Another one bites the dust

The Monkey

The Monkey

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A freshwater dolphin found only in China is "effectively extinct", an expedition has declared following a fruitless six-week search.

The Yangtze River dolphin, or baiji, was listed as "critically endangered" on the Red List of Threatened Species.

It has been dying out due to habitat degradation, overfishing, pollution and ship traffic - which confounds the sonar the animal uses to find food.

Zoologists announced a plan to save the mammal earlier this year.

"We have to accept the fact that the baiji is extinct. We lost the race," said August Pfluger, co-head of the expedition and director of baiji.org, an environmental group dedicated to saving the animal.
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Source

So what do you think should be done to prevent animals from becoming extint? Should we be more active in preventing it, or should we leave them to their fate?
 
A freshwater dolfin living in a river, no. Blackbears living in forrests? yes
 
what? do you want an answer that will magically make the problem go away?

ok kill every last human on earth

there are no simple solutions
 
no, I didn't want an answer, I meant so what if we killed the fresh water dolphin? I'm not a fresh water dolphin, you're not a fresh water dolphin. In fact I'm pretty sure I've never met a fresh water dolphin or even seen one on tv for that matter. I was only made aware of them after they no longer existed.
 
if fresh water dolphins are dying because of our destruction of the habitat you can bet other species are also dying meaning sooner or later people in that area will be directly affected ...this is the same where ever fragile ecosystems hang in the balance
 
Well it's still all the way in China, and the article isn't about people being hurt by a loss of ecosystem, it's about the non-existance of fresh water dolphins. If someone shows to me that human pollution is harming me or the people I know and care about I would be upset and I would say hey, this is bad.

It's like when a lady on the street showed me a picture of an African child and asked me if I wanted to help him. I said no, and when she asked me didn't I care about him, I said no. She looked at me like I was the devil. My empathy only extends as far as I can see and talk to real people... and maybe a few really good movies with sad music that make you feel like you are really there. I can't extend empathy half way around the world, to another species that doesn't even have legs based on a paragraph of text.
 
Dan said:
Well it's still all the way in China, and the article isn't about people being hurt by a loss of ecosystem, it's about the non-existance of fresh water dolphins. If someone shows to me that human pollution is harming me or the people I know and care about I would be upset and I would say hey, this is bad.

It's like when a lady on the street showed me a picture of an African child and asked me if I wanted to help him. I said no, and when she asked me didn't I care about him, I said no. She looked at me like I was the devil. My empathy only extends as far as I can see and talk to real people... and maybe a few really good movies with sad music that make you feel like you are really there. I can't extend empathy half way around the world, to another species that doesn't even have legs based on a paragraph of text.
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your apathy doesnt make the issue go away ..sooner or later it (the destruction of habitat) affects us all either directly or indirectly; it's just a link on an enormous chain

this quote seems fitting:

"When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out."

- Martin Niem?ller
 
Taxman said:
Source

So what do you think should be done to prevent animals from becoming extint? Should we be more active in preventing it, or should we leave them to their fate?
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We should pretend that we care when in reality we just stand back and watch them die. Same with global warming. Let's whine and not do a thing about it.
 
We should do all we can to preserve the species in their natural environments. We really need to think about how we expand, as it affects the world around us. Animals are important too, and in the history of our advancement, we have been very fond it them in various ways. If we keep losing them, we're going to lose a part of ourselves.
 
If they're tasty we should preserve them.

But seriously, when the extinction is human induced we have the responsibility to save them.
 
Cloning. Why not? if it helps preserve nearly extinct species, where's the harm in it?
 
Gunner said:
Cloning. Why not? if it helps preserve nearly extinct species, where's the harm in it?
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Where you going to put them... back into the water that they're dying out at? Or are you going to keep them in a completely unnatural environment for continuation of the species?
 
I don't know nearly enough to answer that question in an intelligent manner, I don't know where you'd put them. Although if by unnatural environment you mean something like a zoo, then no I wouldn't want that. If it's something like a wildlife preserve, then yeah it sounds good to me.
 
I don't care about animals going extinct much.
However, irreversible climate change for the worse, caused by man, does concern me greatly.
 
