7393

• UCREFRP Catalog Number: 7393
• Author: Harrington, W.
• Title: Endangered Species Protection and Water Resource Development.
• USFW Year: 1980.
• USFW - Doc Type: LA-8278-MS,
• Copyright Material: NO

an acceptable policy, as would a breakthrough in biological engineering enabl-

ing plants or animals to be recreated from genetic information saved in vitro.

Such a "genetic ark" would make irrelevant the question of irreversibility.

Both these al ternatives are at present technically infeasible, * but even if

they were not, it is unlikely that either would be universally accepted as a

solution to the problem of vanishing species. For many, perhaps most people,

endangered species protection means the maintenance of populations in the wild.

Th is is certainly true of the "glamour" species that are endangered--the bald

eagle, the whopping crane, the snow leopard, and the like. Many people exper-

ience no small amount of satisfaction simply from knowing that these magnifi-

cent creatures are alive and well in their native habitat, but it also may be

true of very obscure species whose very names invite ridicule (the Furbish

lousewort, the orange-footed pimpleback muss Ie) which suggests that the objec-

tive of endangered species policy may not only be the preservation of species

1n the wild, but preservation of the wild itself.

This position was succinctly stated before the 1978 Senate Hearings by

Mr. Tom Garrett of Defenders of Wildlife:

The obscure species which have figured in certain
recent controversies are, in particular, part and parcel of
very specific environments. Their disappearance, almost
invariably, signals the functional end of the habitat in
which they lived . Their disappearance signals the
end perhaps of free-flowing unpolluted water on a river,
the end of inland marshes in a region. It also signals the
end of any bond that they had with the land. As species
they are, admittedly, insignificant, but in the totality of
their environment, they are something else (p. 81).

If obscure, endangered species are, ultimately, indicator species for the
health of ecosystems, then the range of appropriate policies may be consider-
ably different (and probably narrower) than it would be if the objective were
simply to preserve by whatever means the particular threatened species.
Whatever these alternative policies are, one must have criteria by which
they can be evaluated. Of course, if there is no agreement over objectives,
there will be no agreement over the extent to which the criteria are met, but
they will at least provide a framework for the debate. Among those criteria

*Some species will not breed in captivity.

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