An ECO BOOKS Featured Selection

Noah's Choice

The Future of Endangered Species

by Charles C. Mann and Mark L. Plummer

We want to save nature, but are we willing to inconvenience ourselves to do so? Not very much according to Noah's Choice. The book describes various programs to assist endangered species and the strong pressures these programs face from humans who feel that they would make better use of the land required than a few butterflies, beetles, ticks or whooping cranes. Although the authors fail to make much of a case for preserving endangered species, the book offers a clear perspective on the pressures that preservation efforts face.

Noah's Choice by Charles C. Mann and Mark L. Plummer 302 pages, hardback Knopf, 1995 List: $24.00, Our price: $24.00

Praise for Noah's Choice

"A clear, entertaining, and above all honest look at a subject that is too often mired in dishonest posturing." --William D. Ruckelshaus, former Administrator, Environmental Protection Agency.

"Not only a concise explanation of the crisis created by the Endangered Species Act's inherent conflict between economics and the environment, but a sensible prescription to guide those debating the act's future. Zealots on both sides of the debate should read this, for it makes a compelling, science-based case for changes in our approach and in our thinking; and it makes clear that we will be making difficult choices that will say much about how we really view man's place in the natural world." --Cecil D. Andrus, former Secretary of the Interior.

About Charles C. Mann and Mark L. Plummer / Order Noah's Choice / Search / Table of Contents

Quotes from Noah's Choice

"Species are not truly safe from extinction, biologists say, unless they are part of an ecosystem that is free to operate by its own rules. In the case of the Albany Pine Bush, that means expanding the preserve enough to handle big natural fires. Ten to twenty thousand acres would be necessary, according to Thomas Givnish of the University of Wisconsin--Madison, one of the three biologists whose recommendations were behind the establishment of the preserve. In Albany, such a reserve could not be assembled without displacing roads, stores, parking lots, industrial facilities, and housing developments--one reason that Givnish did not advocate it. But he emphasized that the current preserve, created after such struggle, is not really big enough.

"Moreover, Givnish told us, one reserve, no matter how large, 'will not cut it.' The butterfly, he said, 'occupies a narrow climatic belt from Minnesota to New Hampshire that's only a couple hundred miles wide from north to south. That means that large portions of the range of the butterfly are near its limits, where the physical or biological conditions will often be inhospitable. It's always getting wiped out at any individual place. So it would be foolhardy if one was planning for the global persistence of the species to depend on the Albany Pine Bush. You might get a once-in-a-millennium fire or have the local deer herd get out of control and munch down the lupine plants. There's all sorts of things that could happen.' To avoid putting all the butterfly eggs in one basket, he said, the Karner Blue needs a series of big reserves. Four for five, Givnish thought, would do the trick. The total might run as high as 100,000 acres--about 150 square miles."

. . .

"In sum, biodiversity as a whole has overwhelming utilitarian value, but most individual species do not. The reasons for saving the 10 million rarely apply to the one. The whooping crane might be worth saving for its value to tourists. But that type of value surely does not extend to the Karner Blue butterfly or the American burying beetle. Nor does it extend, one presumes, to the Socorro isopod, or the tidal shore beggar's tick, or the small whorled pogonia. Should we therefore sweep them aside?"

"If the value of the oil beneath Aransas soars, why shouldn't we kill the last whoopers? This logic is compelling, but people have rarely embraced it. Time and time again, human beings have hesitated, axe raised, and decided to remove endangered species from the executioner's block. Even if they have no utilitarian value, people work to protect them. To judge by these actions, people must disagree with the logic above, which would license us to wipe out most other species. This suggests, in turn, that the entire discussion of utilitarian value, though often invoked as a reason to conserve biodiversity, is a red herring."

. . .

"Because prudence will save so few species, caring about biodiversity becomes, as Sagoff told us, a question 'about right and wrong, and should be treated as such first and foremost.' "

"The Noah Principle embraces the same view, of course, but does so by creating what thinkers since Kant have called a 'perfect duty' toward all species. Such a duty, Sagoff wrote, 'does not admit of exceptions in order to accommodate wants, interest, or inclination.' A classic illustration of a perfect duty is that we must not enslave others, even if becoming a slaveholder would free us from poverty. By contrast, we do not have a perfect duty to help the poor. 'Obviously it is distasteful, to say the least, if you gorge yourself while the world starves' Sagoff told us. 'Some compassion is called for. But you don't have the duty to give up all of your own aspirations to help them.'

"The problem with creating a perfect duty to biodiversity is twofold. It is unethical, because trying to save every species perfectly would force our society to destroy many or all of its other accomplishments, an act of self-immolation that the ecologically concerned cannot force on others, who may have different but equally worthy goals, And it is impracticable, because this perfect duty is impossible to fulfill, even if our society were willing to turn back three hundred years of its history. On the ethical side, the desire to protect biodiversity must not overwhelm other human goals. It would be wrong, for instance, if we allowed concern for the environment to destroy someone's aspiration to educate their children, or to provide good health care for their family, or to live in a safe, comfortable home."

"Acknowledging that a problem is moral, in other words, does not mean abjuring practicable concerns. Everyone may agree that, from an ethical point of view, protecting the whooping crane is a good thing to do. But they can also agree that the same protection is, pragmatically speaking, a costly, even losing, economic proposition. . . 'To balance the ethical with the prudential,' Sagoff has argued, 'is to recognize that the way toward ideals which are morally valuable, like the protection of nature, must be practicable. . . . a prudent regard for our interests determines when virtuous action would be supererogatory: that is, morally praiseworthy, but impracticable and above and beyond the call of duty.' "
 

Table of Contents of Noah's Choice

1. Seventeen Beetles
2. Kinds Of
3. The Crisis
4. Uncooking the Frog
5. Reasons Peculiarly Our Own
6. "The Awful Beast is Back"
7. The "Is" and the "Ought"
8. Noah's Choice

Reader Comments on Noah's Choice

Daniel W. Van Riper, Albany, NY, Fri, 02 May 1997

Noah's Choice devotes forty pages to the efforts by the local citizenry to preserve the Pine Bush ecosystem in Albany, NY. Yet not once in the narrative is there mention of the all-volunteer organization Save the Pine Bush or the lawsuits we have filed and won for almost 20 years. Ah, but in the microscopic bibliography in the back of the book the lawsuits are referenced!

The point of this right wing waste of paper is to "prove" that big government has imposed environmentalism, land preservation and endangered species protection on an unwilling and uncomprehending populace. The only problem with this conspiracy theory is that the Pine Bush Preserve has been created as a result of long battles by citizen volunteers against the government. Check out the Save the Pine Bush web site, read all about it.

Of course, these propagandists use the typical rightist tactic of separating endangered species from the ecosystems in which they live. Why save the Karner Blue butterfly? Because we don't want big corporations to use the government to destroy the Pine Bush, that's why.

Related ECO BOOKS Titles

Search / Order / Comments / Index / Main Page

Copyright ECO BOOKS 2000