
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 6, 1991                   TAG: 9102060498
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: THOMAS DUNLAP
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

PROTECT NATURE, FOR OUR OWN SAKE

THE ENDANGERED Species Act of 1973 is back in the news. We concentrate on individual species, like the spotted owl in the Pacific Northwest or the logperch in the Roanoke River, but the question is much broader: How can we live with nature in an industrial civilization?

The argument goes back a long way, and it is going to continue as long as we need jobs and look in wonder at a spider web and find joy in a mockingbird's changing song. We have the capacity to destroy nature, and uncontrolled economic development can do it.

We first faced this in the late 19th century, when we had killed the buffalo and plowed the prairies. From then until the 1960s, we tried to save species by game laws and national parks and refuges. The Endangered Species Act and other environmental legislation came when we realized that was not going to work.

Keeping nature, we now know, is going to require research, laws and programs. We will have to regulate a lot of what had been private matters.

A lot of people think it foolish to try. The world, they say, is ours and we can do what we want. What difference can it make if we do not have around some three-inch fish? Should we sacrifice humans for birds?

Arguments like that miss the point. Nowhere does it say in the Bible that God gave us the world so we could waste it, and no one is asking people to starve to save a bird.

As for usefulness, uranium was pretty useless for a long time. Do we know enough to decide what we can do without?

On a practical basis, what happened in the James River (remember kepone?) and is happening in Chesapeake Bay should convince us all that there are costs, often high ones, that go with careless or unthinking development. Even in Southwest Virginia, we are seeing the effects of other people's smoke and other people's trash.

Saving endangered species is not just a matter of liking nature. We can destroy the world - not with bombs but with the waste products of our civilization and its incessant demand for more.

Unless we act and act wisely, we will wind up with a world not worth living in. We ourselves could wind up on the endangered species list.

AUTHOR NOTE: Thomas Dunlap is a professor of history at Virginia Tech and author of "Saving America's Wildlife."

by CNB