12/9/2016 0 Comments Not all species created equalAt least when it comes to conservation. It's largely known in the wildlife conservation community that often the animals that receive funding for conservation aren't necessarily those that contribute the most to their environment, but are just simply cuter. M. Sanjayan, in an article for National Geographic, described it "What we decide to save really is very arbitrary—it's much more often done for emotional or psychological or national reasons than would ever be made with a model," For this reason we see species like pandas and tigers receiving large portions of the funding available for conservation efforts because that's what people want to donate to, not necessarily those species that keep our planet and the biosphere functional. This is a graphic of the number of the top 5 species that most non-governmental organizations are dedicated to saving and the number of NGOs that use that species for publicity.
0 Comments
12/8/2016 0 Comments The pandas are saved... right?On August 28th, it was announced by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (ICUN)that giant pandas, a species that has long sat as the face of the conservation movement, is no longer endangered. The ICUN states that they have upgraded instead to "vulnerable" which, really isn't much of an upgrade. The culmination of more than five decades of research, 67 panda reserves, and millions of dollars is that there are now 1,864 wild pandas. If you sound underwhelmed by that number, you should be.
Pandas are notoriously slow breeders in the wild and captive birth rates are still difficult. Female pandas only go into heat for 2-7 days a year and are fertile for around a day and a half of that time. The first captive breeding attempt was in 1955 and didn't result in a successful birth until eight years later. Furthermore, panda pregnancies are hard to maintain and measure. Sometimes gestation won't begin for weeks after fertilization so the pregnancy isn't observable and even then, the panda may be experiencing pseudopregnancy instead where the panda displays the symptoms of pregnancy but isn't actually carrying. While more and more pandas are being placed under federal and international protection, shipped around the world for breeding programs, and put on display in zoos, more than 20,000 species of animals still remain on the brink of fading from our planet. In the same posting by the ICUN, they announced that with the addition of the Eastern Gorilla, four out of six species of great apes, the group containing the largest primates on the planet, are now listed as critically endangered. This isn't to say that pandas should not be saved, but rather that the way we are allocating the resources available to us to save species affected by humanity. Pandas may no longer be teetering on the edge of extinction, but they're not out of danger yet. The major issue with panda conservation is that the process isn't sustainable in a way where pandas could eventually be left alone to exist in their ecosystem without human intervention. However, many other species that don't receive as much attention could be saved quite simply in ways that wouldn't take half a century to implement. Some scientists are skeptical of these numbers. Marc Brody, an advisor at one of China's foremost panda reserves, thinks that "perhaps we are simply getting better at counting wild pandas." rather than actually seeing a marked increase in their population. Given that in the past decade the wild population increased by only around 200 individuals this is entirely possible. |
AuthorMy name is Ian Wright, I'm a bio major at University of Wisconsin- Whitewater and I am writing this blog as a form of dissemination for a paper I wrote on the subject of sustainable conservation. ResourcesICUN RED LIST- Global list of all species marked as having some degree of threat of extinction
http://www.iucnredlist.org/ World Wildlife Fund- Global foundation that supports conservation efforts around the world http://www.worldwildlife.org/ |