*
DOES it have to end this way? Does the last best hope for the world’s
most magnificent creatures—or, for that matter, its least magnificent
ones—really lie in pools of liquid nitrogen? Having been alerted to the
ways in which we’re imperiling other species, can’t we take action to
protect them? Isn’t the whole point of trying to peer into the future so
that, seeing dangers ahead, we can change course to avoid them?
Certainly humans can be destructive and shortsighted; they can also
be forward-thinking and altruistic. Time and time again, people have
demonstrated that they care about what Rachel Carson called “the
problem of sharing our earth with other creatures,” and that they’re
willing to make sacrifices on those creatures’ behalf. Alfred Newton
described the slaughter that was occurring along the British coast; the
result was the Act for the Preservation of Sea Birds. John Muir wrote
about the damage being done in the mountains of California, and this led
to the creation of Yosemite National Park. Silent Spring exposed the
dangers posed by synthetic pesticides, and within a decade, most uses of
DDT had been prohibited. (The fact that there are still bald eagles in the
U.S.—indeed the numbers are growing—is one of the many happy
consequences of this development.)
Two years after the ban on DDT, Congress in 1974 passed the
Endangered Species Act. Since then, the lengths to which people have
gone to protect creatures listed under the act is very nearly, in the literal
sense of the word, incredible. To cite just one of many possible
illustrations, by the mid–nineteen-eighties the population of California
condors had dwindled to just twenty-two individuals. To rescue the
species—the largest land bird in North America—wildlife biologists raised
condor chicks using puppets. They created fake power lines to train the
birds not to electrocute themselves; to teach them not to eat trash, they
wired garbage to deliver a mild shock. They vaccinated every single
condor—today there about four hundred—against West Nile virus, a
disease, it’s worth noting, for which a human vaccine has yet to be