The importance of wildlife protection. Wild animals refer to animals that grow in the natural environment and are not domesticated. However, in recent years, more and more wild animals are on the verge of extinction, which destroys the balance between the number of extinct species and the number of new species. Then let's understand the significance of wildlife protection.
The significance of wildlife protection 1 personal significance
In all fields of wildlife protection, the most intuitive, touching and easily aroused is undoubtedly "saving individuals". Seeing a recovered kestrel return to the blue sky is enough to bring tears to everyone present.
But what is easily overlooked by volunteers is that the value of saving wild animals is often not in the individual itself, but more in the whole population behind the individual. This is different from helping the weak individuals in human society.
There are many differences between animals and people. According to evolutionary biologist Dawkins and others, the biggest difference may be that animals lack culture. Here, the definition of culture is "a behavior pattern that has nothing to do with heredity, but can be imitated and passed down".
In human society, cultural factors are gradually overwhelming genetic and physiological factors. Our ability to transform ourselves is getting stronger and stronger, and the importance of innate genetic quality is getting smaller and smaller. When we say "everyone is unique", this uniqueness mostly comes from the day after tomorrow. And a person's contribution to society comes almost entirely from the cultural field: in his life, he will create countless new ideas and new things, affecting everyone around him; When he dies, even if his blood is passed down by later generations, countless unexpressed thoughts will disappear forever. In contrast, his contribution to human genes is negligible.
However, most behaviors of wild animals in the environment can be traced back to their genes. Even if there is cultural inheritance between individuals, it usually has little influence [1]. If the two groups of wolves react differently to the same scene, it is because their genetic characteristics are different, not because they have experienced different wolf history and different wolf culture. Even if an animal learns complex behaviors from humans because it gets along with people, it is almost impossible to teach other animals the "human skills" it has learned and change the original culture when it returns to the wild. A human culture that does not adapt to its environment can lead to the destruction of a civilization, but the culture of the animal kingdom seems to have never played such a big role.
Therefore, the value of wild animals is more borne by its genes, and the continuation of the population itself is more critical. Individual death is inevitable, but genes can last forever through the population gene pool to maintain the existence of species. Our protection of a single wild animal is more a means to protect the population than an end in itself. This is why Yellowstone National Park introduced wolves to control the number of deer and eliminate the old, the weak and the sick. Such behavior is unimaginable in human beings, but it is completely normal and reasonable in essence; We often look at wild animals with human eyes and forget the objective differences between us.
And if a species itself is not endangered, then deliberately protecting their individuals will not be of great benefit to the whole species. If you want to protect these individuals from death for other reasons, it does not belong to the narrow sense of animal protection.
The meaning of species
If the protected individual is
The meaning of protection
However, it is really too difficult to judge whether a species exists or not from the value of human beings. After all, our understanding of the world is still very shallow. When it is difficult to discuss in detail, we turn to abstraction. With this common thinking habit, many times we will say: animal protection is not only for the survival of the species itself, but also for conforming to (an elusive) natural law; Violating the laws of nature will have bad consequences, and it should be like this. ...
This paper does not discuss the fallacy of naturalism, but only talks about equating "protection" with "conforming to nature".
Adapting to nature sounds beautiful, but it can't be implemented in practice-the extinction of nature has always existed, including the extinction of great disasters and the extinction of peacetime. So, what if a species that should have been extinct is forcibly rescued? Does this process harm the interests of other species that should be prosperous? There are conflicts of interest between animals. For example, the prosperity of stray cats usually brings serious harm to wild birds. For better or worse, this is obviously a serious "interference" with nature.
So don't disturb them and let them go extinct, okay? The question comes again-who should be extinct? If you don't act, there will be other human activities; The impact of these activity can never be completely offset. The status of giant pandas has not been disputed so far. Their ability to live in wild natural habitats is extremely strong, and no one needs to worry at all. The real problem is that the habitat itself has suffered serious man-made damage. However, habitats will change due to climate change. If human civilization had never existed, would giant pandas be in danger because of the natural climate cycle? Without humans, when will they run out of gasoline? Will there be new species before extinction? Nobody knows.
Therefore, the actual principle of wildlife protection is actually one sentence: "try to maintain the status quo" (including "returning to the previous status quo"). Because this is in the best interests of mankind and the environment remains unchanged, we can develop culture and economy steadily. Does this interrupt a mysterious "natural process"?
If "nature" is defined as everything except human beings, then every behavior of human beings is "interference". Considering that human beings are just a twig on the giant tree of evolution, is it the most fundamental anthropocentrism to separate "human" from "nature" for no reason?
