Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
10
The Good of a Species:Toward
a Science-Based Ecosystem
Conservation Ethic
H
UMANKIND IS AT A CRITICAL JUNCTURE IN THE WAY IT CHOOSES TO IN
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teract with the environment. Rising human population combined with ris-
ing demand for resources to sustain or even elevate standards of living means
that living space for other species is diminishing.The current sentiment is
that we cannot protect everything and so we must be strategic about what
we keep and what we choose to let go.To this end, society is increasingly
demanding that ecologists explain what species A, or species B, and so on,
is good for (Myers 1996).This form of questioning reveals a deeply held
ethic that species are largely expendable showpieces; hence it is reasonable
to do ecological triage if allocating space or financial resources to conserve
species conflicts with human economic progress (Myers 1996).
Aldo Leopold (1953) had a different take on this same issue:
The outstanding scientific discovery of the twentieth century is not television,
or radio, but rather the complexity of the land organism [ecosystem]. . . . The
last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant [species] “What
good is it?” If the land mechanism as a whole is good then every part is good,
whether we understand it or not. If the biota, in the course of aeons, has built
something we like but do not understand, then who but a fool would discard
seemingly useless parts? To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of
intelligent tinkering.
Leopold effectively argued that society needs to change its ethical per-
spective about nature from one that views it as a magnificent collection of
species for our passing enjoyment to one that recognizes that species play
integral roles in maintaining ecological services that make up nature's econ-
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