In the true realm of science, it is almost impossible to not be in some sort of ethical dilemma; nothing comes without a cost. Whether it be the monetary funds, the time wasted, the animals sacrificed, or the morals ignored, there is always a give and take when it comes to science, especially in a society that craves results and efficiency. One of the biggest problems we face today is the anthropogenic effects on the climate and the other organisms that inhabit our planet. The extinction rate among plants and animals is 1000 times greater than the rate of extinction that occurs on our planet naturally. Every day, dozens of species that once thrived cease to exist while we continue to destroy the Earth through fossil fuel burning, mass pollution, poaching, overfishing, and the introduction of invasive species. Many have called this the Sixth Mass Extinction of our planet. Quite recently, humanity has learned how to wield one of the greatest forces on the planet: genetic engineering. With this new power at hand we have once again stumbled into another ethical dilemma: do we play God and resurrect extinct species that were doomed to death due to our carelessness or use those resources towards saving the species that are still attempting to survive on our planet?

        As a child, my favorite movie was Jurassic Park, now it’s my favorite novel. I want to be a paleontologist to study extinct species and I’d give anything in the world to see a Tyrannosaurus rex in the flesh. There is research in paleogenetics – even with Tyrannosaur bones—but it is highly unlikely that it’ll yield any significant results before I reach the age of my grandfather. However, research in the resurrection of the woolly mammoth is much more promising. In about a decade, we could be the first humans to see a mammoth since our Ice Age ancestors banished them to extinction 5,000 years ago, but is it worth it? Although it would be amazing to see the mythic megafauna that only roam through our dreams roam the planet once more what would we gain through this? The cost alone of creating one mammoth would be astronomically high and they lived in herds of hundreds to thousands like the elephants of Africa today. The mammoths created would have a very unstable gene pool and would need constant care and human intervention just to survive. The environment of Ice Age Siberia is much colder than today and there would be very few places they could live comfortably, especially as the planet continues to warm, they’d be destined to life in captivity. The biosphere is dynamic, constantly changing and attempting to stabilize itself and fill the holes that are the species that go extinct. There is no niche for the mammoth in the modern planet. Why should we invest all of this money and resources when it is estimated that the African elephant could be extinct in the next ten years?

There are other animals that are also prime candidates for de-extinction. The Tasmanian Tiger, the largest carnivorous marsupial, went extinct in 1933 CE. This animal was well known in Tasmania, Australia, and some of the other neighboring islands and was one of the apex predators before humans wiped them out. (Above is one of the only recordings of the marsupials). Next door, in New Zealand, the Moa, a genus of six species of massive flightless birds, went extinct in 1440 CE when in 1280 CE, when the Polynesians settled New Zealand, the populations are estimated to have been around 58,000. Another bird, the elephant bird of Madagascar, was the largest bird ever standing around ten feet tall. This bird went extinct due to poaching around 1200 CE and natives were seen using the eggshells as bowls as late as the 19th century. Others include the passenger pigeon, the Atlantic gray whale, the woolly rhinoceros, saber toothed cat, the giant cheetah, gomphotheres, macrauchenia, giant ground sloths, and hundreds of other proposed species that have been doomed to extinction because of human carelessness.

        As a society we value life, but we also value defying the impossible. We want to see a wooly mammoth because it seems impossible to resurrect the dead. In order to raise the dead, we must sacrifice dozens of species to join the other thousands that we’ve condemned to extinction. We are responsible for the damage we have caused to this planet and instead of investing billions upon billions towards seeing a sickly furry elephant, it could be going towards closing the hole in the ozone layer, or blocking anthropogenic eutrophication in our coastal waters which leads to ocean acidification, encouraging safer fishing techniques, cleaning up oil spills properly, protecting severely endangered species such as the vaquita or the northern right whale, decreasing pollution, combating poaching and illegal logging, researching safer pesticides, conserving natural resources and land reserves, researching coral bleaching, encouraging the use of renewable energy or discouraging the use of fossil fuels. When we have stabilized our biosphere and our atmosphere, the possibility of seeing a herd of mammoths or a field of elephant birds is something that I welcome with open arms but until then, there are more important things that must be kept alive.

