nowhere else, and its replacement with a species found elsewhere. But it should be noted that new arrivals from elsewhere often mutate into entire new species. Furthermore, species thought to be lost in one place often pop up years or decades later in the same or another place - even relatively vulnerable species such as the Allocebus lemur of Madagascar where much of the rain forest has been cut; the lemur had not been seen since 1964, but a primalogist went out to find one and did. Another example: The capitate milkvitch flower was found near the city of Afula in Israel in 1993 after not having been seen since 1942. 2. It is difficult to have a sensible and civilized argument with biologists on species extinction. One reason is that they require an almost religious test of fealty, and of credentials -- whether one is a biologist -- before they will consider a person's testimony as relevant. Jared Diamond says: "Our current concern with extinction is sometimes `pooh-poohed' by nonbiologists with the one-liner "Extinction is the natural fate of species." In my view, the understanding of data is not the private province of any discipline, and the background of the analyst should not be a test of the validity of the analysis. As long as being a biologist is a criterion for entering the debate, the issue cannot be said to be debated rationally. Another difficulty is that conservation biologists' goals with respect to species diversity are not easy to understand. Sometimes they emphasize the supposed economic benefits of species diversity. For example, in its widely distributed 1990 fundraising letter (four letters received by my household alone) The World Wildlife Fund asks, "Why should you care about the fate of these forests thousands of miles away?" and answers, "Because not only do they provide food and shelter to at least half the world's species of wildlife, these tropical forests are also the world's largest `pharmaceutical factory' -- the sole source of lifesaving medicines like quinine, man's most potent weapon against malaria. Hundreds of thousands of people owe their lives today to these precious plants, shrubs, and trees. What would we do without them?" Diamond answers similarly: "We need them to produce the oxygen we breathe, absorb the carbon dioxide we exhale, decompose our sewage, provide our food, and maintain the fertility of our soil." But other biologists -- James Quinn and Alan Hastings, for example -- say that "maximizing total species diversity is rarely if ever the principal objective of conservation strategies. Other aesthetic, resource preservation, and recreational values are often more important." And Lovejoy says, most inclusively: What I'm talking about is rather the elusive goal of defining the minimum size [of habitat] needed to maintain the characteristic diversity of an ecosystem over time. In other words, I think the goals of conservation aren't simply to protect the full array of plant and animal species on the planet, but rather also to protect them in in their natural associations so that the relationships between species are preserved and the evolutionary and ecological processes are protected. This vagueness of goals makes it very difficulty to compare the worth of a species-saving activity against another value. What are the relative worths of maintaining the habitat on Mount Graham, Arizona, for about 150 red squirrels who could be kept alive as a species elsewhere, versus using 24 acres for an observatory that would be at the forefront of astronomical science? There is much less basis here for a reasoned judgment in terms of costs and benefits than there is even with such thorny issues as electricity from nuclear power versus from coal, or decisions about supporting additional research on cancer versus using the funds for higher Social Security payments, or for defense, or even for lowering taxes. Policymaking is also made difficult by conservationists asserting on the one hand that the purpose of conserving is that it is good for human existence, and on the other hand that human existence must be limited or reduced because it is bad for other species. "There are many realistic ways we can avoid extinctions, such as by preserving natural habitats and limiting human population growth" is a typical statement of that sort -- by the same biologist who urges that humans should preserve the species because humans need them for existence! 3. Still another difficulty in conducting reasoned discussion of the subject with biologists is their attitude toward economists, whose trade it is to assess the costs and benefits of proposed public programs. As one of the most noted of conservation biologists, Peter Raven, asserts, "Perhaps the most serious single academic problem in the world is the training of economists." Raven and other biologists believe that the fundamental structure of economic thought is perverted because it leads to unsound social choices by omitting ecological propositions the biologists consider crucial. But the conservationists do not render those supposedly-omitted matters into a form that a calculus of choice can deal with. Herein lies a major intellectual problem for the issue at hand. 4. Many biologists consider the interests of humans and of other species to be opposed. This leads to humankind being seen in a rather ugly light. "[O]ur species has a knack for exterminating others, and we're become better killers all the time" says one of them. A recent article by another is entitled "Extinction on Islands: Man as a Catastrophe." 5. It is quite clear that species are seen by many as having value quite apart from any role they play in human life, a value that is seen as competitive with the value of human life. Great Britain's Prince Philip, now president of the World Wildlife Fund for Nature International, says, "The need for someone to stand up and speak for the earth with wisdom and insight is urgent." And Raven writes, "Although human beings are biologically only one of the millions of species that exist on Earth, we control a highly disproportionate share of the world's resources." This suggests that it is unfair that we "control" more resources than do eagles, mosquitoes, and the AIDS virus. There is further discussion of the role of values in debate about species in chapter 39 on values. These beliefs lead to policy recommendations toward the human race which hinge upon a particular set of values about the worth of humans versus the worth of other species, values which our civilization has traditionally not espoused. 