Awesome Animal News!

[Nerdanel]

Originally Posted by Mari

She's pretty! And she looks very relaxed, must be because of the big eyes.

You can complain all you want, I don't think it's complaining. I didn't know about the inbreeding thing to preserve the whiteness. Thank you for enlightening me
I'd like to preserve nature and wildlife as much as possible, but sometimes I wonder where the limit is. How far can you go and how much that is done "in order to preserve nature" is in fact just the arrogance of man?
But I'm getting gloomy and in a philosophical mood here, so I'll shut up as well.

Those are very good questions, though. Over-preserving is stupid, too: life on earth is dynamic, species come and go. That's how it's always been. Through conserving, though, we're trying to target the species and biotopes that we affect in a way that may be disastrous. Lately, there has been a lot of discussion about preserving evolutionary processes instead of single species, which might be a step in the right direction. This poses a lot of other complicated questions, though.

So, of course, nothing is that straight-forward: first of all, how do we know how to distinguish between effects caused by humanity and other effects? That is, how do we make sure we're not too conservative in our conservation efforts? And to what extent are we 'part of nature', is it only the effects the industrialised world has that need to be considered? Those are just a fraction of the philosophical questions conservation biologists work with: more direct questions, though, are those about money: where do we get the money? And more importantly: how do we get the money to preserve all that life that is crucial without being cute and furry?

I have feeling this should be discussed somewhere else.. X)

(and I'm always happy to enlighten someone. )