Most of these species that we wish to "save" are sentinel species - our own
survival is at risk if we cannot correct the problems that threaten those
less adaptable.  The idea of "caring" is a very old one, but was only very
recently fully resurrected.   

When I am asked why I go to the trouble of keeping bees in a city, I tell
people that a place where bees cannot thrive is a place where humans will
not thrive, either.  The "Millionth Tree" was planted in NYC this week. The
good news for bees is that donors have been glad-handed and arms have been
twisted for the last decade, so a good number of those million trees are
bee-approved species like linden.

Permit me to wander away from beekeeping with a "compare and contrast".

First up, Elisse Reclus, a geographer who summed up his life's work in "Man
and the Earth" (1905) - a 3500 page, 5-volume wander through philosophy,
anthropology, geography, history, and what is now called "ecology".  The
book starts with the observation that "Humanity is nature becoming
self-conscious".  He identified the industrial revolution as "ruthless" in
its destruction of nature, and he predicted that the fate of the Earth would
hinge on humanity's ability to create institutions that espouse a deep
concern for the nature and all living things.  Pretty prescient stuff for
1905.  He even wrote of the experiencing of nature as necessitating a loss
of the "sense of selfhood" and a "merging" with the surrounding ecosystem,
which is classic pantheism, a pretty good trick for a self-professed
atheist. (I do not know if the book was ever translated into English.)

Fast-forward 70 years to the far more famous "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle
 Maintenance - An Inquiry into Values" by Robert M. Pirsig.  I will quote it
twice:

"We stop at an abandoned school yard and under a huge cottonwood tree, I
change the oil in the cycle."

and later:

"At a filling station next to the restaurant I pick up a quart of oil, and
in a gravelly lot back of the restaurant remove the drain plug, let the oil
drain, replace the plug, add the new oil, and when I'm done the new oil on
the dipstick shines in the sunlight almost as clear and colorless as water.
Ahhhh!"

Yes, the author just lets his oil just drain onto the ground wherever he
changes his motorcycle's oil!!!  What fine "values"!  Somehow, we lost the
concern over the industrial revolution's impact on nature in one lifetime,
and we must learn it all over.

But most people who presume to care about Nature, or want to "Save the
Planet" are suffering from a narcissistic delusion.  The planet is not in
need of saving - we are.  We will kill ourselves, the planet will survive
long after.

An example of a sentinel species in very dire straits - African Penguins are
very likely to go extinct in the wild in our lifetimes.  A scheme of
"penguin eugenics" is going on to assure a good genetic variety among the
penguin population of zoos and aquariums planet-wide.   Penguins are
computer-matched by their genetic profiles, traded between institutions, and
when they reach adulthood, they are given some privacy and some Barry White
on the stereo, and in a very high percentage of cases, they are raising
chicks in short order.  

These "species survival programs" will be able to restock colonies in
post-extinction scenarios with a genetically diverse population that can be
the basis for a viable re-establishment of the species.  Many people scoff
when they hear about such plans, but it is not so speculative - the Bronx
(New York) Zoo alone bred from its own herd of Bison, and restocked the
Bison population at Wind Cave National Park in 1913.  Nearly every bison you
might see today has an ancestor from the Bronx, no joke.

Right now, you can give a great holiday gift of adopting a rescued penguin
chick for $35 US (500 Rand) at http://sanccob.co.za, which you get to name,
and the recipient will get a very cute portrait photo of the fuzzy rescued
chick, and its individual life story in its own words, as some are abandoned
eggs (many penguins have problems incubating, moreso after having been
subjected to an oil spill, very common at the bottom of Africa), and some
are abandoned chicks, where food is so scarce due to over-fishing, that the
parents go into molt before their chicks are fully raised, and cannot swim
to catch fish when in molt, so the chick will starve if not rescued and
hand-fed.  The big time for these rescues is the Christmas season. There are
also periodic oil spills, which mean even adults must be rescued, kept warm,
cleaned, rehabilitated, and re-released.

All this may seem a silly indulgence, but field efforts like SANCCOB build
the skills and tools required to raise chicks in large numbers, keep them
healthy, and release them to live as successful wild birds.  All are tagged,
and they have re-rescued tagged oiled adults that they had raised from egg
or chick years before, so the techniques are known to work.  The
infrastructure is needed if we are to re-create viable colonies of thousands
of penguins, and we are likely have to.

You can also adopt pairs of Magellanic penguins, which live on the coast of
South America, at http://seabirds.org Dr. Mike Bingham, who runs the
research projects and desperately needs the money, sends great photos of
your specific adopted penguin mated pair at regular intervals, and sends
periodic 15-page letters with news of the colony, their activities and their
trials and tribulations in an era of fishing trawlers and climate change.
This is not a con, each penguin has unique markings, he really does track
hundreds of pairs and send you photos of your adopted pair, you can even
travel down to the Straits of Magellan and peek at them yourself if you
wish, as he marks the burrows.

But why care about penguins?  
Because they make everyone smile, and because we have proof that we can save
them at very reasonable cost.

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