6. Yet one more difficulty is that the conservation biologists have the disconcerting propensity to offer metaphors rather than data in discussions of these matters. For example, in response to the fact that some extinctions are unknown, as indeed the species themselves are unknown, one ecologist (Thomas Lovejoy) supposedly likened species extinction to a library being burned before the books had even been cataloged, and therefore there may still be loss even though we don't know what it is. But such a metaphor can be entirely misleading. The example may hold for the library in Alexandria that burned 2000 years ago; there were irreparable losses because we have never found other copies of the books. But a better analogy for species extinction may be a newsstand burning down when we have every reason to believe that there are other copies of the publications on the stand in many other places. Obviously the only way to distinguish which is the appropriate analogy is by empirical study. 7. One of the arguments for preserving all existing species - and therefore for preserving tropical and other wild habitat - is that we do not know what valuable biological properties might be lost, and something that might be lost "could come in handy sometime". This argument reminds me of my father saving every old piece of string from packages, and every piece of junk he found on the street, because "it could come in handy sometime". I still have coffee cans taking up shelf space in my basement full of the used bent nails that he extracted, straightened (more or less), and saved until he died. But the truth is that most of this stuff saved indiscriminately does not come in handy. And it takes up valuable space, and costs valuable energy to haul it from one house to another. With the same amount of effort, my father could have built something useful. And with the same space and time cost, I could have done something better. The argument for saving all habitat in order to save all possible species that might be lost is even weaker than the argument for my father's savings. He at least knew what the pieces of string were, whereas we are being asked to save things whose identify and nature - or even existence, in many cases - or possible usefulness we do not know. And in some cases we are asked to save things that are so trivially different from others that their values can only be esthetic - for example the "three most endangered species of birds in North America", according to E. O. Wilson: Bachman's warber, Kirtland's warbler, and the Red- cockaded woodpecker. Would anyone contend that the germplasm in these birds is sufficiently different than that in other warblers and woodpeckers - or even birds at large - that losing them would have ill material consequences for humanity in the future? The problem in thinking well, here as always, is that there are tradeoffs between what may be "extinguished" and what we may otherwise create and use. Only by explicitly confronting those tradeoffs can we act sensibly. 8. Ecologists are growing to recognize that their own interests are best served by not simply say "No" to the human use of space and other species. Examples include the flourishing of elephants under a market system (see Chapter 00), and of fish habitat in British privately-owned streams. Another example is alligators: Whereas in the 1970s they were listed as an endangered species, the ecologists now ask people to buy goods made with alligator skins so as to promote the farming of alligators in Florida, both for the sake of the alligator species and as a way of maintaining wetland habitats. The large increase in the quantity of alligators (and a fall in demand) can be seen in the drop of prices from $60 a foot for wild-raised and $180 a foot for farm-raised alligator skins (a difference that is interesting in itself) in the late 1980s, to $20 and $75 a foot respectively in 1993. CONCLUSION There is now no prima facie case for any expensive species- safeguarding policy without more extensive analysis than has been done heretofore. The existing data on the observed rates of species extinction are almost ludicrously out of whack with the doomsters' claims of rapid disappearance, and they do not support the various extensive and expensive programs they call for. Furthermore, recent scientific and technical advances -- especially seed banks and genetic engineering -- have diminished the economic importance of maintaining species in their natural habitat. But the question deserves deeper thought, and more careful and wide ranging analysis, than it has been given until now. I do not suggest we ignore potential extinctions. Rather, I want us to be as clear as possible about the extent of the risks. We should separate the available facts from the guesswork and the purposeful misstatements, in order to improve the public decision-making process. And we should take into account -- but in a reasoned fashion -- the non-economic worth of species, in light of the value we place on undisturbed nature and other aspects of life on earth. It is important that we think as clearly as we can about this problem that is indeed difficult to think about sensibly. I hope that decision-makers will think sensibly and coolly about the matter of species before embarking on the sort of resettlement program described above, or on a "crash program" to map diversity which would "absorb the careers of 25,000 biologists" according to Wilson and cost billions of dollars that could be used for other scientific and social purposes, or even just for poor and not-poor individuals' personal benefits. AFTERNOTE ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPECIES [Maybe the following goes with values chapter] Deep philosophical questions are involved in discussions of the values of species and policies toward their preservation. There is a large literature on the subject, far beyond the scope of this book, and I shall mention just a few issues of particular interest. 