Читать книгу Fundamentals of Conservation Biology - Malcolm L. Hunter Jr. - Страница 66

When we assess the instrumental values of species, we generally focus on their usefulness here and now, but this is a shortsighted viewpoint as revealed in our discussion of medicinal research and biodiversity. Our rudimentary understanding of biology and ecology leaves an enormous gap between the currently realized value of a species and its potential future value. This gap is particularly wide because we have only a vague idea of what our future lives will be like – technologically, culturally, and ecologically. Consider the bacterium, Thermus aquaticus, which grows in the boiling hot springs of Yellowstone National Park and appears to be mere “slime.” This bacterium has proven fundamental to an extraordinary revolution in biotechnology. Everything from using DNA fingerprinting to identify criminals to discovering the molecular basis of major diseases to develop new treatments originally depended on an enzyme from Thermus aquaticus that is capable of remaining functional at very high temperatures while replicating DNA strands (Brock 1997). Before this discovery one could hardly have imagined its utility. It may be even harder to guess at the potential importance that any species might assume in the future. It would certainly have taken a very prescient biologist to guess that the shrew‐like proto‐mammals that scurried around the ankles of dinosaurs would eventually become the Earth‐dominating Homo sapiens. Or that those wolves skulking around the edge of our campfires 20,000 years ago, hoping for some food scraps, would become our beloved Chihuahuas and Great Danes.

The core idea in this section is nicely captured in a phrase that could be a motto for conservation biology: keep options alive. We must take this approach because we know so little. We can never say of any species that it lacks value.