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Comment by jbob2000 | Hacker News Reader

jbob2000·

Nature and animal conservation is a political issue. The best use of your skills would be to aid in the lobbying efforts for tighter regulations and more money for developing countries.

You might save a tiger, but in the year it took you to save him, Brazil cut down 8 million hectares of the rain forest for palm oil.

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Lobbyists require data. Existing wildlife laws require enforcement. Political support requires mobilization. All of the above can be helped by smart, enthusiastic developers. If more people help out, we can save the tiger and the forest.

All of this requires political support. You can't collect the data if you are not allowed to or if your results are silenced. Enforcement requires political will, otherwise the criminals never get prosecuted or flee to their home countries.

Until we get "the establishment" to care about this, doing any work in this field is simply for vanity or to make you feel good.

> doing any work in this field is simply for vanity or to make you feel good

Making blanketing, dismissive claims about everyone who works in a specific field is a great way to end the conversation.

Why is this downvoted? We need people to do the actual work but we also need people to support the political projects to enable people to do the actual work.

I assume it was downvoted because it attempts to reduce a complex issue down to a single dimension while providing nothing of substance for the OP. It's also misinformed, by creating the false dichotomy of saving a tiger or saving a forest, and by ignoring that wildlife conservation is a lightning rod for public support that leads to wider initiatives.

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