Slashdot Mirror
Scientists Build an Ark To Save Jungle Amphibians
Peace Corps Online writes "In the 1980s a deadly fungus called chytrid appeared in Central America and began moving through mountain streams, killing as many as 8 out of 10 frogs and extinguishing some species entirely. (The fungus has little effect on any other vertebrates.) Now a returned Peace Corps volunteer and her husband have opened the El Valle Amphibian Conservation Center in western Panama to house more than 600 frogs as chytrid cuts a lethal path through the region. Experts agree that the only hope of saving some of the more endangered, restricted-range species is to collect animals from remaining wild populations, establish captive breeding programs, and be prepared to conduct reintroduction projects in the future. But before reintroduction can even begin, scientists must find some way to overcome the chytrid in native habitats using vaccines, breeding for resistance, or genetic engineering of the fungus. Conservationists are budgeting for 25 years of captive breeding, long enough, they believe, to allow some response to chytrid to be found. 'There are more species in need of rescue than there are resources to rescue them,' says Amphibian Ark's program director. 'When you're talking about insidious threats like disease or climate change, threats that can't be mitigated in the wild, there's simply no alternative.'"
I understand that we dont want frogs to die off in that region but why mess with nature. If we vaccinate these frogs and there numbers swell; what are those consequences going to be? Im sure that the frogs will adapt to the environment and overcome.
Why not leave nature to its own devices? Survival of the fittest, and all that kinda stuff...
And now they're begging for money to save frogs.
It seems to me, that here they are begging money to fight evolution...
Witness Don Quixote in action.
- High Tech workers, please say NO to Union Carpenters, their Union sees fit to control our compensation.
How is saving frogs from evolution improving the world exactly?
Keeping the frogs available for study may help us learn to exploit them.
The more creatures we "ranch" the more we have available. Think of it as a "seed bank" of sorts. Instead of killing off species, we can retain and manipulate them.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Aye. And it's not just compassion. Suppose some bacterium mutates and becomes extremely lethal to cows, pigs, chickens, etc., and spreads like crazy, and kills every member of these species on earth. Some loony will shrug and say 'oh, evolution/natural selection, nothing to see here, move along', but it is NOT in our best interests to let these animals go extinct.
Just because evolution is 'natural' doesn't mean we shouldn't fight it when it is screwing us in some way. Dying of appendicitis is natural selection too, yet very few people suffering from such diseases refuse medical attention...