Wednesday, August 31, 2016

The peril to ourselves if we let extinctions happen

Cleaning up my desk just now, I found a 2012 Sierra magazine. You think that's old? I've found way older things in my work area. It seems I saved it due to one small article. And didn't know what to do with it, because, you know, it provides only one example of something I've been thinking about.

As we carry on toward greater global warming, and shrug at warnings that a lot of species are already going extinct, we occasionally hear of a huge reason not to shrug. Some species, and we don't even know yet which ones, have enormous medical uses for us humans.

We've seen it with species that we've abused, thinking they were of low value. The magazine points to the horseshoe crab.  It has BLUE blood. A blood that has special ability to clot quickly around bacterial contaminants. So now we've put protections in place on this declining creature. Maybe no longer will we casually grind it up into fertilizer, or use it for eel bait.

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