Conservation extreme – conservation with all means?
Newsletter 25/02/2020
Worldwide, one million animal and plant species are threatened by extinction. In the struggle for biodiversity, conservationists are developing increasingly unusual methods. Successfully?
In a recently broadcasted documentary in the ZDF documentary series planet-e, Marilena Schulte and Franca Leyendecker address this question using three examples.
A sad extreme case is the northern white rhino. On March 19, 2018, the last male northern white rhinoceros "Sudan" died at the age of 45, it had to be euthanized due to old age. Since then, only the daughter and granddaughter of Sudan are still alive. Thus, the northern white rhinoceros is "functionally extinct".
After successfully harvesting eggs from these two females a team of veterinaries headed by Thomas Hildebrandt at the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife research in Berlin try to fertilize them with the stored sperm from conspecifics that had died long before Sudan did. Resulting embryos will be carried to term by females of the southern subspecies.
The second example is a project on the rivers Saar and Moselle carried out by a team led by Sebastian Hoffmann, on behalf of and with the participation of the Saar Fishing Association. The eel hiking trail is blocked by hydroelectric power stations, so the adults are caught above the obstacles and transported to the Rhine by truck. From there they can continue their journey into the Atlantic Ocean and the Sargasso Sea east of Florida to spawn and subsequently die. It was intended as an interim solution, but became routine, because alternative solutions have not been found yet and the method appears to be successful - the eel population is increasing again.
The third example is our Northern Bald Ibis project, where birds learn a new migration tradition by means of human led migration flights. I don't need to further explain this project here.
The justified question arises whether one should take care of individual species with a lot of effort in perspective of the dramatic loss of species. As an alternative, the protection of habitats is widely discussed, which has become the classic approach to species conservation since Theodor Roosevelt - with great success. But the three examples represent a rapidly increasing number of endangered species and populations, where this classic approach clearly reaches its limits. Nowadays many species need direct help and invasive measures in order to survive.
In the documentary Katrin Böhning-Gaese from the Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre concludes that, given the dramatic situation, the grand variety of methodological approaches is indispensable, beyond paradigms.
And it needs success stories that give a reason for hope and motivate for further and joint measures against biodiversity loss.
Picture: The documentary shows the reintroduction of the Northern Bald Ibis as an example for innovative species conservation and as a success story that gives hope and inspires for the conservation of species.
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