Disappearance species can also be a boon for the outdoor tourism industry. The NOAA Fisheries estimates that the right whale of the North Atlantic in the process of endangered has generated $ 2.3 billion in the whale observation industry and in the larger economy in 2008, compared to the annual costs of approximately 30 million dollars linked to shipping and fishing restrictions by protecting them.
Beyond financial gains, humanity has drawn a richness of knowledge of nature to help treat and cure diseases. For example, the paclitaxel anticancer compound was originally extracted from the Pacific Yew Tree bark and is “too diabolically complex” a chemical structure that researchers have invented by themselves, according to the federal government.
Stopping species disappearing from disappearing guarantees that we can one day discover what we do not yet know, according to Dave Owen, professor of environmental law at the law of the University of California, San Francisco.
“Even apparently simple species are extraordinarily complex; they contain an incredible variety of chemicals, microbes and genetic adaptations, which we can learn, but only if the species is still there,” he said by email.
Last month, the Fish and Wildlife Service announced that the Roanoke Logperch – a freshwater fish – has restored sufficiently to be removed from the list of endangered species.
In an article on X, the interior secretary said it was “proof that the list of endangered species is no longer from the California hotel. Under the Trump administrator, species can finally leave! ”
But the recovery of this striped fish did not occur overnight. Federal agencies, local partners, landowners and environmentalists have spent more than three decades, millions of dollars and countless hours by removing obsolete dams, in restaurants wetlands and reintroducing fish populations to help bring the Roanoke Logperch from the edge. And it was the Biden administration that first proposed to relaunch fish in 2024.
These types of successes give reasons of hope, said Wilcove.
“What optimists is our ability to save species, if we put our minds and our resources there.”
This article originally appeared in Inside Climate News, a non -profit non -supported press organization that covers the climate, energy and the environment. Register for their newsletter here.