Solaris said:
I don't care about animals going extinct much.
However, irreversible climate change for the worse, caused by man, does concern me greatly.
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Why does that concern you, and animals going extinct by man doesn't?

We can adapt easily to drastically changing weather conditions for the most part, with technology and our ability to travel anywhere on the planet. As a species, it won't affect us much.

Animals however, cannot do that. The ones going to be MOST affected by climate change, are animals... but you don't care that they go extinct?

It's a stupid idea to care about the environment, but not the critters in that environment.

Who would of thought. I'm more of a leftist when it comes to environmental conservation than Silly Solaris.
 
I don't respect an animals right to life.

Anyone who does, and eats meat is a hypocrite.
 
Raziaar said:
Where you going to put them... back into the water that they're dying out at? Or are you going to keep them in a completely unnatural environment for continuation of the species?
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A better solution:

1) Save some DNA samples of said dolphins, enough to allow for the dolphins to mate without becoming cousins to every other dolphin.
2) Fix whatever's wrong with the river. If it's a problem that affects more than just the river (pollution, global warming, hunting, etc.), even better.
3) Clone the dolphins.
4) Figure out specifically which nutrients your cloning procedure lacked, which resulted in those clones dying.
5) Receive a glass bottle thrown at your face by anti-cloning activists.
6) Amend the cloning procedure, and clone more dolphins - this time, they live.
7) Place dolphins in river.
8) ???
9) Receive a mild-mannered cloning protest by anti-cloning activists.
10) ???
11) ???
12) Profit!
 
Solaris said:
I don't respect an animals right to life.

Anyone who does, and eats meat is a hypocrite.
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Why? We're part of the food chain just like them. Any carnivore or omnivore if sentient, would not like their food sources wiped out. It's their livelihood at stake if they lose their food.

Respecting an animals right to life is NOT the same as respecting a species right to exist. Eating meat factors NOWHERE in the equation. The earth is a complicated ecosystem in perfect balance. When you upset that balance and species start to die, everything else begins to destabilize. We're talking about millions of years of evolution and balance that is being thrown out of whack due to mankind. The least we can do is try to keep it as intact as possible.

Don't be foolish Solaris.
 
Raziaar said:
Why? We're part of the food chain just like them. Any carnivore or omnivore if sentient, would not like their food species wiped out. It's their livelihood at stake if they lose their food sources.

Respecting an animals right to life is NOT the same as respecting a species right to exist. Eating meat factors NOWHERE in the equation. The earth is a complicated ecosystem in perfect balance. When you upset that balance and species start to die, everything else begins to destabalize. We're talking about millions of years of evolution and balance that is being thrown out of whack due to mankind.

Don't be foolish Solaris.
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Truth.

"I'm going to eat this animal so that I can live for another week" is different than "A species that isn't us can die out because it doesn't matter as much as us."
 
Remember, human beings are also part of nature. The extintion of animals, even if caused by humans, is actually caused by nature. We are part of nature. Let evolution take its course.
 
zleppelin said:
Remember, human beings are also part of nature. The extintion of animals, even if caused by humans, is actually caused by nature. We are part of nature. Let evolution take its course.
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That's such a silly thing to believe. Humans are releasing pollutants into the ecosystem that no single source on the entire planet could produce in the quantities that we're doing it. We're creating such a substantial difference in the environment that *NO* evolution mechanisms could adapt to it when directly affected by the brunt of the toxins we release into the environment.

I seriously hope you're joking zleppelin, because otherwise I'm just going to come out and call you an idiot. The things we can create with our superb intelligence, the incredibly destructive things, are not something nature intended. We're at the point that we can bend nature's mechanisms to our own will in many regards. Our capabilities may have been given to us by the nature of evolution, but the stuff we're harnessing is hardly a part of nature just taking it's course. Atoms don't just magically split themselves in a planet as stabilized as ours and cause nuclear fallout. It just doesn't happen. Only with sentient that defies natural processes do things like that happen.

If you were to put it into video game terms, we would be consider exploiters of game code, doing things that were not intended by the developers, and not balanced in any way at all.
 
zleppelin said:
Remember, human beings are also part of nature. The extintion of animals, even if caused by humans, is actually caused by nature. We are part of nature. Let evolution take its course.
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Flawless logic as always.
 
zleppelin said:
Remember, human beings are also part of nature. The extintion of animals, even if caused by humans, is actually caused by nature. We are part of nature. Let evolution take its course.
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I guess we should let Hitler annex countries too? After all, he's just part of human nature.

