The Biodiversity Debate

Sometimes the needs or desires of people conflict with the things an endangered species requires for survival. When this occurs, a debate about biodiversity unfolds, which at its core pits the value of animal and plant life against the value of human life. The Endangered Species Act has a mandate to protect threatened habitats as well as species, but when habitat lies on private land, many landowners feel the law intervenes with their right to use their property as they see fit. Utah State University political science professor Randy T. Simmons has opined, “Under the current law, landowners are punished for owning habitat that attracts or protects an endangered species. This fact leads rational, normally law-abiding citizens to destroy habitat before an endangered species arrives.” Mr. Simmons’s theory has indeed played out in Boiling Spring Lakes, North Carolina, where property owners have cleared their land of pines that are habitat to the endangered red-cockaded woodpecker. Landowner Steve Lowery owned two vacant lots and decided to level one of them of all its trees. “I get one lot and the woodpeckers get the other one,” he told Associated Press in 2006. Of course, protecting habitat takes more than the simple compromise Lowery proposed, partially in jest. When an endangered species means a tiny amphibian or a delicate lichen, protections become even more difficult than for a bird or mammal. Often businesses and local governments pressure the federal government to weaken the law to preserve their income. This scenario has occurred several times since the enactment of the Endangered Species Act.

Biodiversity must be discussed in terms of value in order for many people to understand what it means to lose it. Environmentalists therefore often speak of biodiversity as a benefit. As yet undiscovered species may in the future serve as sources for new medicines, food, cosmetics, or enzymes for cleaning up pollution and recycling nutrients. Today, however, many—but certainly not all—new drugs come out of laboratories rather than a jungle, and genetic engineering provides more and more products for consumers and for environmental cleanup. These advances may lead some to question the need for biodiversity in the modern world.

1. How extensive are the current threats to biodiversity?
2. How can these proposed threats be measured in a reliable manner?
3. Do humans really have a role in protecting biodiversity?

Environmental ethicists have proposed two ways to view the value of Earth’s biodiversity: instrumental value and intrinsic value. The instrumental value of biodiversity proposes that the Earth is a resource to be used as humans see fit, for deriving new medicines from exotic plants,
new antibiotics from animals or microbes, pesticides, unique food sources, or industrial materials. After human needs are met, people may be more willing to help other species survive. Instrumental value consists of two subcategories: use value and nonuse value. Use values benefit
people in economic, scientific, or recreational ways, and people may therefore be willing to protect them if they feel a benefit may someday come from these resources. Nonuse values, by contrast, give benefits even when people seldom come in contact with the item. For example, non use value resides in the knowledge that an old-growth forest is home to spotted owls, even if that forest is hundreds of miles away. Other examples of nonuse value are provided by forests, marshes, mountain ranges, and jungles because of their solitude, quiet, or natural beauty.

The nocturnal bird of prey, the northern spotted owl, inhabits old-growth forests in the Pacific Northwest and northern California. It became a symbol of the value and the frustrations of species protection because its threatened status was designated based on the bird’s spotted owls living in that habitat. (John and Karen Hollingsworth, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)

Intrinsic value of biodiversity suggests that the Earth exists not solely for human use but serves
a role in the universe beyond human needs. Intrinsic value does not translate into direct benefits
for people but, rather, relates to a person’s beliefs about the meaning of life. Civilization has confronted this question since the beginning of recorded history, so it is not surprising that the intrinsic value of nature can be difficult to define.

The northern spotted owl of the U.S. Pacific Northwest provides an example of how views
differ on biodiversity, as well as the instrumental versus intrinsic value of nature. This nocturnal hunter feeds on flying squirrels and nests only in the cavities at the top of broken old-growth fir trees. This is a very specialized creature! Old-growth forests contain large, mature trees that provide the spotted owl’s favorite habitat, but in the past 200 years the timber industry has reduced old-growth forests in the United States by 95 percent. As the trees fell, the spotted owl struggled to find habitat; the government added it to the endangered species list in 1990 (as
threatened) and listed its habitat in 1992. The protections to the northern spotted owl created a fiery debate over nature’s instrumental value and intrinsic value.

Timber jobs in the Pacific Northwest began to vanish and with them, the land’s instrumental value. The spotted owl incident led, nevertheless, to new techniques in forest management. Clear-cutting, which results in splitting habitat into separate pieces, has stopped. A government-initiated program called the Forest Plan coordinates activities between the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the U.S. Forest Service, and the FWS to develop ways for maintaining habitat and retaining a lumber-based industry. The area has also welcomed tourists seeking to experience the intrinsic benefits of deep, old-growth forests.

Scientists and philosophers may never find a fail-safe way to measure biodiversity’s value. Most likely, biodiversity’s value comes from a spectrum of benefits from the tangible (money) to the intangible (beauty).