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Environmental Law

: ESA Blawg

Why bother blawging...?

By Keith Rizzardi

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So why do I bother blawging? After all, pessimism gets the better of me sometimes, as I read the scary science and predictions related to climate change. Maybe the oceans really are dying, as the Los Angeles Time reported today. See, "Dead zones off Oregon and Washington likely tied to global warming," Sadly, as I've already acknowledged on these pages, as a result of these massive global changes, there may be little we can do to save some species. See, "Has Climate Change Jeopardized the ESA?" But in other cases, perhaps humanity really can make a difference.

Photo of "School of Tuna" by Greenpeace, from Making Waves blog pages.
For a wonderful artistic depiction of dolphin tuna interactions, visit New York's American Museum of Natural History dioramas.

Maybe we can avoid the extinction of tuna , our important "chicken of the sea" -- and the dolphins that swim with them -- by learning lessons from cod. See NOAAdiscussion of tuna-dolphin issues by Southwest Fisheries Science Center and see ENN article on learning lessons from cod.

Maybe we can learn from our successes, such as the delisting of bald eagles and brown pelicans.

Maybe we can learn from the passenger pigeon, doomed by conversion of forests to farmlands, and excessive hunting. (In 1878, in Michigan, 50,000 birds per day were killed for nearly five months!)

Photo of a famous passenger pigeon named Martha, the last of her species, who died at 1 p.m. on September 1, 1914, at an astonishing age 29, in the
Cincinnati Zoological Garden. From the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History (Martha is not on view.)

Maybe, by learning about what we are doing to our own environment, humanity will awaken, and work even harder to solve the problems we create.

And maybe, just maybe, by blawging about the extinctions of the past, and the tragic extinctions that could soon occur, I can play a role in helping us to avoid needless extinctions of the future.

There are no dodos, and no passenger pigeons left.

For the sake of my children, I'd like to avoid a future with no people.

Full post as published by ESA Blawg on February 22, 2008 (boomark / email).