Ecological Extinction - Implications For Conservation Policy

Implications For Conservation Policy

Conservation policy has historically lagged behind current science all over the world, but at this critical juncture politicians must make the effort to catch up before massive extinctions occur on our planet. For example, the pinnacle of American conservation policy, the Endangered Species Act of 1973, fails to acknowledge any benefit for protecting highly interactive species that may help maintain overall species diversity. Policy must first assess whether the species in question is considered highly interactive by asking the questions “does the absence or loss of this species, either directly or indirectly, incur a loss of overall diversity, effect the reproduction or recruitment of other species, lead to a change in habitat structure, lead to a change in productivity or nutrient dynamics between ecosystems, change important ecological processes, or reduce the resilience of the ecosystem to disturbances?”. After these multitudes of questions are addressed to define an interactive species, an ecologically effective density threshold must be estimated in order to maintain this interaction ecology. This process holds many of the same variables contained within viable population estimates, and thus should not be difficult to incorporate into policy. To avoid mass extinction on a global scale unlike anyone has seen before, scientists must understand all of the mechanisms driving the process. It is now that the governments of the world must act in order to prevent this catastrophe of the loss of biodiversity from progressing further and wasting all of the time and money spent on previous conservation efforts.