Extinction & Loss of Habitat

From: "Ron Iles" roniles at eircom.net> on 2001.11.07 at 19:47:29(7772) Ted Can I congratulate you on provoking discourse & then taking part most sensitively so that everybody could both agree & agree to disagree without anybody losing their dignities in the face of hurt insecure egos! If you or any other optimistic person was to be written off the list then I would certainly not remain silent. I would however request that you do not use Yank-slang that we Old world peoplemost don't understand - like "cool" & "parking lot". Obtusely under the above heading - If only marmosets could war against Man's visionless eco-terrorism, then I'd be the first to request instant re-incarnation. Ron +More ----- Original Message ----- To: "Multiple recipients of list AROID-L" Sent: Wednesday, November 07, 2001 4:16 PM Subject: One Last Comment I knew when this started that my comment would touch a nerve among the more ideological among the list members. I guess I am just an optimist about the world. Throughout the history of life (as we know it currently) there have been some pretty remarkable cataclysms where the number of species have been reduced dramatically by all estimates. It is probably the case that at any given "stable" time that a large fraction of the extant species exist in a rather precarious situation. Something comes along and shakes things up (and I suppose this could be construed as "habitat loss" except that as that phrase is usually used in today's parlance it means the whole "parking lot" business - not "natural" climate changes, vulcanization, meteor strikes, ice ages, etc.) and a host of the more specialized species get the rug pulled out from under them. In fact, if the "trajectory" of all the species present at any one time could be known and plotted, one would find that some are on the ascendency, vigorous, robust, while others are in decline, weak and prone to succumb to shocks of various sorts. Naturally, some of the weak species are really cool from the parachial human perspective. A lot of the coolest plants that this list likes are in that category. But from the standpoint of the history of the world, whether people like a particular life form does not matter very much. To be sure, people are now able to intervene in evolution in both good ways and bad. We can make parking lots and we can artificially propagate cool plants and animals and keep them going. From the comments I read about the Philodendron spiritus-sancti it is not clear why it is such a rare plant. Maybe it is because some preferred habitat is now a parking lot. Maybe it is because the plant was being overwhelmed by more successful species and is hanging naturally on the edge of extinction. Someone brought up the Franklinia issue a day or so ago.The reason Franklinia was hanging by a thread when rescued had nothing to do with loss of habitat then. There is no lack of habitat for Franklinia to be reintroduced into the "wild" today. The point is that species extinction is a really old thing and that for the vast majority of extinctions human parking lot building had absolutely no role. That this is happening today is not a valid opposing argument. I will now be silent on this topic unless people want to write me off-list. ted.held@hstna.com

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