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Flash Points
Plants and animals are dying off up to 1,000 times more quickly than in past centuries. But biologists can't agree on the reason or the solution. One camp argues that we must stop “bulldozing the Garden of Eden” and slow the destruction of habitats. Another believes that unless we address global warming, saving the floes and forests won't matter.
A disproportionate share of life-forms is concentrated in 34 biodiversity “hot spots,” such as Madagascar, which boasts 10,000 unique species worth untold millions to curious pharmaceutical companies. But preserving the island's plants and animals means battling timber companies and political unrest—and providing eco-friendly options to locals who make a living chopping down trees or selling lemurs to restaurants.
Placing a species in captivity is often a last, desperate measure to boost its numbers. And there have been some successes: Biologists in China, for instance, succeeded in tripling the number of pandas capable of breeding, by putting males through a “sexercise” program that includes custom-made panda porn on DVD. But the role of certain zoos as conservation stewards is murky. Critics claim that some zoo-kept animals die younger, are vulnerable to disease, and have trouble reproducing. Indeed, some zoos have already started to ship elephants to preserves. Exhibits in Detroit, San Francisco, and other American cities have recently closed.
What the status means:
Endangered species: an animal or a plant in danger of extinction in the foreseeable future.
Threatened species: an animal or a plant likely to become endangered in the foreseeable future.
Extinct: no longer exists.
Famous Species
A handful of threatened species have had an outsize impact on our laws and imaginations.
Dodo
Status: extinct
This flightless, long-beaked bird that inspired phrases like “as dumb as a dodo” (or as dead as one) lived on the island of Mauritius but died off in the late 1600s, done in by deforestation and its “sitting duck” status with predators. Memorialized by Lewis Carroll in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, it got its name from sailors who mistook its fearlessness (the bird had no predators before humans arrived) for stupidity.
Black rhinoceros
Status: endangered
The Chinese believe the rhino's horn acts as an analgesic to bring down fever. A single horn can sell for tens of thousands of dollars on the black market, leading some African nature preserves to cut off the horns preventively or to keep the animals under armed guard. (About 4,240 remain.)
Chimpanzee
Status: endangered
A million were swinging free at the turn of the 20th century; now there are fewer than 300,000. Our closest animal relative and the lifelong study subject of researcher Jane Goodall, chimps are still hunted for meat and threatened by a disappearing forest habitat.
El Segundo blue butterfly
Status: endangered
Ten years ago, only three small colonies of these speckled butterflies remained, near the Los Angeles airport. Now, after a decade of careful nursing, they're fluttering on L.A. beaches as well.
Snail darter
Status: threatened
In the 1970s, this three-inch fish delayed Tennessee's Tellico Dam by six years. Saving the snail darter was an early test of how far the federal government would go to enforce the Endangered Species Act.
Bald eagle
Status: no longer endangered or threatened
Bald eagle populations in the Lower 48 states have increased 25-fold since the 1960s, thanks to an array of federal protections. America's national bird was taken off the endangered species list in 2007 and joins the American alligator, the Yellowstone grizzly bear, and the peregrine falcon as species that have recovered thanks to conservation efforts.
Forward Thinking
Disease control
Scientists are taking drastic measures to save bats and frogs, which are quickly succumbing to mysterious fungal diseases. In the Caribbean, scientists are giving frogs—which eat insects and, in turn, are eaten by their own predators—medicinal baths and airlifting others to zoos in Britain and Sweden. There's also a $50 million effort to create frog “safe houses” in several countries. In the northeastern United States, wildlife officials have closed off caves to humans, who, they say, may spread a deadly fungus to bats—critical pollinators and champion mosquito eaters.
Your own private Amazon
What can one person do to stop the destruction of rain forests? Buy one. Wealthy environmentalists are scooping up vast tracts of threatened habitats: Johan Eliasch of Head, the athletic clothing and equipment maker, recently bought 400,000 acres of the Amazon. He shut down sawmills, brought in scientists—and quickly became the subject of a Brazilian government investigation after reportedly floating the idea of buying the entire Amazon for $50 billion.
The long arm of the law
After years of wrangling, the polar bear was added to the U.S. threatened species list in 2008— and became the first animal to make the list because of climate change. Since the designation legally guarantees federal protection of an animal's habitat, environmentalists are now trying to use the bear's new status to force the government to limit carbon emissions. Reducing greenhouse gases, they argue, is the only way to preserve the sea ice that the bears depend on. But that means limiting energy use in Florida to help a polar bear in the Arctic.
If you plant it … The Pollinator Partnership is urging Americans to plant the wildflowers that sustain bees, butterflies, bats, and other at-risk pollinators. Why care? Three out of every four crop species won't grow without them.
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