Keep Using, Stop Abusing: The Immediate Benefits of Conservation

With great powers, come great responsibilities. I used to preach this to all my unenlightened friends in Denmark who’ve only seen animals in zoos and don’t really know how quickly the natural world is disappearing. Because we are the most sophisticated species on the planet, we have the responsibility to protect all its lesser species who are now being threatened by our presence. But what’s the end goal? You can’t have your cake and eat it. The human population is growing and growing rapidly and the need for natural resources becomes higher and higher, so to protect these becomes increasingly more difficult. In the end it could lead us to a very hard choice, but it’s a choice that has always been around, even back to the earliest hunter/gatherers. Us…or them. The way things are going, we can’t have both. According to some doomsday prophets we can have neither and our continuing strain on the planet will inevitably lead to the destruction of all life, including ourselves. More on this later. But considering the immediate short-term choice between our own survival and that of our natural world, on a macro-scale, this makes the current benefits of conservation look slightly paradoxical because it will inadvertently mean the suffering and hunger of human populations. There are however other areas where conservation is urgently needed. 

Harvesting natural resources for consumption and energy is what I would constitute as more or less acceptable use of nature and one that we have always depended on to survive, the only problem being that our population has now become too large to keep relying on these resources sustainably. Beyond this use of nature there is another category, where I think conservation is more relevant, if still a losing battle. Beyond acceptable use of nature there is abuse of nature. Here I am referring to black market trade of endangered animals or parts of them, for medicinal, culinary or pet purposes, use of animal products to create clothing and other uses unnecessary to ensure our own basic modern living standard. The demand for these products cause destruction worldwide through poaching and illegal fishing, all to fuel this industry that is already banned in most of the western world yet still thrives in more ancient parts. 

One issue more important to me than anyone because it affects my own personal favorite animal, is the shark fin soup industry that I have witnessed up close in Asia. One thing is eating fish for their nutritional value, another is to kill it just for its fins which have no flavor or nutrition at all just so you can show off how wealthy you are to your friends and family. This is something I believe our current society should be beyond already. In fact, like religion, practices such as these mainly prevail in the less progressed parts of the world where people either still believe in the medicinal or nutritional properties of eating these rare animal parts, or they simply buy these products as a cultural status symbol such as shark fin soup or fur coats (which is not just occurring in the less progressed parts of the world), not caring the least that they needlessly caused the slaughter of a sometimes endangered animal. At times this indifference is culturally integrated, in many countries the natural world is nothing but a resource to be exploited in any way desired, no matter the cost or the consequence. Animals simply does not have any rights in cultures such as these. They are to some cultures what fields of crops are to others. Other times the indifference for the natural world comes from ignorance. I had several friends from Malaysia who did not know how much damage the shark fin industry was doing to the world’s shark populations, some even thought the shark’s fins grew back after they were cut off. 

Abuse of the natural world rather than use of the natural world is something that I believe is more within our reach to alter, in fact as mentioned, like religion, it mostly only flourishes in the less developed regions of the world, potentially as a result of lack of education. Many efforts around the world are genuinely making a difference to combat these industries and most of them are already banned, even if they are still being practiced due to low enforcement capabilities or general corruption. However, like the bigger issues of conservation it is still an issue that can only really be solved long term by looking inwards at our own species. Only by progressing further up the evolutionary ladder can we start fixing these problems on the macro-scale. But for certain key species like sharks, conservation is key to ensuring their immediate survival until such a time is reached. So by no means should we stop fighting for issues such as the banning of shark finning. Abuse of the natural world is something that we can easily prevent right now at our current level. The larger natural uses of nature is another matter altogether, with no perceivable easy fix currently available. To be continued.