Seeing is believing...what do you see?

A little bit of a backtrack:

Towards Friday's discussion, I sit to my blog post: people, and their satisfaction (or contentment or however you want to put it), come first. If securing a border is what is required to make the people content, then fine. That does not mean that territorial integrity/border security etc is now first priority. It means that the people, as first priority, needed a border secured in order to achieve contentment. Same with the creation of institutions, systems etc. Those are all for the people. Hence, first priority.

---------------------------------------------

Now for something completely different:

Endangered species. First thought: lions and tigers and panda bears oh my! Along with wolves, owls, gorillas, harp seals, elephants, and anything else resembling cute/large. According to the IUCN Red List, over 16,000 species are considered threatened (that includes vulnerable, endangered and critically endangered). Which, is, of course, a bit depressing. But more than that, of those thousands of species, so few actually get media attention at all.

If they aren't cute, aren't big, aren't commonly made into stuffed animals for children to squeeze, then they aren't considered within the radar of "worth saving". That's unfortunate. There are a lot of really interesting animals out there that are moving towards extinction. And while extinction is a natural process, for many animals, the destruction of habitat or hunting for various body parts isn't. While some animals aren't pretty or cuddly, they still deserve attention, because some of these may be keystone species. If keystone species are thriving, then it can generally be assumed that its habitat, and what lives in its habitat, are doing alright too.

It's as Mark Carwardine, co-author of one of my all-time favorite books, Last Chance to See says:

Animals and plants provide us with life-saving drugs and food, they pollinate crops and provide important ingredients for many industrial processes. Ironically, it is often not the big and beautiful creatures, but the ugly and less dramatic ones, that we need most.

There is one last reason for caring, and I believe that no other is necessary. It is certainly the reason why so many people have devoted their lives to protecting the likes of rhinos, parakeets, kakapos, and dolphins. And it is simply this: the world would be a poorer, darker, lonelier place without them.(emphasis mine)

Amen. In the realm of world politics, it is always the big, spotlight issues (and animals) that are noticed, and thus supported. Yet, without a cohesive intent to look at species, especially keystone species, and how we can help them, our quality of life will fluctuate as well.

Look at it this way: as I said, the first priority of a leader is to keep the people satisfied. People like animals. Animals like not being dead (...unless its an opossum, but those don't count). People like animals that aren't dead. It is in a government's interest to take interest in endangered species, and not just the cuddly ones. The cuddly ones can serve as spokespersons, but the fugly ones are usually where the money (read: drugs, food, secret to curing cancer) are. Apart from people liking animals that aren't dead, people also like people that aren't dead. In fact, dead in general just isn't looked on positively. Anyway. If governments work together (also, people like it when governments work together) on something like saving species for the good of planet-kind, it's a double whammy of a content populace.

It's killing two birds with one stone.

...Probably not the best idiom to use. It's like killing two endangered Mauritius kestrels with one stone.

Better.

(And just a side note: I realize posting blogs about food and endangered species isn't necessarily the most world politics discussion/reflection thing to do, this all simply relates back to my first post: What in the World are We Talking About? As I stated in that post, what defines world politics isn't a solidified set of rules. By exploring how world politics relates to various arenas of the world, I'm providing evidence to support it.)