In the previous post we discussed the importance of rainforests and coral reefs. Not only are they massive hosts of biodiversity but they also serve as carbon sinks, a source of carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere. One final ecosystem that we will be discussing is polar ecosystems.

Although polar ecosystems do not host a vast array of biodiversity, the oceans are teaming with life on the microscopic level. Since colder water has the capacity to be saturated with with more dissolved oxygen, more life can live in the water compared to warmer aquatic environments. The reason that we usually don’t associate the polar regions with vast abundances of life is that most of that life is microscopic. These life forms then draw filter feeders to the scene, most notably whales. This is why many species of whales, such as humpback and minke whales, migrate to the poles. This is also why whales are one of the species most affected by climate change. Narwhals (coincidentally, my favorite animal) have recently replaced polar bears as the animal most threatened by climate change.

Whaling is one of the worst stains on the history of humanity and the environment. In only three centuries, humans have decimated most of the populations of whales for their blubber. Whale oil is not only an expensive and extremely finite energy source, it is also extremely inefficient requiring the need for thousands of whales to fuel the economy of the 18th century industrialized world. Thankfully almost every country has banned whaling but many species today are on the brink of extinction. Atlantic gray whales are completely extinct while northern right whales, vaquitas, all species of river dolphins, belugas and narwhals are all struggling to maintain their numbers. When belugas wash ashore, most times they are radioactive from all of the degrading plastic that is in their systems and are considered biohazards. Whales have lived on this planet for the last 40 million years but is remains unclear if they will last the century and recover from their decimation.

Although whales are a prime example, all polar organisms are facing the threat of extinction due to climate change. When the sun’s heat is transferred to our planet, the icecaps are able to reflect some of that heat back into space. As the greenhouse effect continues to warm our planet and the icecaps recede, less heat is being reflected so the warming process increases in a positive feedback, loop eerily similar to the coral reef heat sink/source that I discussed in my previous blog.

We can see the icecaps receding across our planet in glaciers in Iceland and Canada to the snow caps in Argentina. Many glaciers are melting at rates unseen in modern history and sea level rise is following just as fast. Several weeks ago, the Bramble Cay melomys was announced as the first mammal to go extinct due to climate change. The Bramble Cay melomys is a rodent that lived off the coast of Australia on a small island, Bramble Cay. As the sea level rose, the small mammal could only watch as its habitat was destroyed by the surrounding waters. Sea level rise is something that will not only threaten mice and small islands but large coastal cities such as Manhattan, Miami, Philadelphia, London, New Orleans, Sydney, San Francisco, Lisbon, Tokyo, and Washington D.C., displacing millions.

Endangered species are struggling across the globe not just in the tropics. In Africa, many species of animals are struggling to survive in “protected areas” from poachers. Poaching is rampant in many nations with people paying thousands for a lion pelt or elephant tusk or pangolin scales for their traditionally believed, but inaccurate, medicinal or aphrodisiac properties, or just for decor.

The highest rates of poaching are in nations with the least regulations for environmental protection and poaching, but that doesn’t mean that the United States is immune from poaching. Recently, there has been a proposal floating around the federal government to legalize the hunting of grizzly bears. Although the grizzly population in the continental United States is increasing, slowly, it is only because that population is only found in Yellowstone National Park and the lands bordering it. The grizzly population that was once over 10,000 bears and stretched from Alaska to Mexico is barely over 600 and can only be found in no more than 5 states, not including the Alaskan populations. In any other administration, the idea of legalizing grizzly hunting wouldn’t even be put onto paper, but currently this could become a very real possibility in our imminent future. The worst part is that the bears would be hunted for trophies, not meat.

One benefit that endangered species in the United States and other developed nations have up their sleeve is that there is usually stringent regulations regarding the protections of these animals. As I have discussed previously, a large portion of this legislature will potentially be rewritten or removed by the Trump Administration, but so far the vast majority is relatively untampered. The Endangered Species Act (ESA) gives governments the power, and responsibility, to protect native endangered species over other interests, such as builders or oil prospectors. In my next post we will be building upon the ESA along with invasive and introduced species, and de-extinction.

