Quote from: FirstAscent on August 02, 2012, 02:46:46 AM

Quote from: myrkul on August 02, 2012, 02:27:24 AM

Quote from: FirstAscent on August 02, 2012, 02:08:00 AM

Quote from: myrkul on August 01, 2012, 08:14:02 PM

Your precious biodiversity is being protected by hunters.

How so?

The Scimitar Oryx is extinct in the wild. That means they only exist in zoos and game reserves. The largest breeding population extant of that Scimitar Oryx is at that ranch. How is that not protecting biodiversity?

Biodiversity, it's very definition, implies diversity, which arises from the existence of thousands, tens of thousands of species within any given ecosystem. This then results in the ecosystem being able to provide its services, known collectively as ecosystem services. The goal is to protect biodiversity by protecting ecosystems. A general technique for doing so is to declare a top level species within its respective ecosystem as endangered (because it is endangered or will become extinct if its ecosystem is destroyed) as an umbrella species, otherwise known as a keystone species. The ecosystem is then preserved under the umbrella of the umbrella species. This protects biodiversity. I gave a general summary of this process by drawing attention to the Spotted Owl controversy and what it was all about in this post: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=96217.msg1061023#msg1061023

We can get into all kinds of discussions as to what biodiversity is, what threatens it, where you'll find it, why it needs to be preserved, and how preservation is affected.

Your example of relocating the Scimitar Oryx is simply not a case of protecting biodiversity. What they did is not necessarily a bad thing, but your usage of it as an example to protect biodiversity simply shows that you have a lot to learn about the subject.

Holy crap... you're starting to make sense. Quick, get over to that ecology thread why you still have it!

No, but seriously, That's actually a coherent response to my question. Thank you. That said, this thread is not the place to be discussing it.