As humans increasingly pick the winners and losers of the animal kingdom, will the monarch butterfly make the cut, or will it be left to die out?
A once-familiar sight in Canadian gardens, migrating monarchs are flying closer to extinction. The International Union for Conservation of Nature declared the butterfly an endangered species on Thursday.
The monarch’s struggles are largely the result of pesticides destroying milkweed, the only plant monarch larvae eat, and scientists warn the species could become extinct within the next 15 years if it doesn’t get more human help to survive.
But for this, the monarch must compete against more than 41,000 species of threatened animals, insects and plants. Many more species will join them as climate change, industry and other factors decimate their habitats.
This means that humans will have to make an increasing number of difficult decisions in the future about which life forms we want to save, with limited resources to do so.
“[You’ll] Get into these arguments about: Is this particular plant worth it? Is this particular butterfly showy enough, or is this particular slug something we care about?” said Holly Doremus, a professor of environmental law at the University of California, Berkeley. “And that ends up taking a lot of resources in itself. “
LOOK | Migrant monarch butterflies are now an endangered species:
Monarch butterflies have been added to the endangered species list
The International Union for Conservation of Nature has added the migratory monarch butterfly to its list of endangered species.
Given the choice between a cute and charming creature, such as a glowing butterfly or a slimy slug, which would you choose?
“This is actually the biggest problem in my profession,” said Frank Köhler, a mollusc expert at the Australian Museum who is fighting to save Kaputar’s giant pink slug, of which there are only a few dozen left, above of a remote mountain for seven hours. north-west of Sydney.
“People are always easily convinced by furry, furry things that we can relate to in some way, that they’re beautiful… We have a lot of other threatened species… and it’s very difficult to raise awareness about their conservation.”
For Köhler and other advocates for slugs, snails and unphotogenic brown creatures, it’s a constant struggle to prove that their chosen organism is as worthy of saving as any other.
This Mount Kaputar slug was spotted by a ranger in Mount Kaputar National Park in New South Wales, Australia in early 2020. Wildlife officials had feared for the species after bushfires they razed their alpine habitat and decimated their population. (National Parks and Wildlife Service)
“If things have a use for humans and are more attractive or more interesting, then of course we tend to level them a little bit more, and I think that’s probably a mistake,” he said.
Survival of the fittest?
In 1859, Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection changed the way humans understand the unique attributes of animals, as well as explaining why some species thrive while others die out: the survival of the fittest.
But humans have always had a hand in picking the winners and losers of the animal kingdom, based on whether they’re tasty, cute or useful.
Case in point: giant pandas, struggling to reproduce, subsisting on a single food that provides them with almost no energy and no apparent purpose other than to entertain humans by comically falling out of trees, all of which only makes us more determined to save. they.
“They’re really cute,” Doremus said.
“And that’s the problem, right? We’re keeping them because they’re so cute.”
Hundreds of millions of dollars are spent each year on efforts to save giant pandas, which struggle to survive outside of captivity. These baby pandas, pictured on February 3, 2021, live in a nature reserve in China’s Sichuan province. (Associated Press)
Few scientists will publicly argue against saving endangered species. In a 2017 opinion piece, R. Alexander Pyron, an associate professor of biology at George Washington University, argued that conservation is a waste of time, which “serves to release our own guilt, but little else.” .
The piece drew strong rebuttal from scientists and Nobel laureates, who wrote in a letter to the editor: “It is dangerous to think that we are ‘neither better nor worse’ without a large proportion of the species alive today.” .
After being publicly shamed for his opinion, Pyron backed down. (He declined an interview request from CBC News.)
Pyron was right that extinction is an eventuality for all living species; however, humans are dramatically speeding up this process for many of them.
“It’s like we’re pruning the evolutionary tree of life,” said Sally Otto, an evolutionary biologist and professor at the University of British Columbia.
“We’re not losing random things; we’re specifically losing species that can’t thrive alongside humans. The winners in this will be things like rats, starlings and pigeons, which can thrive in crowded urban environments . cities.”
Picking winners and losers
To decide how much to invest in saving any species, governments around the world use several criteria: the uniqueness of the species, its likelihood of recovery, the fiscal cost and what benefits it would bring.
In Canada, an independent advisory body assesses whether species should be considered endangered, but the federal government makes the final decision, and it’s not always based entirely on science.
“[This] can influence which species receive formal protection and, more broadly, the effectiveness of efforts to conserve biodiversity,” a group of US and Canadian scientists wrote in 2013.
In an email to CBC News, Environment Canada says the agency developed a “pan-Canadian approach” with provincial and territorial partners in 2018 to identify animals in need of conservation. He identified six “priority species”.
These species are:
- Wasteland caribou.
- boreal caribou
- Cock of Arlvis major.
- Peary’s caribou.
- Southern mountain caribou.
- Wooden bison
“These species were chosen following a number of criteria and considerations in collaboration with provincial and territorial partners,” the agency said. “These include, but are not limited to, the role and value of the species within its ecosystems, its conservation status and the possibility of achieving conservation outcomes, its social and cultural value (especially for peoples indigenous peoples) and the leadership/partnership opportunities that their conservation has. presents.”
Monarch caterpillars are displayed on the undersides of milkweed leaves. The use of pesticides by humans has resulted in a dramatic reduction in milkweeds in Canada, which has affected butterfly species. (April Douglas (@seaglassheart)/Twitter)
Some scientists are not interested in the government’s criteria and broader approach. “We’re not choosing in any rational way,” Otto said. “We’re losing species and we’re not really deciding whether that’s something we as a society want to happen or not.”
The case of the monarch, and all the rest
Canadian monarch advocates argue that the butterfly is more than just a pretty face, and its utility is one more reason to save it.
“It’s a pollinator [and] we need pollinators to survive – we can’t eat fruits and vegetables if there are no pollinators,” said Alessandro Dieni, an ecologist and coordinator of Mission Monarch at the Insectarium de Montréal, a community science program.
But what about the thousands of life forms that lack obvious appearance or function? Should we worry about saving them?
“Each species has its place in the ecosystem, and nature is so complex that we often don’t even know until a species is lost what kind of ramifications they will have down the line,” said monarch expert Sam Knight at Nature Conservancy. of Canada, which focuses its work on protecting ecosystems, rather than individual species.
Sam Knight, monarch butterfly expert at the Nature Conservancy of Canada, said each species has its place in the ecosystem. (Submitted by Sam Knight)
If the last surviving giant pink slugs were to die, Köhler admits that their delicate ecosystem would likely be fine without them.
But he cautions that humans should not choose extinction on this basis alone.
“The question is, if you have a puzzle, how many pieces can you lose until you basically lose the whole picture?”
How you can help the monarch butterfly
Canadians can help by observing monarch butterflies in their community and monitoring butterflies during the International Monarch Monitoring Blitz from July 29 to August 7.
People can also help by planting milkweeds, or leaving them, for monarchs to lay their eggs and by avoiding the use of pesticides that can kill the weed or the insects that depend on it. Because milkweed is considered a noxious weed, there are rules about which species can grow in different parts of Canada.