If a small group of animals with no connection to other groups die out due to lack of diversity (the wrangle island mammoths), isn’t saving critically endangered species pointless?
In: Biology
There’s a difference between saving a creature who has effectively evolved themselves into a dead end, and saving species who are endangered because of the rapid changes humans are effecting on the natural world.
Lack of diversity isn’t necessarily a death blow to a species, it just makes it more difficult for that population to survive changes in the environment because there are no individuals that may be better suited to the new conditions.
The isolated mammoths died out, but they had already greatly outlived their mainland relatives who were similarly unable to adapt in time. Isolation was probably working in their favor for most of that time.
Depends what you’re trying to get out of it. I’d argue that saving *any* species is ultimately pointless, unless that species has some tangible benefit to humans, like bees. I’d argue that because I don’t perceive any objective value in a thing – I believe value comes only from how humans make use of it – and I feel no obligation or sense of self-satisfaction from conservation efforts.
Conservation of endangered species is mostly done by people who don’t agree with me on one of these points – they feel there’s some inherent value to a species independent of humans, or they feel a sense of guilt that human activity has driven the species to this point, or they just like to feel like they’re helping nature. For someone like this, saving a critically endangered species is not pointless, because the point of saving the species comes not from the merit of the species being saved but some other value that is independent of the species in question.
I think part of the thinking behind preserving endangered species of plants and animals is that we don’t (and can’t) actually fully know and understand their usefulness.
It’s like burning books in a genetic library… yeah maybe a lot of them were dumb books, but you’re still left with fewer original ideas than you started with.
Small groups of animals don’t _always_ die out. Wrangel island mammoths did, but that’s not the inevitable fate of all small groups, some just keep going (like Devil’s Hole Pupfish for example) And just because a species is limited to a small area now doesn’t mean it will always be limited to a small area. Take Florida Panthers for example, they are currently starting to expand their range after being limited to a tiny area, now that they are protected. Also, if people are keeping an eye on a population it’s less likely to die out.
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