Throwing seed at Goliath
I’m grumpy.
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| I'm the little guy with the sling. Image credit |
As much as I love my job, sometimes it’s hard to maintain any sense of optimism. Sometimes it feels like the forces working against me are too big, powerful, untouchable. Feels like I’m David staring down Goliath while my rock budget keeps getting cut.
It’s hard not to turn cynical and jaded and say, “to heck with it.” To not push the envelope anymore. To not strive for what they say can’t be done.
For instance, the US Fish and Wildlife Service recently proposed listing the monarch butterfly as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. Just in my lifetime, the western population has declined by more than 95 percent. That means they are more than 99 percent likely to be extinct by 2080, just in time for my kids to retire.
Extinct. Gone. Wiped off the face of the earth.
But that’s just the western population. The eastern population, the one we’re familiar with because their migratory path – one of the longest migrations of any insect in the world – comes through our backyards.
Well, it used to.
The eastern population has only declined by about 80 percent making their likelihood of extinction somewhere between 56 and 74 percent. If that were a casino game, I know few people who wouldn’t take those odds.
And here I sit at the head of an organization whose core mission is “dedicated to the sustainability of natural resources…”
Dedicated, sure. At least until there’s not much left to be dedicated to, I guess.
What’s extra painful about this particular situation is the iconic nature of the species we’re watching vanish. When someone says the word “butterfly” most people envision the monarch. It is THE butterfly among the 750-ish species that exist in this country, about one in five of which is currently at risk of extinction.
At work we host educational programs focused on the monarch. We raise, capture, tag, and release hundreds annually, contributing to the scientific knowledge base and public awareness of the species. These programs are some of our most popular ones out of the 300+ we do.
It hurts my soul to think how many kids at those programs might one day read the depressing headline that the monarch butterfly no longer exists. And to twist the knife even more, we will have been largely responsible for it. Monarch population declines are due to loss of habitat, exposure to insecticides, and the effects of climate change.
Not that we’ll acknowledge it.
As I sat in a meeting at the library last week discussing ways we can bring some native plant species for butterfly and pollinator habitat to the urban landscape, I learned that the state of Iowa has taken steps to remove the terms “climate change” and “evolution” from curriculum standards.
Sometimes its hard to keep up the good fight, you know?
Maybe I shouldn’t even worry. Maybe it’s just the natural way of things. I mean, lots of species have gone extinct over time. We don’t see any dinosaurs running around anymore, do we? And thank goodness. You think pigeons are messy, imagine pterodactyls perching on our downtown buildings.
And maybe the natural cycle of things will just fix it. Maybe the climate will keep trending (don’t use the term “climate change” anymore, kids) the way it has been and we’ll get even more wildfires in coastal California (my condolences to the Angelinos impacted by the recent ones) which may improve habitat for the western species of monarch which have “biologically changed” (in Iowa we don’t say “evolved” anymore either, kids) over time with natural forces like wildfire.
Maybe. But I’m guessing there’s about a 99 percent chance that it won’t.
Back here at home, there’s a 56 to 74 percent chance that I’m grumpy and just need a vacation. So I’m going have my little pity party for a bit, take a little trip to Florida (yes, in a plane that contributes mightily to “climate trends” – I acknowledge the hypocrisy), but then I’m going to get back to work. Because somebody has to.
As the Lorax said: “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”
Curriculum standards come and go. Administrations change. But extinction is forever. Just because Goliath seems like a big dude doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep throwing rocks. Or milkweed seed.
If previous generations had given up, we wouldn’t have bald eagles, gray wolves, or alligators, all of which once found themselves on the endangered list (on account of human actions of course), only to make it off after intentional – and human-led – intervention.
So grab your rocks and your milkweed seed, fellow Davids. We have work to do. With eagles, wolves, and alligators backing us up, Goliath isn’t so big, is he?
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