Conservation or Preservation?

This is a note to discuss more optimistic views on how our world is going in the world of conservation as well as possible solutions to our problems. I am not crazy about environmentalism like I used to be, so know that I am not exactly a treehugger, yet I feel as though we have a stewardship responsibility to maintain our world to the best of our ability while giving our children the notion that we really wanted them to have a world in which it is worth living.


            Photo Courtesy of Derrick Arnold
Anthropogenic causes are obviously very strong when it comes to the environment. A part of me would like to say that I value human life over the other existing lifeforms, but I do understand that there are symbiotic relationships that we have with other organisms. Ethics are somewhat the way to look at environmentalism whether one believes it or not.There are three main issues pathocentrism ,anthropocentrism, and Biocentrism. There are others, yet they aren't the prominent ones, so I will discuss the prominent ones. If you prefer the minor ones, write a note and tag me in it.
Anthropocentrism is the stance that humans are the most sole measure of value or the most important in the entire universe. When it comes down to the life of a monkey, a dog, or a human, then we are to choose the Human. No questions asked according to anthropocentrism.

 Photo Courtesy of Derrick Arnold from Derrick Arnold's Novel "Bloom"
Pathocentrism is the stance that says that just as humans have intrinsic value, so should other creatures with intelligence. The animals that can feel empathy. So, I used to adopt this ethical stance when I was vegan saying "I can't eat anything if I could be friends with it." I became a vegetarian because I applied this code of ethics to not eating meat, but not towards fungii or plants; I had to eat something, right?

Biocentrism is the view point that all forms of life have the intrinsic right to exist and that it is immoral for people to cause extinction. This is extreme. This view has pretty much become a religious view point called deep ecology.

I would like to say these arguments need not be mutually exclusive. I hope if anyone reads this that they won't get offended, but it would be encouraging to hear ideas about your own personal reflection on this.

I will present what I believe should be the way to approach the subject and let you give any feedback or insight. I believe I can break it down to 3 laws, kind of like the three laws of Robotics by the science fiction writer Isaac Asimov.
I believe that human life is vital and must be preserved at all cost
All intelligent life must be preserved at all cost, unless if it conflicts with human life
Preserve all life as long as humans and all the species in which humans empathize the most are not at risk from such preservation.
I, however, hold to if there are ticks and mosquitos... I will kill them. I am pretty cool with a lot of life, but these parasites... ew.. they disgust me.
Let's say there is an island nation and they have no means of food except for the fish that surround them. Do we let them fish? Of course, but what if they fish beyond the sustainable yield and some people die? (USTAINABLE YIELD in a simple defintion is a yield of extraction without destroying the population of these fishies)  This is ultimately a question of which is more important to preserve the lives of fishes or of humans. By eating at a sustainable yield humans can continue to live, but cannot indulge in overeating; this gives the ecosystem a chance to remain in balance. Evolution has seen predation like this since the predator/prey relationship began, but it hasn't experienced a capable of not only eradicating many forms of life, but also the world as well. It is because of the indulgent behavior of man that mankind may be the sole cause of the 6th exinction. You think there will be a Captain Planet to save the day? I doubt it, amigo.

Keeping in mind these nuances, what are the best ways to preserve biodiversity?
First I would say that we need to protect first and foremost Biodiversity hotspots around the world. If you are unfamiliar with this term it is a  region with a significant amount of biodiversity that is under threat from humans. These places are defined by having at least 1,500 endemic vascular plants that only live there, and also the environment may have lost over 70% of the original habitat area. Most people don't realize that 60% of the world's plant and animal species are endemic to these regions alone. Any concentrated conservation efforts should be here to protect biodiversity. As far as money goes to contribute to conservation, this would be the wisest decision.Next would be to conserve the forests of areas in or around these regions. We need to save the frontier forests beyond the hotspots themselves. Some places for example are the Amazon Basin, the Congo, New Guinea, and also places like the temperate forests of Russia, Finland, and Scandanavia.The next step is to stop logging all old growth forests. These obviously will have some overlap as some of the frontier will be in the hotspots and old growth forests, and well you get the point. The big deal is that the more forests we preserve, especially tropical, the more species we keep on our journey around the sun.

The next step is to preserve lakes and rivers of the world. At the present time have the highest percentage of endangered species to area occupied to any ecosystem. Then comes the ocean. We hardly even understand the ocean and all of its facets; what this means is that we do not even know the hotspots for marine regions. So, not only do we not know where they are for the most part, we don't have much intention on trying to preserve it. We know right now only of the coral reefs because they seem to be the majority hotspots when it comes to marine regions because they display the greatest amount of diversity being like a tropical rainforest of the sea. Our energy should be focused on preserving these regions when it comes to marine biology.

Next would be the complete mapping of biodiversity. This is just getting started via the Encyclopedia of Life (EOL.ORG). They plan on have a page listing for each species of biodiversity by 2017. E.O. Wilson wrote in his book "The Future of Life", looking at the totality of life, the poet asks "who are gaias children?". The ecologists answers," they are the species, we must know the role each one plays in the whole to manage the earth wisely.The systamatist adds," then lets get started, how many species are there? who are they? what are their genetic kin?"  This is when Wilson proposed EOL to catalog life and characteristcs of each species. This is a great way to commit to cost effective preservation efforts, and if you are into conservation this is a great way to steward your money. Besides committing to mapping out specific species, a great thing for us to do would be to use remote sensing to survey biodiversity regions and hotspots. It would help in so many ways its crazy. It would help for biodiversity ranging and changing and biogeochemical make ups of the regions as well.This will help when it comes to getting financed from companies interested in funding conservation because it will narrow the view to what is the most important. In stating this, we need to make conservation profitable. Otherwise, we as selfish douschbags won't desire to do it. Using biodiveristy wisely is the biggest thing, if we can get big companies to profit from it than it will be 100% easier to preserve our biodiviersity.