From: harelb@math.cornell.edu
Newsgroups: talk.environment
Subject: Bio-diversity (article)
Date: 20 Jan 93 22:44:00 GMT
Nf-ID: #N:9301202241.AA02967@poly.math.cor:1261795236:000:9374
Nf-From: math.cornell.edu!harelb    Jan 20 14:44:00 1993


From: harelb@math.cornell.edu (misc.activism.progressive co-moderator)
Subject: Bio-diversity (article)


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    "[...] The local geckos ate the dead flies and were poisoned with
    DDT. The geckos were eaten by housecats and the cats died.  Then
    ensued a plague of rats which ate the people's food and threatened
    them with bubonic plague. So goes the food chain and the law of
    unintended consequences."
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		       =======================
			  Movement MEANINGS
		       =======================
		       B I O D I V E R S I T Y
		       =======================
		       B y   A n n   A l p e r
		       =======================
		      Z Magazine, November, 1991
		    (See bottom for more about Z)

RECENTLY CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, asserting on the essay page of Time that
nature is here to serve man [sic], urged his readers to distinguish
between environmental "necessities" like protecting the ozone layer
and environmental "luxuries" such as saving the spotted owl. The
variety of nature is "a good," he says, "a high esthetic good.  But it
is no more than that." If erasing the old-growth forests in which the
owl lives saves loggers' jobs, let's get on with it.

But surely Krauthammer knows by now that saving forests is one of the
two principal ways of *protecting* the ozone layer, which he
recognizes as an "environmental necessity." The role of forests in
sopping up carbon, the principal ozone depleter and the largest waste
product of industrial society, has been covered exhaustively in media
reports of the tropical rainforest destruction in South America. Never
let us underestimate the power of denial, however. Species homo
sapiens can go to truly mind-boggling lengths to keep from
acknowledging facts too discomfiting to bear.

Here are more: Old-growth forests such as those of the owl in question
have already disappeared from private lands. They're 90 percent gone
from public land. We're fighting over the last 7 percent not destroyed
in the mere 150 years since the white people came to the Pacific
Northwest. But what's left of the Northwest temperate rainforests
still contains more biomass to bind carbon than the Brazilian
rainforests.

Ferns, mosses, lichens, fungi, and soil-enriching microbes along with
a variety of trees and brush protect water levels and quality, as well
as the quality of soil in the Northwest and the productivity of its
fisheries. The tree farms that supplant them, containing only one or
two variety of trees, are unable to do this.

Only days after the publication of Krauthammer's remarks, we were
reminded how critical this old-growth biodiversity is. The Department
of Agriculture announced that Bristol Myers-Squibb has been given
permission to harvest the Pacific yew for an anti-cancer drug found in
its bark. This hitherto scorned old-growth tree, relegated until now
to the slash pile for burning, will produce enough pure taxol to treat
12,500 ovarian and breast cancer patients in clinical trials. The
women who stand to benefit would hardly describe taxol as a "luxury."

Over millennia, many plants have developed chemicals to fight off
predators which would otherwise eat or infest them. These same
chemicals appear to fight off some cancers as well.  A few years ago,
the rosy periwinkle of Madagascar was found to contain a substance
which is now very effectively used in the treatment of leukemias and
other cancers. As a matter of fact, one-third of the medicines we buy
in our pharmacies are extracted from higher plants. Some of these
medicines can be synthesized in the lab, now that nature has shown us
the way, but their genetic structure is so complex they'd probably
have escaped the human imagination forever.

How many necessary medicines, foods, and fuels there are yet to be
found is a question no one can answer.  Though we've discovered and
described one-and-a-quarter million species of plants and animals,
estimates of the numbers of species on earth range from 5 to 30
million and they're going extinct at a rate hundreds of times faster
than in the days before industrialization. Destroying the Pacific
old-growth forest is destroying a genetic library still largely
uninvestigated.

Nor are beneficial plants all that's disappearing. The spotted owl has
been designated an "indicator species," which recognizes that the
environment required by the owl is required by other species as well.
Five endangered or threatened animals -- the gray wolf, grizzly bear,
Columbian white-tailed deer, bald eagle and peregrine falcon -- share
Northwest old-growth forests.

There are 15 other old-growth forest species which are candidates for
those lists. They include the Iynx, wolverine, Pt. Reyes mountain
beaver, pond turtle, and several kinds of birds and fish.  Many more
species have been designated by the state of Oregon. Though recent
research has shown many of these animals capable of surviving in young
and mature natural forests, many cannot. In managed tree farms, few
can.

Should we care about animals when loggers' jobs are at stake? In a
word, yes. These animals are part of an eco-system that species homo
sapiens (including loggers) is part of, too. Earth's varied ecosystems
have evolved over billions of years and sustain all life on the
planet. It's not unreasonable to say that every living thing
potentially affects every other living thing.

A well-known example of interconnectedness given by population
biologist Paul Ehrlich is that of the spraying of DDT in Borneo some
years ago to control mosquitos. The DDT not only wiped out the
mosquitos, but wasps and flies as well. Caterpillars, no longer eaten
by wasps, devoured the thatched roofs of the people's houses, causing
them to fall in. The local geckos ate the dead flies and were poisoned
with DDT. The geckos were eaten by housecats and the cats died.  Then
ensued a plague of rats which ate the people's food and threatened
them with bubonic plague. So goes the food chain and the law of
unintended consequences.

Still another consequence of ecosystem destruction is the foreclosing
of new food and energy sources. Just when humankind needs such sources
desperately, we are endangering animals such as the Amazon giant river
turtle, whose meat is both nutritious and delicious and can be
produced without cutting down the rainforests, as cattle-raising
requires. Nor are wheat, corn, and rice, our principal grain staples,
necessarily the best ones. There are more nutritious grains not under
cultivation and thousands more edible plants and animals we've not
learned to use. Many are in the tropical rainforests of South America.

When explorer Amerigo Vespucci first came to the Brazilian coast
almost 500 years ago, he was impressed with the native diet of tubers,
delicious fruits, crab, lobster, oysters, and all manner of fish,
turtles, and game. He might be shocked to know that only the richest
inhabitants of the area can now enjoy such a diet and that only a
sixth of the native people survive because of the loss of their
habitat and other ills brought by "civilization." He would surely be
astonished by Brazil's medical problems, for he found the inhabitants
of the area amazingly healthy and long-lived. "If one of them should
chance to fall ill," wrote Vespucci, "he immediately gathers herbs and
cures himself." How many of those medicinal herbs have gone the way of
their users, we can only guess.

What's certain is that saving our natural world is inseparable from
saving ourselves. The contest is not between loggers and owls, as
Krauthammer would have us believe. but between our very short-term
economic interests and our long-term survival. If we don't soon
acknowledge our biology, we're history.  Z

---

Ann Alper is a psychotherapist, an occasional contributor to the op-ed
page of the Lost Angeles Times.

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