Comment by peterwwillis | Hacker News Reader

Comment by peterwwillis | Hacker News Reader

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That's not the question at all. The question is whether we should let humans hunt species to extinction.

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https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/fight-against-...

"Between 2010 and 2012, ivory hunters shot down an astonishing 100,000 elephants across Africa—more than 60 percent of central Africa’s elephant population has been lost during the ten-year period beginning in 2002—according to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences."

http://www.bagheera.com/inthewild/van_anim_elephant.htm

"Demand for ivory, combined with habitat loss from human settlement, has led to a dramatic decline in elephant populations in the last few decades. In 1930, there were between 5 and 10 million African elephants. By 1979, there were 1.3 million.

In 1989, when they were added to the international list of the most endangered species, there were about 600,000 remaining, less than one percent of their original number.

Asian elephants were never as abundant as their African cousins, and today they are even more endangered than African elephants. At the turn of the century, there were an estimated 200,000 Asian elephants. Today there are probably no more than 35,000 to 40,000 left in the wild."

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So, we ask the question: Why save endangered species?

http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150715-why-save-an-endanger...

1) We like them, 2) The biosphere provides trillions of dollars to the global economy, 3) Loss of species impacts ecological systems and puts us at risk as we depend on them for survival.

> "...The question is whether we should let humans hunt species to extinction."

Why is this the question? Why is "extinction" so important? The fate of most species is extinction anyway.

I added an answer to this at the bottom of my comment.

Great article, thanks for sharing.

> "...1) We like them, 2) The biosphere provides trillions of dollars to the global economy, 3) Loss of species impacts ecological systems and puts us at risk as we depend on them for survival."

Is there a non-selfish reason, that is morally justifiable, for preventing species extinction?

Considering these arguments or normally made to people thinking of humanity first, non-selfish arguments wouldn't make much sense to use. Consider the audience of the argument.

How is to not jeopardize the ecological system a selfish reason?

Assuming humans did not exist, the main moral justification I see would be to prevent the unnecessary suffering of living beings. Of course suffering is a part of natural systems, but as living beings, we can identify with the discomfort of said suffering, and find it a moral imperative to limit suffering to only that which is necessary.

When natural systems can no longer sustain life, that life dies out. This can happen when there are no longer enough natural resources to support said life. But this does not necessarily happen quickly. The cause could be drought or famine or climate chane, resulting in lack of an environment suitable to life. This can cause the deterioration of a species to the point of disease, starvation, cannibalization, and other painful processes.

Let's take an example. Assume that some new disease affected a wolf population in a given area. Once those wolves died out, the lack of natural predators would cause other species (say, deer) to reproduce abundantly, and then overgraze, which would then affect the growth of forests, which then would affect the ecology sustaining a myriad of species that live in said forest. Assuming those species attempted to adapt by migration, they may be adversely affected by other species in a new region, or adversely affect those species themselves, setting off new chain reactions.

This is not a theory. This is a real problem affecting the northeast united states. Except it wasn't disease that killed off the wolves: it was humans.

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