Discussion 2: Threats to Biodiversity Where You Are
Rapid loss of biological diversity is one of the primary pieces of evidence that we are in the Anthropocene. This week\\\”s discussion is an opportunity to learn more about threats to biodiversity close to your home, by researching a local threatened or endangered species.
There are two websites that are very useful for this kind of research:
For students in the United States, first search United States Fish & Wildlife Service (USFS), Threatened and Endangered Species Listings by US State/Territory (Links to an external site.). (https://ecos.fws.gov/ecp0/reports/species-listed-by-state-totals-report)This is an easy way to find threatened species near you.
After you\\\”ve chosen a species, search that species in International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species (Links to an external site.).(http://www.iucnredlist.org/) This is an excellent resource as well, and I prefer it for its organization of information, but it does not do a good job of searching by US states.
If you are a student outside the US and its territories, just search the IUCN Red List.
Tell us about your threatened species, including the information in the discussion prompts, and then find an article or video about your species to analyze and cite in your discussion post, according to the instructions below. If your species is too obscure to find any articles or videos, then broaden your research to find an article or video about the primary threat to your species (habitat loss to agriculture or urban/industrial development, invasive species, overexploitation, etc).
Discussion Prompts
Your location
Common name and scientific name of the endangered or threatened species
Brief description of the species: Is it a tree, flower, fish, rodent, canid, feline, etc? Where does it live: Is it endemic to your location, or distributed all across your continent, or?
What role does this species play in its ecosystem? What does it eat? What eats it? Is it a keystone species or an umbrella species? What ecosystem services does it contribute to?
What is the status of the species? (Most common USFS statuses: Candidate, Threatened, Endangered; Most common IUCN Red List statuses: Near Threatened, Vulnerable, Endangered, Critically Endangered, Extinct in the Wild, Extinct)
What are the reasons that this species is threatened? Look under Threats in IUCN Red List description, read the Executive Summary of the Recovery Plan in the USFS description, and/or do additional research online.
What is being done to protect or recover this species?
What do you think? Is conservation of this species worth the effort and expense? Do you think the species has intrinsic value, in addition to the instrumental values described above?
Instructions
Your discussion posts must include the following:
Response to the above discussion prompts
Enthusiasm: what you think is valuable from the material and why
Critical evaluation of the author and/or publisher of the cited material: What is the authors background and/or expertise? What is the mission and vision of the organization and/or its underlying values? What is the purpose of the article? What biases do you think the author/publisher may have?
Skepticism: What aspects of the issue/topic did the writers neglect, misunderstand, misrepresent, or willfully ignore? What about their argument confused you?
Note: Being skeptical doesn\\\”t mean saying that the author is wrong (although that can be the case at times). Being skeptical can also mean thinking about possible counterarguments, dimensions of the problem that were not discussed in the article, stakeholders that were not represented, etc. Try to identify the purpose and scope of the video or article, and then think about what lies outside that scope that is also relevant. One reason I ask about author bias is that identifying the author\\\”s potential biases can help guide your thinking about what to be skeptical of…
Reference citations including author/publisher, year, title, and URL
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