Bullshit, people had the power to stop him, they thought it was necessary, and did so.

We are in the position where we have power over many ecosystems, the least we can do is behave responsibly. Eating meat is not hypocritical, as long as we do it in a sustainable way.
I think it's quite an irresponsible view to not bother to take care of our ecosystems with the arguement that we eat meat anyway.


Another thing - if we destroy the ecosystems, we will destroy ourselves.
 
zleppelin said:
Remember, human beings are also part of nature. The extintion of animals, even if caused by humans, is actually caused by nature. We are part of nature. Let evolution take its course.
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Then is it not the course of nature for some of us to try and prevent the extinction of other species?
 
Raziaar said:
Can you clarify your position please?
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"lol i never saw teh dolphin so liek y shud i caer? :D"

At the very least, people should realize that the destructive potential of mankind that effects and kills off other species can and will eventually turn in itself onto humans if ecological awareness isn't achieved.
 
Stigmata said:
Then is it not the course of nature for some of us to try and prevent the extinction of other species?
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That's a possibility. But is it going to happen? Probably not.

Raziaar said:
Atoms don't just magically split themselves in a planet as stabilized as ours and cause nuclear fallout. It just doesn't happen. Only with sentient that defies natural processes do things like that happen.
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Sentient beings and atoms are part of nature. Sentient beings are walking chemical reactions, if you think about it. A sentient being splitting an atom is just a chemical reaction causing another reaction.

Gunner said:
Flawless logic as always.
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It actually is. If A causes B, and B causes C, then it is logically permissible to conclude that A causes C. Ergo, nature causes extinctions. Look up "transitive property" on Wikipedia.
 
Raziaar said:
That's such a silly thing to believe. Humans are releasing pollutants into the ecosystem that no single source on the entire planet could produce in the quantities that we're doing it. We're creating such a substantial difference in the environment that *NO* evolution mechanisms could adapt to it when directly affected by the brunt of the toxins we release into the environment.

I seriously hope you're joking zleppelin, because otherwise I'm just going to come out and call you an idiot. The things we can create with our superb intelligence, the incredibly destructive things, are not something nature intended. We're at the point that we can bend nature's mechanisms to our own will in many regards. Our capabilities may have been given to us by the nature of evolution, but the stuff we're harnessing is hardly a part of nature just taking it's course. Atoms don't just magically split themselves in a planet as stabilized as ours and cause nuclear fallout. It just doesn't happen. Only with sentient that defies natural processes do things like that happen.

If you were to put it into video game terms, we would be consider exploiters of game code, doing things that were not intended by the developers, and not balanced in any way at all.
Click to expand...

whoa whoa, he is completely right you know, humans are a part of nature. By my definition and understanding nature is essentially everything. It has no "intentions" it is not a game developer that wants us to play a specific way. And by the way atoms do spontaneously split themselves to release energy. Look at what happened in Hiroshima. Consciousness is just an emergent propery of a complex system. We start with the big bang 15 billion years ago as the input to an isolated system. 1945 you get nuclear explosion in a small planet in the corner of one galazy. That sounds pretty spontaneous to me. If you do a controlled experiment where you can completely isolate a system. IE the system is defined as everything that exists, and a specific input reacts to produce a specific output then it is spontaneous no matter what happens inbetween.

Maybe the problem is that you need to come up with a different definition for your nature. How do you define "nature" and "ecosystem" and what constitutes damage to it. Is any change to the biological network of the Earth to be considered "damage". Life didn't exist 5 billion years ago, was it therefore bad that there was no ecosystem or nature? I mean humans are by far not the worst impact either even by that convoluted logic. 200 some million years ago there was a mass extinction that wiped out almost everything bigger than a rat. Was the asteroid or whatever caused it therefore evil? Was the environment considered "damaged" after that because it didn't have as many species? What is wrong with not having as many species? Environment doesn't care, nature doesn't care. They are just following the physical laws of nature.

