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Science, Religion, and Endangered Species

What Must We Do?

Calvin B. DeWitt

We learned something about ourselves and our love for living creatures from the rhetoric of the last months of the 1996 campaign. Remarkably, our teachers included the Speaker of the House and the President. In the aftermath of a clear move in the Congress to weaken the Endangered Species Act -- including "saving" species without their habitats -- both leaders sought some creaturely companionship, if not creaturely comfort. Before the election, the Speaker frequented zoos and appeared on a talk show with snake around his neck and creatures in his lap. On a post-election field trip, the President cuddled a Koala in a biodiversity hotspot as he relished the creaturely wonders of the Australian rainforest and the Great Barrier Reef. Our leaders clearly are finding it necessary to dramatize their love for the creatures and Earth's biodiversity. With all the flurry over endangered species in the 104th Congress, one wonders: Have they discovered that all of us care?

Will the 105 th Congress follow our leaders' leadership in affirming our care for the creatures? No doubt, hearings will be held on our potential for breaking those countless long and thin lineages of plants and animals whose heritage extends thousands of years into our moment on Earth. People will express their views on what do and when to do it. Yet, boggled as the diversity of opinions might make us, we will want to keep these threads of life intact, rather than destroy them. It is a moral issue for us all.

Within this moral discourse are many voices: scientists, religious leaders, pragmatists. To whom shall we listen?

As an environmental scientist, also engaged in researching the scriptures, I propose that we can and should listen to all three because they all come to a common end-point. All affirm the moral imperative to keep Earth's biodiversity. All converge on common moral principles for the common good.

Our struggle in this discourse is not new, of course. We have been here before. It all began not with the 104th Congress nor with Earth Day, but with Genesis. And even there it began not with the "first endangered species act" administered by Noah, but with the charge to serve and keep the garden given to the moral earthling, Adam. Because it has become commonplace in our time to cite Judeo-Christian teaching when dealing with matters of environment and biodiversity, we must be clear about scriptural teaching, no matter what our belief system. It is part of our thread whose heritage extends into our present moment on Earth.

In the scriptural tradition and among its religious leaders, there is unanimity on some basic moral points that relate to biodiversity:

• The Creator cares for creatures of every kind and confirms this with a supportive covenant;
• Creatures of every kind are the Creator's valued handiwork whose worth is independent of human utility;
• Human beings should mirror the Creator in their valuing and caring for the creatures and Creation;
• Human beings are responsible to the Creator and therefore granted neither freedom from stewardship nor freedom to destroy Creation; and
• Human beings are given freedom for stewardship and therefore are entrusted with the care and keeping of the living creatures and the whole Creation.
  
  

The clarity of the scriptures on these points has brought moral consensus across the broad sweep of Judeo-Christian leadership. The Pope says that "the ecological crisis is a moral issue," Billy Graham says that "The Lord said we are to look after His Garden, and We are responsible for it." At the highest levels of Jewish denominations, leaders say that "We are heirs to a tradition of stewardship. Our tradition teaches that we are to be partners in the ongoing work of Creation." The U.S. Catholic Bishops tell us that "The diversity of life manifests God's glory..." and accordingly, "it is appropriate that we treat other creatures and the natural world not just as a means to human fulfillment but also as God's creatures" who possess "an independent value, worthy of our respect and care." Methodist leaders, reflecting on human beings both as creatures and mirrors of God's love for the world, tell us that we "are simultaneously co-creatures with all Creation and co-creators of God in the world in which we live." And over a hundred evangelical leaders say that "Our actions should both sustain Creation's fruitfulness and preserve Creation's powerful testimony to its Creator."

Particularly important is Genesis 2:15, which announces that people were placed in the garden by the Creator to serve it and to keep it. SHAMAR (the Hebrew word for keep) calls for a caring keeping that sustains life-fulfilling relationships with habitat, other species, soil, water, and air. It is not mere preservation.

These principles and scriptural teaching resonate with environmental and ecological science. "The major cause of the current extinctions is human activity..." reports a National Academy of Sciences study. Leading scientists of the AAAS, AIBS, and Ecological Society of America conclude that "More than 95% of U.S. endangered species are imperiled at least in part by habitat loss or alteration," and affirm that "habitat protection is a prerequisite for conservation of biological diversity and protection of endangered and threatened species." The National Academy study reports that there is "no doubt" that the Endangered Species Act "has prevented the extinction of some species and slowed the declines of others" and the Fish and Wildlife Service reports that "America's effort to save endangered species has prevented the extinction of more than 99 percent of animals and plants on the Endangered Species List and nearly 60 percent of species listed the longest are stable or increasing in number," with only seven of the species having gone extinct. And most importantly, leading texts in ecology and environmental science affirm the importance of biodiversity in maintaining ecoystem and biospheric structure and functions.

A utilitarian perspective also contributes significantly. There is the usefulness of pollination by diverse insects, the scientific knowledge of the kidney's loop of Henle gained from study of the kangaroo rat, the potential contribution of biodiversity for diversifying the food supply, the contribution of diverse living things to the 40% of pharmaceuticals which are based upon or synthesized from compounds derived from various species, and the benefits of the habitats saved for endangered species for a wide variety of other fish and wildlife and for clean water and recreation. All of this supports the health and well-being of human society and the wholeness and wellness of human community.

The religious, the scientific, and the utilitarian converge to the same moral end-point: keeping Earth's biodiversity is important for the common good. "KEEPING THE EARTH" -- the title of the recent videotape by the Union of Concerned Scientists on the topic -- is at the core. The moral imperative is this: We must care for and keep Earth's biodiversity.

So what do we do with the Endangered Species Act? Clearly, it should be an expression of this moral convergence of science, religion, and utility. And if the Speaker and President would have us follow their leadership, it might even be an expression of our love for Earth's living creatures! The religious, scientific, and utilitarian perspectives that bring us to a common end-point must and can lead us to the most reliable paths towards the common good.

Please mail any comments to Dr. Mark Lassiter.