Dilemma for environmentalists

[Caligastia]

Originally posted by Theben


Looking at Neutrino's list, one could list any species "asthetic" quality as making it "useful to humans."

So that means you must save 'em all- you tree-hugging enviro wacko you.

Damn! Yeah, I thought of that shortly after I made that post and hoped no-one would point that out.

[JohnT]

If you are a depressed environmentalist, does the following news make you even more depressed?



Frogs, fish and pharmaceuticals a troubling brew

Prozac, other drugs detected in streams and their inhabitants
By Marsha Walton
CNN
Friday, November 14, 2003 Posted: 9:14 AM EST (1414 GMT)

(CNN) -- A number of aquatic and amphibian species are being exposed to small amounts of everything from Prozac to perfume to birth control pills that make their way into U.S. rivers and streams.

And scientists now have evidence that this "cocktail" of pharmaceuticals, in high enough quantities, can lead to problems that may be serious enough to prevent wildlife from reproducing. It's not yet clear how the buildup over time could affect the species.

In 2002, 80 percent of streams sampled by the U.S. Geological Survey showed evidence of drugs, hormones, steroids and personal care products such as soaps and perfumes. The U.S.G.S. tested 139 rivers in 30 states.

To give an idea how many drug remnants make their way into ponds, creeks and streams, after being passed through humans, sent into sewer systems and released from wastwater treatment plants:

More than 61 million prescriptions for anti-depressants were prescribed by U.S. doctors in 2001, according to the National Center for Health Statistics at the CDC. Because prescriptions like anti-depressants are for chronic conditions, patients often take them for months and years at a time, making them more likely to build up in wastewater

Researchers are working on several fronts to determine how big the problem is and just what short- and long-term ecological effects there might be on wildlife.

Bryan Brooks, a toxicologist at Baylor University in Texas, discovered evidence of Prozac, an anti-depressant, in the brains, livers, and muscles of bluegill, caught downstream from the Pecan Creek Water Reclamation Plant in Denton, Texas, near Dallas.

Unintended consequences
Anti-depressants have the same effect on fish that they do on people: they tend to relax them. That's not necessarily a good thing for the fish, though.


Wastewater treatment plants like the R.M. Clayton plant in Atlanta are not equipped to remove pharmaceuticals from the water.
"We need to ask the question, 'what does accumulation in fish tissue actually mean to the organism's ability to live, grow, or reproduce?'" said Bryan Brooks, a Baylor University toxicologist.

While he and his colleagues discovered those medications in fish in the wild, scientists are now studying aquatic species in the lab, to see just how specific amounts of pills and potions affect them.

Marsha Black, an aquatic toxicologist at the University of Georgia in Athens, found that low levels of common anti-depressants, including Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil and Celexa, cause development problems in fish, and metamorphosis delays in frogs.

"In mosquitofish, markers of sexual maturity were delayed in both males and females," said Black. Metamorphosis in frogs was also delayed significantly, she said.

In the mosquitofish, sexual development in males was delayed by two to four weeks.

Black says that timing is crucial to the survival of many water creatures. For example, frog eggs are often laid in ponds and wetlands that are temporary. If tadpoles have not completed metamorphosis by the time the water disappears, they will die before reaching adulthood.

In the next phase of her study, funded by the Environmental Protection Agency, Black will look at the reproductive tissue of the fish affected by the anti-depressants.

Sewage treatment plants are not equipped to filter out any of the hundreds of different prescription drugs that are present in wastewater. And it's not clear just how they would approach the cost or technology of such a challenge.

Michael Smith is manager of the R. M. Clayton wastewater treatment plant in Atlanta, the largest such facility in the southeast. The facility treats about 80 million gallons of water each day.

"Trying to enhance this facility to remove those items would probably require some reverse osmosis or some kind of further ultra filtration system," said Smith. "It would require a lot more construction and a lot more cost to remove those items," he said.

[Theben]

Save money- don't buy the pills, just drink the water!

[Immortal Wombat]

Originally posted by skywalker
Not true. The animals exist for no particular purpose; they just are. Why not make use of them as we feel? Why bother "conserving" them?

This attitude is bizarre. The animals exist for no particular purpose: nor do humans. Why not let them be. Why not, better still, appreciate the diversity of life on earth, and feel some sort of curiosity about them, even if it's just to look and say wow, isn't that bird pretty. Simply because something has no 'purpose' is no reason to be unconcerned that it's soon not going to exist. When the last giant panda dies, nobody will ever see a giant panda again. Isn't that even faintly significant? Remotely saddening?

[GePap]

Originally posted by The Mad Monk
I believe that there is no such thing as "natural balance", as it goes against everything I have observed about life.

Life is about flux, not equilibrium.

Fine, so if I tiger gets loose and eats a bunch of people and is captured again, the tiger should just simply be put in some zoo, or preserve and left to live on..after all, he did what life intendend him to do, hunt for food....

Man has no special claim to the world. IN the end, conservation is about people, not animals. When people here say "let the animals die, that is nature", they are correct..but of course, as the biosphere collapses, eventually we go to, and then we can say nature took its course, and man went along with it. Face it people: man is the dominant speciaes in the world TODAY. In a sense, to conserve what exists today is to conserve the world which gave us our hegemony..which will help us MAINTAIN it. Let nature run wild, and guess what? Eventually we are next.

So save the endangered species, and continue Man's hegemony of Planet Earth!

[The Mad Monk]

Originally posted by GePap


Fine, so if I tiger gets loose and eats a bunch of people and is captured again, the tiger should just simply be put in some zoo, or preserve and left to live on..after all, he did what life intendend him to do, hunt for food....

I have no problem with that. Nor do I have a problem if they hunt it down and kill it -- elimation of threats / competition being a natural perogitive. It goes both ways, of course.

Man has no special claim to the world. IN the end, conservation is about people, not animals. When people here say "let the animals die, that is nature", they are correct..but of course, as the biosphere collapses, eventually we go to, and then we can say nature took its course, and man went along with it. Face it people: man is the dominant speciaes in the world TODAY. In a sense, to conserve what exists today is to conserve the world which gave us our hegemony..which will help us MAINTAIN it. Let nature run wild, and guess what? Eventually we are next.

So save the endangered species, and continue Man's hegemony of Planet Earth!

Oh, I quite agree -- it is in our best interests to preserve the global gene pool, as we really don't know what part of it will eventually be critical to our survival -- that's only common sense.

I just get annoyed with this semi-mystical "Balance of Nature" crap people keep spouting. Consider it a cynical geologist's POV.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by The Mad Monk
Then we are one of elements, and we are not disrupting the balance -- just adding our own piece of it.

There's no balance when the ecosystem just kinda falls over, no?

[Boris Godunov]

Wrong thread!

[The Mad Monk]

Wrong poster!

There's no balance when the ecosystem just kinda falls over, no?

Let me know when the ecosystem falls over, and I'll tell you.