1. The supposed "rights" of "other species" is a most puzzling concept. With increasing frequency we see proposals to make allowance for the supposed needs of other species. The justification is not that it is useful or pleasing for us humans that animals live in pristine wilderness but, rather, the supposed "rights" of those other species. I'm not talking here about the kinds of cruelty to animals which seems almost innately revolting to human beings - harshly beating dogs or beasts of burden, pulling the wings off insects, closely crowding animals raised for food, killing wild animals and then using just one small part such as their ivory. Rather, I'm talking about such proposals as the one to destroy the electricity-producing dams on the Elwha River in Washington State to enable wild salmon - as distinguished from hatchery-raised salmon - to live in the river as they did eighty years earlier than the time of writing (1993); the criterion is "fish needs" rather than human needs. Another example is a scientific project that makes a loud underwater sound - comparable to a jet engine - intermittently (an hour on and an hour off) for 10 days that can be heard in oceans far away as part of a study of global warming. This study was accused, in connection with the Marine Mammal Protection Act, of "harassment" of marine mammals. (One wonders whether those who worry about this project worry about the effects of storm sounds at sea - incomparably louder than any jet engine - on sea life.) Still another example is the accusation by "animal-rights activists" that inserting genes into cows so that they will produce medicinal products as part of the milk that they give is an "exploitation" of livestock. It would take a legal scholar to make a proper analysis of the concept of rights in this connection. The most I can do is to suggest some of the questions that must be answered. The idea of rights is one that a group defines for itself, and/or fights for. True rights cannot be assigned by others. When rights are assigned, the system is dictatorship, and the rights continue to exist just so long as the dictator bestows them. Self-defined rights, on the other hand, involve such matters as laws, a constitution, courts, and the like. The notion of self-defined rights obviously is nonsensical for species other than humans, and calls into question the idea of rights for them. As to the bestowing of rights, there does not exist a philosophy of dictatorship, so far as I know. How should a dictator, or even a group such as a nation, decide the relative rights of various species? We do so, of course, when we decide what to keep in zoos and parks, and what to exterminate. But we do this on the basis of our policies, not their rights. Yet there are serious proposals being offered about "restoring and "giving back" the land to the other species, as mentioned earlier in this chapter. The underlying philosophy needs a clear legal and philosophical basis, and not just emotional expression. 2. A curious question concerns is the relative strength of our attachment to various species. The following makes sense to me, though I have not found it in animal-rights writings. I can understand making some distinctions among species on an analogous basis to the "natural" distinctions we make among people in our private relationships and loyalties (as discussed so well by Adam Smith in his early philosophical work); we feel closer to closer kin, and hence it makes sense that we feel closer to gorillas than to mice or caterpillars. Similarly, few religious writings urge us to feel close to people who threaten our well-being; the analogy to animals is clear. Perhaps whatever "duty" we have runs along the above lines. Charity should begin at home, with respect to persons and also with respect to species, according to my feelings. But others feel otherwise - as does the Earth First! group that demonstrated at the Lincoln Monument in Washington call for "Equal Rights for All Species: Save the Rain Forest." 3. Philosophical discussions of species often ignore the inescapable fact that one cannot have one's cake and eat it, too. Reading a wonderful naturalist adventure such as Farley Mowat's Never Cry Wolf, I share his excitement and wonder at learning about the wolves in a vast country that contains only a few hundred Eskimos, many caribou and mice and birds, a few thousand wolves, and less obvious species. One feels: This could not happen if "civilization" had occupied the territory, which would be a loss. The feeling for wilderness solitude was documented in a survey of campers among whom "86 percent...objected to having another party camped within sight or sound, while 65 percent said: `It's best if you meet no one.'" Yet when a rich person buys a great painting and withdraws it from the public, keeping it for only his/her viewing, we feel that that, too, is a loss. In this latter case, the painting is at least private property, whereas publicly-owned areas are no one's personal domain by ordinary law. The simple problem is the same in both cases, however: Having the property to oneself undisturbed is incompatible with many people enjoying it. Recognition of this simple point must be antecedent to sensible discussion of the matter. 4. The entire issue raises most peculiar questions. Whereas a human violently attacking another living thing is considered odious by many, another animal doing the same thing is merely a fascination to them; this can be seen in the flourishing television channels showing wildlife scenes. And - will there be police to enforce the rights of fish against bears, and baby seals against whales? page # \ultres \tchar31 February 9, 1994