For years, many scientists and regulators believed the oceans were so vast there was little risk of marine species dying out. Now, some suspect the world is on the cusp of what Ellen K. Pikitch, executive director of the Pew Institute for Ocean Science, calls "a gathering wave of ocean extinctions." Dozens of biologists believe the seas have reached a tipping point, with scores of species of ocean-dwelling fish, birds and mammals edging toward extinction. In the past 300 years, researchers have documented the global extinction of just 21 marine species -- and 16 have occurred since 1972.Setting aside the question of whether this is true (it's always good to be suspicious of apocalyptic science), isn't artificially preserving species in conflict with the idea of evolution? If man is merely another species of animal, isn't his alleged encroachment on animal habitat part of the unfolding process of evolution? Man can alter the environment, the unfit species will die out and others will adapt and evolve in the new circumstances. Isn't that the natural flow of things? Isn't the ecological movement no less an artificial human intervention in the flow of history than, say, bulldozing an acre of rainforest? Both are just man doing what he wants, right?
Since the 1700s, another 112 species have died out in particular regions, and that trend, too, has accelerated since the mid-1960s: Nearly two dozen shark species are close to disappearing, according to the World Conservation Union, an international
coalition of government and advocacy groups.
"It's been a slow-motion disaster," said Boris Worm, a professor at Canada's Dalhousie University, whose 2003 study that found that 90 percent of the top predator fish have vanished from the oceans. "It's silent and invisible. People don't imagine this. It hasn't captured our imagination, like the rain forest."
Why do we need to preserve species who can't "cut it" under current conditions? Why, I mean, unless there is some value in creation that is outside of ourselves. If life is just a series of random occurrences, our attitude towards endangered species ought to be, "so what?" To care about individual species implies respect for them, which in turn implies belief at some level in an order in the universe --things are not just random; some species "ought" to exist.