Urbanization should not be an erosion of nature.
Actual protection
But in reality, the biggest dilemma of wildlife protection is not environmental ethics, but the lack of resources without exception. If the limited funds are equally distributed to various species like Chili noodles, it is likely that nothing will be achieved; The cruel reality forces wild animals to be divided into different grades, and we will give priority to those wild animals with low cost and great significance.
Ecological cornerstone species are definitely more worthy of our efforts. Therefore, there are two exclusive concepts in conservation biology: umbrella species and flagship species.
The so-called "umbrella species" may not have much ecological status, but the living environment they need can cover many other species; As long as someone pays to protect it, they can jointly protect many other species. Of course, such a good deal cannot be let go. Establishing animal reserves around umbrella species has always been an important direction of wildlife protection.
"Flagship species" can even relax the requirements for living environment. Strictly speaking, there is only one basic standard: it can sell cute, attract people's attention and attract donations. It would be better if the standards of umbrella were met at the same time; If there are national symbols, national characteristics and so on, it will be almost perfect. So the giant panda has become the most perfect flagship species so far (WWF takes it as a symbol for no reason): it is strange enough and rare enough (as an EN level, it has qualified, although many species are even rarer than it, and it is invincible, relatively easy to keep in captivity, and can also be qualified for the role of an umbrella.
People often question why they spend so much money to protect giant pandas. Indeed, the giant panda has received relatively more attention, but the propaganda significance of the giant panda itself and its significance to the overall ecological protection of Sichuan and Yunnan do exist. It is impossible to save everyone, but we should always strive to win more people and save more species. This is an objective situation. Only certain species can be given priority and resources can be concentrated in meaningful areas.
Therefore, the discussion on the significance of the first three parts is not empty talk, and we should choose the arrangement of resources accordingly. Some conservationists are so fascinated by the individual animals, the illusory "interests of all animals" or "laws of nature" that they do their best to cheer for some creatures that are not actually endangered. I can't say that they must be wrong, but I can only remind them that these resources could have been used in more valuable areas.
It means that protecting species and protecting the earth's ecology should be the ultimate goal?
But in fact, these two propositions are very suspicious. Although species have a long life span, they will disappear sooner or later. The average life span of each new generation of mammals is only several million years. At least 99.9% species in the history of the earth have become extinct, and most of them have nothing to do with human beings.
As for "protecting the earth", the problem is even bigger. In fact, no species is "indispensable". Some species will be replaced immediately after they disappear, while others will spread to other species. Once only a few species are extinct, it may cause large-scale extinction of ecosystems. However, extinction is not the end of the world. Tens of millions of years later, everything will start all over again. The earth is very fragile, and it is easy to be beaten black and blue. For example, the P/T extinction event that occurred about 250 million years ago killed about 96% of the species in the ocean. But the earth is tenacious, and no matter how bad it is, it can recover. After P/T, 6.5438+million years passed, and the species diversity exceeded the pre-extinction level.
A similar situation has happened many times. A bit like a tumbler, it shakes when pushed, but it won't fall; In the words of ecology, it is "on the geological time scale, the stability of the overall ecosystem of the earth is very weak, but resilience stability is very strong." Frankly speaking, as long as the structure of the solar system remains unchanged, I can't imagine any way to make life on earth irreversible; Even a nuclear bomb cannot guarantee the destruction of all invertebrates.
So what do we emphasize on maintaining the ecosystem map every day? It's like a person who fell countless times while growing up, and will fall countless times in the future. Why does he insist on stopping this now?
Quite simply, the earth can withstand the destruction of the ecosystem, but humans can't. Although the earth is restored as a whole every time, there are countless species buried with it. Don't say that the ecosystem is destroyed, and the fragile human economic system can't even cope with the sea level rising by tens of centimeters, which makes the sea level change of hundreds of meters in the history of the earth so embarrassing.
From this, it seems that we can draw a conclusion: we protect the ecology, not for the earth as advertised in the slogan, but for ourselves. Actually, the earth doesn't care how noisy we are. It has enough time to recover. But we can't wait. Even if human beings are not directly buried in the disaster, when the earth recovers, human beings will cease to exist.
