(6) Salvage and ethics

A comment on the TAXACOM discussion list says there's money in biodiversity salvage.

The story is that commercial plant collectors are taking orchids and cacti from land slated to be 'developed'. Profits from the sale of the plants are shared with the landowner, who then uses the money to clear the land.

The TAXACOM contributor can't vouch for this story, but if the salvage cart is leading the development horse in this way, anywhere, then there's an ethical complication in promoting biodiversity salvage.

Another ethical concern arises when a biologist knows that specimens or populations to be salvaged are the last of their kind. Most people would hesitate to collect, to avoid having 'blood on their hands' and feeling guilty because they were the reason for a species or variety becoming extinct. They would feel even worse if the development threatening those last survivors never happened - called off at the last minute, the land to be made a reserve instead.

But how likely is this scenario? Imagine a case in which there is enough information about a particular species for biologists to say for certain that the last survivors are threatened by development. Isn't that a solid justification for translocation and off-site conservation?

The reality of species loss is that we’re largely ignorant of the details. We don’t know when, where and how most species are becoming extinct. In coming years we might be able to witness the last days of the last polar bear, but for every iconic mammal or bird there are thousands of invertebrates, plants and fungi which will vanish unrecorded and unknown.

Unless we salvage. As I replied to the orchid/cacti post on TAXACOM:

I wouldn't be surprised if there are cases of salvage where none is needed. I'd like to say those are exceptional cases in the context of the vast, worldwide salvage effort. I can't because that effort doesn't exist. That's the problem.