As of now, all of my previous blog posts have been centered around climate change. I am now planning on talking more about the environment and the issues that it is facing. Although closely connected, these are two separate issues that are often joined together. Even if we were able to magically stop climate change the environment would still be struggling, albeit to a lesser degree. This post will serve as a transition between the two subjects as we will be covering two extremely important ecosystems and their impact on the planet and how they are being affected by climate change.

Rainforests and coral reefs host the vast majority of biodiversity on our planet. Rainforests can be found on every continent and coral reefs are in every ocean except the arctic. Both of these ecosystems thrive in warm and wet climates. Not only do both of these ecosystems host a vast array of biodiversity, which is important for a plethora of reasons, they are also massive carbon sinks.

A carbon sink is something that can remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. When plants photosynthesize, they use carbon dioxide to create sugars which they use for energy, growth and sustaining their structures. The more carbon dioxide and water, the more sugars and excess oxygen. Not only does this process remove CO2 from the atmosphere but it also adds oxygen and purifies the air, this is why many people refer to rainforests as the lungs of the planet. The biggest threat to rainforests is logging and clear cutting. Many farmers have been chipping away at the Amazon Rainforest for the last century, slowly destroying the Earth’s Lungs in order to farm, raise cattle, earn money from wood, and mine the land for oil and other precious materials. For some rainforests, sea level rise and salt water encroachment is a major issue that is threatening their size.

Coral reefs are sometimes considered the rainforests of the ocean and although they do share a significant amount of similarities they also have their differences. Coral reefs are made of of colonies of thousands to millions of coral polyps which contain photosynthetic algae known as xothanthelle. The algae form a symbiotic relationship with the coral. The algae are given safety within the coral polyp and the polyp receives energy and food from the algae. As the coral grows it builds up a limestone skeleton made from calcium carbonate which is formed from the carbon dioxide in the seawater. Unlike most trees, corals are restricted to only the tropics because they require very specific conditions.

Many people argue that they don’t feel the planet getting warmer. One of the biggest reasons of this is because the ocean absorbs a large portion of the excess heat our planet is receiving, which is making it the oceans more inhabitable for corals. As the temperatures increase, the corals are forced to purge themselves of the algae that provides them nutrients. This also causes the corals to lose all color, this is known as coral bleaching. Mass bleaching events have been on the rise as the ocean temperature levels keep increasing. The largest mass bleaching event occurred in 2016 and almost half of all the corals in the Great Barrier Reef off the Australian Coast lost their color. The damage was seen from space!

Coral bleaching however doesn’t mean death. About half of all corals that are bleached will regain their pigment and algae while the other half will die. After bleaching, corals will have to gain all of their food directly from filter feeding until they reabsorb the zooxanthellae. Corals are also more susceptible to the dissolution of their calcium skeletons during this period.

Warmer oceans have the ability to absorb more dissolved CO2. Higher concentrations of CO2 in the oceans increase the acidity which will trigger carbonate skeletons, which are made up of CO2, to dissolve. This is a problem being faced by all organisms that have a calcium carbonate exoskeleton. This includes crustaceans, such as crabs and barnacles, mollusks, like clams, snails and nautiluses, corals, and echinoderms such as sea stars and sea urchins. There are also large swaths of microscopic life that have carbonate skeletons and produce a significant portion of the oxygen we breathe. In some places in the ocean, the water is so acidic that life has become near impossible to sustain itself. As the coral reefs die off, their carbonate skeletons are left behind and the massive coral reefs are transformed from a carbon sink to a carbon source. The increase in carbon dioxide increases the carbonate rocks which creates a positive feedback loop in our ocean that is becoming more and more difficult to break.

Corals are also threatened by invasive species and human impacts such as irresponsible tourism, pet trade and the coral economy, and pollution. Corals are extremely susceptible to pollution and can break easily from being stepped on. Many species in the Caribbean have been wiped out due to invasive species of viruses and pathogens from the Eastern Pacific reefs and human runoff into the oceans.