Re: Ethics, responsibility and endangered species

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Posted by doug on July 14, 2001 at 10:36:41:

In Reply to: Ethics, responsibility and endangered species posted by doug on July 13, 2001 at 09:44:39:

Thanks for the replies.
If I understand EJ correctly, then I think I was unclear about my motives. I know keepers are only human (some good, some bad.) I'm not suggesting that I think someone else might care for my tort better than I. Rather, my thinking is solely about species propogation. If my guy stays at my house and never reproduces, then for all intents and purposes (genetically) he doesn't exist. To the amount of impact one tort could make, I also couldn't say. When I spoke to the BZ, I think they had 10 or 12 kleinmanni (I don't know m-f ratio.) But if this is the case, one unrelated tort increases their genetic diversity up to 10%. That's a huge number, isn't it? In a perfect scenario (for discussion purposes) if this new male breeds with the existing females each clutch of eggs provides genetically unrelated males and females to breed with existing stock. That is, a female out of a new clutch could breed with one of the existing males and produce ANOTHER clutch of torts with no common DNA and so on. Wouldn't this allow a greater spread before the inevitable linebreeding occurs?
As for breeding for the purposes of wild-reintroduction, I hadn't really thought that far. I was only thinking about maintaining the species as extant. Once we're in this line of thought we face the debate I've often seen, is preserving an animal only to exist in zoos better than an extinct animal? My personal (automatic) response would be yes, but when one thinks about it, is it really better? See the stuffed dodo at the museum, or see a couple of caged ones at the zoo. Their behavior would likely be silmilar. I don't have an answer, so I do value your opinions.

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: Thanks for the replies. : If I understand EJ correctly, then I think I was unclear about my motives. I know keepers are only human (some good, some bad.) I'm not suggesting that I think someone else might care for my tort better than I. Rather, my thinking is solely about species propogation. If my guy stays at my house and never reproduces, then for all intents and purposes (genetically) he doesn't exist. To the amount of impact one tort could make, I also couldn't say. When I spoke to the BZ, I think they had 10 or 12 kleinmanni (I don't know m-f ratio.) But if this is the case, one unrelated tort increases their genetic diversity up to 10%. That's a huge number, isn't it? In a perfect scenario (for discussion purposes) if this new male breeds with the existing females each clutch of eggs provides genetically unrelated males and females to breed with existing stock. That is, a female out of a new clutch could breed with one of the existing males and produce ANOTHER clutch of torts with no common DNA and so on. Wouldn't this allow a greater spread before the inevitable linebreeding occurs? : As for breeding for the purposes of wild-reintroduction, I hadn't really thought that far. I was only thinking about maintaining the species as extant. Once we're in this line of thought we face the debate I've often seen, is preserving an animal only to exist in zoos better than an extinct animal? My personal (automatic) response would be yes, but when one thinks about it, is it really better? See the stuffed dodo at the museum, or see a couple of caged ones at the zoo. Their behavior would likely be silmilar. I don't have an answer, so I do value your opinions.

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