Saving species, saving ourselves

By Joel Sartore

This essay originally appeared in conjunction with the exhibit “Fragile Nature” at the University of Nebraska State Museum. Fragile Nature is currently on display at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science.

Preserving endangered species saves all of us in the long run.

We’ve heard it all many times… more people are alive today than ever before. Especially in developing nations, human overpopulation has reached epic proportions. All these new people spread out. All consume resources.

Though we’d hoped these problems would stay overseas, it’s already started here in the United States. Especially now in the American West, this manifests itself in people fighting over water, land use, space, ways of life.

As the battles continue, many conservationists are working harder than ever to save the last of our wilderness on behalf of grizzly bears, gray wolves and other charismatic animals. But here where I live, it’s the littlest things that count the most. Case in point: the Salt Creek tiger beetle.

Found nowhere else on Earth, this is an insect that lives in just a couple of salt marshes on the north edge of my town, Lincoln, Neb. If I can get folks to stop and think about this for a minute, maybe the big picture will fall into place as well. I hope so, anyway.

Here in Lincoln, we have just three places that have any semblance of nature. We’ve got a small patch of virgin prairie out by our airport, some woodlands surrounded by housing developments and highways, and a couple of salt marshes. The marshes are the ones in the news these days because they are home to the beetle, now down to fewer than 250 adults each summer. And even though it has been federally listed under the Endangered Species Act, the developers keep coming, building housing and commercial sites in the last watershed this insect calls home.

The ESA is a whole story in itself. It’s a law designed to save species, the only one of its kind in the world. Some say the law goes too far; others, not far enough. The truth is usually somewhere in the middle. All I know for sure is that we’re quickly running out of wild spaces, wilderness. And we need healthy, functioning wild lands and their accompanying ecosystems to survive. So in that sense, our fate is up to all of us.

So really, why should we care about this bug and the last of our saline wetlands here in Nebraska? Why care about any endangered species? In the end, it all boils down to a few simple questions. Do we respect nature? Do we show benevolence to all life forms? Is there room for “us and them”? You decide. But you’d better hurry. Time’s almost up for one species in Lincoln. The rest of us can’t be far behind.

If you still need more reasons to care about a little bug and the marsh it lives in…

1) Save species and habitat to help save ourselves. To think that humans are not tied in tightly to the natural world is pure folly. In fact, we;re totally dependent on healthy, functioning ecosystems for our very survival, from the air we breathe to the food we eat to the water we drink. Notice that the frogs and bird species are thinning out where you live? These things are living monitors of the health of the earth. To think that we can escape their fate over the long haul is not realistic, to say the least.

2) We're killing off the ark. All plants and animals, even the Salt Creek tiger beetle, are God;s creatures. Who are we to purposely kill off any of these creations? The Salt Creek tiger beetle is our local example of the massive wave of extinction now going on around the globe, all due to human activity and overpopulation.

3) Save it for education. Ever go on a field trip to a pond or a marsh in grade school or high school? Remember the thrill at seeing the wildlife there, from frogs and tadpoles to dragonflies to the teeming life found in a single drop of water when viewed under a microscope?

4) It's about more than just a beetle. Saving the saline wetlands (or any ecosystem) benefits thousands of other animals, such as migrating ducks, geese and shorebirds that use such critical habitat at various times of the year.

5) Small things lead to bigger ones. If people care enough to save something as seemingly trivial as a salt marsh and as tiny as a beetle, then they’ll surely care about the environmentally big things, like the destruction of “The Lungs of the World,” the Amazon rainforest. Cutting down rainforests leads to global warming. They’ll also think more about sustainable living, such as the kinds and amounts of chemicals they use on their lawns and pour down their drains, and the kinds of cars they drive.

6) As a famous biologist once noted, it is the last word in ignorance when a person asks “What good is it?” We are not smart enough as a species to understand what parts are worth saving and what are not. Remember the story about a good tinker not throwing away parts until he fully understands what each does? We’re not even close to knowing how everything works, whether it’s the prairies, rainforest, oceans, the Arctic or even the last of the salt marshes in northern Lancaster County, Neb.

7) Let’s save endangered species simply because we care. The beetle is just one small part of the picture. The big issue is whether or not all of us care enough to preserve what we have left. Do we want to save species and habitats, or do we want to simply pave over and sterilize as much as we can in the name of economics? We are a wealthy nation. If we can’t do it, nobody can.

If you truly care about the environment, the last islands of natural habitat remaining are all precious, whether it’s a salt marsh, a virgin prairie or a century-old cottonwood tree. To good stewards of the Earth, all are equally worth saving.

Sartore will present the first lecture in this year’s E.N. Thompson Forum on World Issues, Thursday, Sept. 13 at 7 p.m. at the Lied Center for the Performing Arts, 12th and R Streets, Lincoln, Neb. The lecture is free and open to the public. For more information on this year’s Thompson Forum, go to http://enthompson.unl.edu.

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