So don't try to pony it up to being good for nature. Nature doesn't care. The only valid justification for any arguments about human action is whether or not it is good for humanity. Even if you want to sugar coat it in nice sounding words, the bottom line is evolution, and systems that tend to continue themselves are the systems that we see around us. Look, here I am.
 
Well, many people are not looking past the fact that "oh, its a river dolphin, nobody cares"

But when will you start caring?


The ecosystem is a giant chain, a giant web wrought up over millions of years through evolution and which is precariously balanced in perfect equilibrium, running in perfect cycles like clockwork and being only upset by major changes in climate or extreme disasters. Every single living thing on the planet is connected in some way, I dont care how remote or how obscure. Every animal in the ecosystem serves a purpose to the preservation of other species, from the foulest parasite to the tiniest bacterium to the most remote trees to cows to human beings: all of us depend on each other.

Let me put it this way: Let's say this single river dolphin is the one and only predator of a certain kind of carp. Now that the dolphin is exctinct the carp multiply out of control, overproducing and overproducing until they are everywhere. The overproduction causes a rise in river acidity and all of the sudden everything in the river dies. It becomes a dead zone like the black sea. The chinese peasants who depend on the river for fishing go into poverty and eventually move away or die, leaving the area barren and uninhabited.

Now this is an over-exaggeration, but we must be extremely careful about maintaining the ecosystem, if only because it is so interconnected and intricate. The only safe way to do this is to maintain population levels of all species. We must not let our progress interfere drastically with the environment or we may see the entire system crash down. A rare fish here, a rare bird there, then we have common fish and common birds then common sea mammals then common land mammals and before you know it all life on earth save us and a few cows has dissapeared.

Now yes, it is possible for us to survive on our own with our technology and our domesticated animals, but would you really want to live in a world devoid of life? Would you want your children to never learn the joys of seeing a live elephant, a jumping dolphin or a roaring lion? Would we really feel happy with ourselves knowing that we've corrupted and destroyed all other living things on the planet just to maintain our way of life?

Earth is a precious island in a vast area of space completley devoid of life. We are a shimmering and fragile jewel amidst an infinite wilderness of nothingness, and we owe it to ourselves, to our children, to the planet and to everything living on the planet to maintain as long as possible the intricate yet fragile ecosystem of life on Earth.
 
theotherguy said:
Earth is a precious island in a vast area of space completley devoid of life. We are a shimmering and fragile jewel amidst an infinite wilderness of nothingness, and we owe it to ourselves, to our children, to the planet and to everything living on the planet to maintain as long as possible the intricate yet fragile ecosystem of life on Earth.
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Ignoring the hyperbole :)P), this is why people should care. We rely on ecosystems sometimes hundreds of thousands of species strong to provide us with services that would be impossible for our technology to reproduce. Purification, providing solutions to medical problems, converting raw materials, waste treatment, blah blah blah. Read 'wild solutions' by Andy Beattie.

We're currently relying on these 'useless' animals to sustain our way of life. The biodiversity that people don't give a damn about, the biological 'capital' that people squander, is keeping us alive.
 
Basically, even though this is just one of many millions of unique species on the planet... One of these days, the continual extiction of animal/plant species is going to add up and start affecting us in unbelievably negative ways. It's up to us whether or not we take preventative or reactionary measures - but chances are, we as a species will take the lazy, procrastinatory reactionary route.
 
I don't want the legacy, well one of them, of our generation(s) to be a mass extinction event. Other generations has an excuse - they didn't know any better. We (should) do.
 
Solaris said:
I don't respect an animals right to life.

Anyone who does, and eats meat is a hypocrite.
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I eat meat to survive and have a healthy diet but i still care that ecosystems around the world are being destroyed and animals going extinct. Through what you're saying, you must of never had a dog or a cat? So if i came in and strangled your little fluffy bunny wunny, you would just shrug your shoulders and say "i didn't respect my little bunny wunnies right to life".
 
So the dolphins are extinct because of humans. According to stern it is 'our' fault then. So 'we' should have done something about it. Let's cut the obscure terms here.
It lived in china, so it is the chinese people's fault, so THEY should have done something about it. Most of the world's population did little to directly contribute towards the extinction of this particular species.
 
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