If we don't consider the factor of "protecting ourselves", the motivation to protect other wild animals seems to be insufficient. The killing of human beings directly or indirectly led to the extinction of mammoths. Should mankind be blamed for this [2]? But if this is human's fault, whose fault is the extinction of trilobites? Should bony fish be asked to consider the feelings and survival rights of trilobites [3] Whose fault was it that dinosaurs died out because they couldn't stand the impact of asteroids? Dinosaurs themselves or asteroids? One creature can't adapt to asteroid impact, and another creature can't adapt to human appearance. What is the essential difference between the two?
In the view of an alien intelligence, it may be like this: if humans kill all mammoths, it is because mammoths lack the adaptability of cockroaches. If human beings destroy themselves by killing creatures indiscriminately, it is that human beings are too stupid and deserve bad luck. If human beings can continue by protecting other species, it is very smart and far-sighted; But this is not an inevitable result, it is not taken for granted, and it is not moral.
But I am a human being, so I very, very much hope that mankind will take the last road.
The significance of wildlife protection 2 Endangered wildlife refers to wildlife species that are in danger of extinction due to their own reasons or the influence of human and other external biological activities or natural disasters. In this paper, six kinds of endangered wild animals in the world were counted, including hummingbirds and gannets. Let's learn about these wild animals together.
Birdshot
Also known as hummingbird
The birds of this family have slender beaks, agile flying ability and are famous for their bright feathers. They have the same appearance characteristics, with a crown on the top and a chestnut color on the back, which gradually turns pale. Its head is black and white, its throat is yellow, and its wings are green and blue. Their homeland extends from Portugal and North Africa to the Mediterranean Sea and southern Russia, and all the way to the westernmost part of China. In winter, they will migrate to South Africa and occasionally deviate to Northern Europe. Like kingfishers, hummingbirds dig holes in the earth embankment to build nests.
aurochs
A bison.
1996 was listed as an endangered animal by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources. European bison mainly eat grass, but also eat buds and leaves. An adult male bison can consume 32 kilograms of food a day. European bison live in the forest. According to some documents of19th century, its natural enemies are only wolves and bears. The European bison was first recorded scientifically by Karl Linnaeus in 1758. Later, there were some records that it was the same species as bison. In the past, they were often killed to make leather and horn cups.
Kenzo Tange
It is the general name of 8 species of large swimming birds in Pelicans.
It is smaller than white pelicans and curly pelicans, with a body length of 134 ~ 156 cm and a weight of more than 5 kg. Spotted-billed pelicans inhabit coastal areas, lakes and rivers. Like group activities, good at swimming, and often nest on the island. It has huge wings, strong flying ability and fast speed. Mainly feed on fish. According to the midwinter waterfowl surveys in Asia organized by the International Waterfowl Research Bureau in 1990 and 1992, more than 3,000 species of waterfowl were found in Asia, but there was not even 1 in China. In China, the number is limited, and it is a national second-class protected animal.
brown bear
One of the largest carnivorous mammals on land.
Brown bears have an excellent sense of smell, seven times that of hounds, and good eyesight. When fishing, they can clearly see the fish in the water. Brown bears are one of the animals threatened by trade, and their numbers declined sharply in the early and middle of the 20th century. Brown bears in West Asia, Southwest Asia, China, Tibet and Kashmir are on the verge of extinction. The European brown bear has been basically extinct in the area where it once distributed. There are also a few brown bears in some areas, including Scandinavia, Russian, Slovenian and Pyrenees, as well as Abreu, Qiqun Mountain and Trentino Valley.
Bluefin tuna
A tuna.
Its habitat depth is 0-9850 meters and its body length can reach 458 cm. It is a kind of marine migratory fish, which moves in groups and is carnivorous. It feeds on fish, cephalopods and crustaceans and can be used as edible fish, fishing and cultured fish. Experts warn that southern bluefin tuna, Atlantic bluefin tuna and Pacific bluefin tuna are on the verge of extinction because of their high commercial value, among which southern bluefin tuna and Atlantic bluefin tuna are on the verge of extinction. If the protection measures are not appropriate, they will all face the fate of extinction.
Atlantic wolf fish
Large carnivorous fish that inhabit the bottom of the sea.
Wolf fish is a kind of fish that feeds at night and rests during the day. After dusk, they began to go out to collect food, and at dawn the next day, they returned to the cave. During the day, they lived a leisurely and quiet life in the cave. Unfortunately, scientists know little about the breeding of wolffish, because they only breed in cold seasons. At this time, the sea is so stormy that no diver dares to go into the sea. However, in Vancouver, biologists can observe the whole mating process of wolf fish through the fish tank.
The significance of wildlife protection 3 The wild animals in China are: giant panda, South China tiger, Chinese sturgeon, wild yak, Chinese merganser and so on.
