Regarding Piping Plovers and other losers

[urbpan]

A group of zoo staff recently went as a group to a local beach to help restore habitat for shore birds, including piping plovers. A friend posted on facebook about it, how much they enjoyed the day, and how he appreciated learning about the complexities of doing conservation work when different stakeholders have input and so on.

A friend of his commented: "There's a part of me that feels like the piping plover is sort of just going through a natural survival of the fittest type situation because they're not very good at evolution. They lay their eggs on exposed rocks! I want to be more sympathetic to them but... ? "

That is a cruel sentiment, expressed stupidly.

I didn't say so, because, perhaps she was commenting quickly and off-the-cuff, something she hadn't thought through. I've certainly posted comments on Facebook, and probably even Livejournal, that I thought better of later. What I did post in reply was:

"By that model all we'll have left are rats and house sparrows. Almost all species fall into either the pest category or the 'not very good at evolution' category, simply because of human influence. (An oversimplification of course, but not far from the mark). If we let the piping plovers go extinct, what's next?"

How stupid are these loser birds to have evolved a breeding system where they lay eggs out on an open beach, where humans and their loose dogs can trample right over them? Sure, it worked for millions of years, allowing them to see from a distance when the predators they evolved alongside would be coming, but why didn't they anticipate human colonization of North American coastlines? What a bunch of idiots, doing what nature and their genetics programmed them to do over countless eons, only to be squashed by cars driving on the beach.

My oversimplification is, I think, basically accurate. There are living things that happen to have adaptations that allow them to thrive alongside human changes to the planet (most of the living things I post about here) and then there are those that do not. If we follow the ethic expressed in the comment at the top, we will lose all the species that do not. Or we can decide that these creatures have inherent value, and that it is our responsibility to make room for them. We can write policies and regulations that ensure the survival of ecosystems and species that otherwise suffer from our presence. We can try to foster the belief that all living things have worth, that biodiversity is a value unto itself.

We will always have the rats and house sparrows, no matter what we decide.

Comments

[dedhamoutdoors.livejournal.com]

It is also a stupid sentiment, expressed cruelly. F**k the polar bears, rhinos, frogs, and every other creature that didn't plan on human ignorance and greed.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I'm with you.

Some people don't want to be made to care, don't want to think about what it all entails. (And some people are just callous assholes.)

But I'd rather care. I like all those creatures.

[hai-kah-uhk.livejournal.com]

Actually, a British friend of mine told me the house sparrow is having a population crisis in England. Infectious disease, possibly. So not even house sparrows are a sure bet.

And I think the anti-plover commenter was just repeating something she'd heard somebody else say. Here on Cape Cod, people say the dumbest things about piping plovers.

[cottonmanifesto.livejournal.com]

i haven't seen a single house sparrow while i've been here.

[trish a. (from livejournal.com)]

Jeez, do you think they'd mind if I sent over the House Sparrows who empty my bird feeder every week?

[hai-kah-uhk.livejournal.com]

Well, the person I talked to would be very amenable to that. She said even the government is getting involved with conservation efforts. I don't know if customs would be thrilled, though.

[cottonmanifesto.livejournal.com]

what an ignorant dickbag cuntface.

[trish a. (from livejournal.com)]

I love you for writing this. Well said.

[gryfindormia.livejournal.com]

No chance they were being tongue-in-cheek? Because I'd say something like that only if I knew everyone knew I was joking/pretending I was a crazy Christian who thinks she understands evolution and WHAT HO! tries to refute it with "dumb birds can't make safe nests, lol".

[temeres.livejournal.com]

We will always have the rats and house sparrows

Possibly not the latter in the UK, where they've declined heavily (though I have noticed more this year).

Never mind, there's always pigeons...

[ndozo.livejournal.com]

I can imagine blurting out something like that. But what I would have meant was: I wonder how these little Plovers have managed to survive all this time even before human encroached on their territory? It seems amazing that any of their eggs ever lasted long enough to hatch considering how vulnerable their nests are.

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

Plovers nest out in the open because the camouflage of their eggs and chicks is so effective that avian predators have a hard time seeing them. The plovers can see mammalian predators coming from a long distance on open beaches--they won't successfully nest if there is vegetation that mammals can hide behind or in. If a mammalian predator gets close, plovers perform a distraction display to lure it away from the nest. It seems weird, but it worked until cars and dogs got to the beaches.

[ndozo.livejournal.com]

Also, unrelated, why do frogs cross the road? Seriously. I had a seemingly endless horrible drive on hundreds of miles of back roads, and every couple of minutes a frog would leap out and try to get me to run over it. For the first time, I understood the inspiration for frogger. What are they doing?

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

Frogs and other amphibians migrate from breeding sites to feeding sites and back. When frogs are disturbed they hop in a quick and unpredictable way, which works good against many predators, but not cars.

[shadefell.livejournal.com]

I get angry when people complain about pandas in the zoo being "too stupid" to mate "to save their species." Right. Because drastically altering their habitat, reducing their range, and shoving them in with strangers they might not be compatible with is a surefire way to foster successful mating. It's totally about them being stupid/stubborn/failures and not about them not being in the correct healthy environment. OF COURSE.