Humans vs The Natural World
"As the first Americans strolled onto their open real estate 13,000 years ago, at the end of the Pleistocene epoch, their continent quickly lost much of its grandeur. More than 60 North American species weighing over 100 pounds went extinct, including the continent's own elephants, lions, camels, and cheetahs. The cause was likely overhunting"Read the article before you read what I have to say
through most of this article I couldn't figure out if this guy was being serious or about to shift gears and talk about how this is not a good idea. Starting with the quote I copied above you could make a very good argument that pretending humans are outside the ecosystem is ridiculuous.
It is clear he is not proposing we repopulate our country with these animals outside of well confined areas. But I do think he is serious about the idea that lions, elephants, and cheetahs should still be roaming around in North America freely in an ideal world. If only these pesky humans had never shown up!
My question is what is wrong with the humans showing up? It is apparent that we came in a changed the ecological system. How is this different from any species entering an ecosystem and changing the mix of other species present? We came in and changed the ecosystem. Several species went extinct...so what?
Isn't this Ishmael's point about pretending to know the difference between right and wrong? Is it right for the lion to kill the rabbit? Is it right for the rabbit to escape and let the lion go hungry? Humans are part of this process as well. It is this author's wish that we live completely outside of the eco-system and try to damnest to restore it to what it was before we showed up? In fact, lets not let anything change the ecosystem ever again.
posted by Tim at 7:42 PM
2 Comments:
The battle between the lion and the rabbit is truly one of survival. As you wrote, the lion is vying for sustenance, and must reduce the rabbit population to survive. Conversely the rabbit does its best to survive, which conflicts with the Lion's ability to eat.
Unfortunately we as humans have often precipitated directly or indirectly in the extinction of species, and rarely has it been to secure our own survival.
Even with a world population swelling over six billion people the Earth's land mass is less than half populated. That we continue to fail at sharing that land mass with the rest of the animals on this planet is a terribly sad state of affairs.
My point that every animal participates directly or indirectly in the extinction of other species. Most species populations flucuate as they overconsume their resources and then recover. Our population has climbed exponentially because we are very good at using our resources efficiently and creatively.
This isn't to say we are intelligent for doing this. But maybe we exhibit behavior that is more similar to other species than we realize. Economists could do experiments with animals to find out!
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