= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Romashka comments on When there are too few people to donate money to - Less Wrong Discussion
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (18)
Very uneven distribution, and/or gradual decline in population, and/or destruction of habitats, and/or (for things like clubmosses, which go to funereal wreaths, secondary stuffing in bouquets and Easter decorations) largely unknown distribution and very slow recruitment of new plants.
In general your presentation doesn't give me the impression that this is a very important issue, especially given what currently happens in the Ukraine.
I don't know to what extent that's due to your presentation of the issue or inherent to the issue. If you want to achieve something on the issue it might be necessary to spent energy on developing talking points that illustrate that it's an important issue.
Notice I never said it is. (And please stop adding 'the', it is seen by Ukrainians as 'they are still referring to us as 'the Edge' after all these years'.) My goal was not to present the issue competitively, but to show a situation where donating money leads to, say, climate change activism (which I think is less efficient) and donating manpower - to a regular, structured, and much more integrated into existing legal infrastructure campaign.
Given the current situation, donating money [to war-related issues] is very efficient iff you know it is not a scam. But there is a vast need for specialized volunteering, too (housing people, rehabilitating invalids, journalism, etc.)
It is worth noting that in the case of the Snowdrop, the classification of species and subspecies is messy. A lot of the preservation is trying to preserve natural variations in their natural habitat. If all we cared about was Galanthus nivalis paralectotype we could ignore localized subspecies -- in fact, if all we cared about was Galanthus nivalis the pretty white flower, we would just be happy to let it go extinct in the wild -- we have plenty in gardens across Europe.
The reason why people take them from the fields when it is so easy to grow them in your back garden is simply that if you take flowers from a mountain field they are free. If you live near a field, don't expect to get caught, and have not particular feelings on the tragedy of the commons, why wouldn't you pick them and sell them?
Were I a part of the system, yes, I would. But I am not, and there were cases (I remember two) when the protected species was declared extinct from a reserve, and the habitat irreversibly changed (into a wood logging site and into a building site, respectively). Without the species (Galanthus sp. in the one case, 3 orchids + 2 willows in the other) the ecosystem is still valuable, but much harder to defend.
So... A species becomes popular - is recognized as becoming rarer - is protected by law (since the Red Data Book has more to do wth law than with science) - is gradually exterminated or left only in unconnected populations - is proclaimed a conservation target - and then winks out, one population at a time, and the places where they used to be are seen as 'lost' and so much less valuable, conservation-wise.