"It is time to let the Panda go"

[karohemd]

Interesting viewpoint and I think quite valid as "survival of the fittest" applies here and the panda is, quite frankly, too stupidill adapted to survive. It would be entirely different if all it took was to conserve or expand his habitat.

I'd be interested to hear what my naturalist/conservationist friends think about this.

(thanks to raggedy_man for the link)

Comments

[zenmeisterin.livejournal.com]

This. Selection 'pressure' in an environment where you have few to no natural predators is weak, and in the interests of energy conservation the species that doesn't over-breed and wind up running out of food would do well. Until human settlers began causing drastic alterations in their habitat, they were doing just fine. They are a fragile species and they cannot handle the human invasion of their habitats. It's quite likely that they would have come to an end at some point in the future even without human intervention, as 99.9% of all species that ever lived have done, but in this case they've been cut short by humanity as many other species have been.

I think it's quite unfair to single out which species to conserve and which ones not to bother with becasue of how useful they are to us at present, or how cute they look. To say that a species of animal 'deserves' to be wiped out by humanity's actions becasue it wasn't good enough to adapt to our blink-of-an-eye colonisation of the planet is arrogant beyond belief. As a species, we have an attrocious sense of responsibility.

[fearmeforiampink]

I think the question that's being raised is more the old NHS one:

Yes, that drug might save you from dying of cancer. But it has only a 10% chance of doing so, and for the same money spent on this other drug, we've got an 80% chance of saving these five other people. Who gets to live?

Swap pandas for the first drug and other more viable but currently at risk species for the second, and I think the situations are rather similar.