1. Giant panda
Giant panda (scientific name: Ailuropoda melanoleuca): the only mammal belonging to the genus Ailuropoda of Xiong Ke, a carnivore, with a head length of 1.2- 1.8m and a tail length of 10- 12cm. The weight is 80- 120kg, and the maximum weight can reach 180kg. It is black and white, with round cheeks, big dark circles, chubby body, iconic walking posture, with eight characters in it and claws as sharp as scalpels. Is one of the cutest animals in the world.
Giant pandas have lived on the earth for at least 8 million years and are known as "living fossils" and "national treasures of China". It is the image ambassador of WWF and the flagship species of global biodiversity conservation. According to the third national wild panda population survey, there are less than 1600 wild pandas in the world, which belong to the national first-class protected animals.
By the end of 2011/the number of giant pandas in captivity in China was 333. Giant pandas eat meat at first. After evolution, 99% of their food is bamboo, but their teeth and digestive tract remain intact and they are still classified as carnivores. When they are angry, they are as dangerous as other bear species. The life span of giant pandas in the wild is 18-20 years old, and they can be over 30 years old in captivity.
2. South China Tiger
Latin scientific name of South China Tiger: Panthera tigris Amoyensis (Xiamen Tiger, South China Tiger). Yu 198 1 is listed in Appendix I of CITES Convention, also known as "Chinese Tiger". South China Tiger has a round head, short ears, strong limbs, long tail, a large number of milky white chest and abdomen, orange body and black stripes. There are short and narrow stripes on the fur, the stripe spacing is larger than that of Bengal tiger and Northeast tiger, and diamond stripes often appear on the side, which is smaller in subspecies tiger.
South China tigers feed on herbivores such as wild boar, deer and roe deer. It is one of the top ten endangered animals in China, and it is a national first-class protected animal. The red species list is extremely endangered and has become extinct in the wild.
3. ACIPENSER sinensis
Acipenser sinensis: The average body length is about 40 cm, the longest is 130 cm, and the maximum weight is 600 kg. [1] The body is spindle-shaped with a long snout at the top. There are four mouths in front of the mouth. The mouth is located on the ventral surface, which is elastic and can be stretched into a tube. The body is covered with five lines of large and hard bone scales, one on the back and two on the side and abdomen.
Sturgeon is a rare ancient fish left over from Mesozoic10.5 billion years ago. Between cartilage and hard bone, the degree of ossification of bone generally decreases. The central axis is an elastic notochord without ossification of vertebral body, and most of the cartilaginous shells along the skull are not ossified. The caudal fin is curved, the base of the lateral fin is broad, and the dorsal fin is opposite to the gluteal fin. The ventral fin is located in front of the dorsal fin, with spiny scales at the base of the fin and caudal fin, spiral valves in the intestine, anus and drainage holes close to the base of the ventral fin, and the opening of fallopian tube far from the ovary.
4. Wild yak
Bos mutus (Latin name) is a wild species of domestic yak, with strong limbs, long hair, chest and abdomen hair almost hanging to the ground, which can shelter from the wind and rain, and has fleshy teeth on its tongue, which is fierce and good at fighting. It is a typical alpine animal, extremely cold-resistant, unique to the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, and a national first-class protected animal.
Inhabiting in alpine meadows at an altitude of 3000 ~ 6000 meters, it is a herbivore in various environments such as inaccessible alpine peaks, mountain basins, alpine grasslands and alpine desert grasslands, and is distributed in southern Xinjiang, Qinghai, Tibet, northwestern Gansu and western Sichuan.
5. Chinese merganser
Mergus squamatus (scientific name: Mergus squamatus) is a bird of the genus Mergus, commonly known as Mergus squamatus, which is endemic to China. The side of the mouth is flat and the front end is pointed, which is different from other kinds of duckbill-shaped flat. The mouth, legs and feet are red. The head and upper back of the drake are black, and the lower back, waist and tail are covered with white feathers; There are white wing mirrors on the wings; The long feathers on the top of the head stretch back into a double crown. There are black fish-scale markings on the wing feathers.
Fast-flowing rivers in forest areas, sometimes in open lakes. Pair up or start a family. Diving fishing. It is distributed in Siberia, Heilongjiang, Jilin, Hebei and the south of the Yangtze River in Chinese mainland, and mainly inhabits streams, valleys, meadows, ponds and grasslands in broad-leaved forests or mixed coniferous and broad-leaved forests. The pattern of this species originated in China.