About Humans and creatures

We humans cannot help seeing ourselves in other creatures. We and they share too many qualities to ignore, beginning with the miracle of our existence. For the same reason, we can't help but feel a powerful sense of loss when a life-form disappears, never to return. Suddenly our planet seems a bit more lonely and our support a little less solid.

In the United States at least 500 species and subspecies of plants and animals have become extinct since the 1500s. Natural causes appear to have claimed just one of the animals, a marine snail that used to live off New England's shores. We hardly got to know the others. Have you ever heard of the sea mink? Emerald trout? Heath hen? But by the 1950s almost everybody knew about the passenger pigeon, the last one of millions dying alone in a cage a few decades earlier.

During the 1960s and early '70s, an era of newly discovered environmental consciousness, the nation as a whole was ready to try. Congress responded with the Endangered Species Act (ESA) of 1973. Based on the supposition that each life-form may prove valuable in ways we cannot yet measure and that each has the right to exist for its own sake as well, the act gave federal government extensive powers to prevent extinction.

Whereas the 1973 list of threatened and endangered species in the United States had 109 names on it, the total is now well over 900. Waiting in line are 3,700 officially recognized candidates, which may qualify for ESA protection but have noy yet experienced a full review.

Save Whales, Eagles and Grizzlies

Save the Whales !!! Save the Bald Eagle !!! Save the Grizzly !!! Such were the cries that helped to make the ESA possible, so I began by checking whether those particular animals have succeeded since the act's legislation.

From a few thousands, California gray whales have increased to about 24,000, sufficiently recovered to have departed the endangered black list. In place of whaling, a new industry has developed simply enjoying these giants. Some 300,000 people spend five million dollars a year for whale-watching in California. The whales win and people win, and both will for generations to come.

As for bald eagles - our national bird - breeding pairs in the lower 48 states have increased from about 400 in 1960 to more than 4,000 today.

But with the grizzly, our powerful brownish-yellow bear, reduced to 1,000 animals in the lower 48 states, the rescue work gets more complicated. Illegal commercial hunting or some dangerous contaminants will not accomplish the purpose. These animals need enormous and extended landscape to survive. 

Critics complain that the ESA too often blocks development. But because wildlife is a public resource, the government has some authority to prevent the destruction of listed species on private property as well. According to Nathaniel Reed, former assistant secretary of the interior, "Ecosystem management will only suceed with the willing help of private landowners". After all, the habitat on which many threatened and endangered species exist is owned by corporations and individual citizens.

Freshwater Mussels

Although the argument that you never know which humble organism will give the cure for cancer may be a bit overused, freshwater mussels happen to be notably resistant to tumors, and medical researchers are exploring the causes.

Freshwater mussels - the most endangered group of animals in North America - play important roles in keeping water clean and storing nutrients within a river system. Filtrating sediment and algae at the bottom of the food chain also makes them highly sensitive indicators of pollution, therefore they also serve as monitors of water quality.

The mollusks, some of which live a century, accumulate toxics from pesticides, waste-treatments plants and chemical spills. Mussels downstream from coal mines are dying from acid wastes and concentrations of heavy metals. Those adapted to fast-moving waters, as most of them are, disappear when dams turn rivers into a series of lakes. 

Sockeye Salmon

An ardent conservationist once said, "The salmon fisheries of the Columbia River are now but a fraction of what they were 25 years ago." That was President Theodore Roosevelt, arguing for fishing regulations in 1908. In 1991 the sockeye salmon in the Snake River - a small red-fleshed species - were listed as endangered as only four fishes returned to spawn.

Dams bear much of the blame. The sockeye salmon have to negotiate eight big dams, so most of them die on their journey to the sea. In addition, generations of commercial fishermen overharvested their resource. And the overall equation includes such factors as our demand for french fries; each bite means more irrigation water sucked from the Snake River to grow potatoes in Idaho's drylands.

The Manatees' Message

Manatees swim from the coast 150 miles up the St. Johns River in Florida to where a hundred million gallons of crystalline water issues each day from a hole in the earth. And there, in a channel of light, the sea cows that sailors once mistook for mermaids, swim and rest through much of the winter.

One day my ranger friend Wayne Hartley and I floated above them in a canoe. He was making one of his weekly controls to observe manatee comings and goings in Blue Spring State Park. "I named that new baby manatee swimming over there Dianne," he said in a fatherly tone. "She is the baby of Dana, and that cow in the shadows is Dana's sister, Delain." I also could differentiate most of the manatees. Everyone I saw was clearly marked by scars from boat hulls and propellers. Too many powerboats go too fast, even in waterways with speed limits to protect teh last 2,000 manatees, and boat use keeps growing as Floridar's human population increases everyday.

One afternoon I paddled off from Blue Spring with my family in a canoe to explore the St. Johns River. Of course, we could have covered more distance if we had taken a motorboat. But tiny frogs would not have climbed onto our boat and ridden with the children in the bow. The reflections were so perfect that we dipped paddles into clouds and tree branches blossoming with ibis and egrets. Then a splash next to the boat broke our reverie, and an osprey flew up carrying a silver fish. And all the while, gentle eddies would suddenly appear like footsprints on the water. They told of big, smooth bodies passing below.

They were manatees, and their message seemed cleared to me: "Relax a little, can't you? Look around. Take some time to understand what you have already been blessed with before rushing on in a haze of noise and fumes to get more". 

From this point forward, it is what we give back to nature, not what we take from it, that will make our world a better place to live in.