As a recent article in the New York Times reported, the endangered spray toad no longer has a home. The species once lived in the spray created by a waterfall on the Kihansi River in Tanzania. Courtesy of the World Bank, that river has now been dammed, thus also damning the toad to conservation pergatory. The only known specimens now reside in zoos.

While efforts to save this species are extraordinary, its last and final hope appears to be captive breeding. But to what end?  Certainly the species’ captive population may allow scientists to learn everything they can before the inevitable end, but the species’ natural habitat appears to have been irretrievably destroyed. 

Is a species really a species in the absence of the habitat in which it evolved?  These are philosophical questions we are going to have to begin asking ourselves as we hammer nails in the coffins of more and more unique organisms.  What bothers me about this situation is that in paying for this last ditch rescue effort, the World Bank was able to avoid the responsibility of causing a unique species to go extinct.  The zoos, although their intentions are good, and perhaps even necessary, are now holding the bag.  If the species blinks out, it will ultimately be their responsibility, not the World Bank’s. 

This is analogous to the U.S. government’s dumping of the endangered guam rail and Micronesian kingfisher on zoos, when their wild populations were threatened by the invasive brown tree snake.  Zoos took on this responsibility with no financial support for maintaining the birds or conducting the needed research on captive management. 

In the future, society will likely have to make more and more decisions pitting human needs against the fate of entire species.  If and when that occurs, let’s let those in power take full responsibility for their actions.  Perhaps then they may think twice about it.  No matter what the justification, I sincerely hope it keeps them up at night. Comments welcome.

Michael Hutchins Environmental ethics, Human Dimensions of Wildlife Management and Conservation, endangered species, wildlife conservation