I used to get really angry every time the Tribune ran an editorial about an endangered species. Their usual slant on efforts to prevent the extermination of one of earth’s unique genetic combinations was “What the heck, we’ve got millions of them. Is anybody really going to notice if we lose one?”
Red squirrel populations in southern Arizona are scattered, separated by lower-altitude areas where scrub, grassland, and desert vegetation are dominant and where the squirrels can’t live. Mount Graham, which is 10,720 feet high, is the southernmost outpost of the species.
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My knee-jerk response to cases like this is to support the squirrels against the astronomers. But this time I decided not to get angry. I figured I owed at least a little dispassionate consideration to the arguments of a rich and powerful newspaper, no matter how numbingly stupid they were. So here, as near as I can understand it, is the Tribune’s case for regarding the telescope as more important than the squirrels.
Finally, the Tribune argues, the battle is not really about squirrels; it is about the hidden agenda of various environmentalists, who oppose all human progress. Somewhere there may be somebody who really cares about these squirrels, they say, but nobody involved with the lawsuit does. If environmentalists don’t drop the suit, they may win it, but they will lose so much public sympathy they may wish they hadn’t.
There are some people with knowledge of the case who think the observatory will harm the squirrels. This question, as they say, is for the courts to decide–with the aid of whatever expert testimony and additional evidence the courts think necessary. It is not an issue that can be settled by a priori arguments.
And in this context, just what do phrases like animal rights and human rights mean? The Tribune seems to assert that we have a right to risk the extinction of a unique life form and the destruction of a scientifically interesting ecosystem in order to advance our scientific knowledge in other areas. And if science doesn’t convince you, how about national prestige? What if we lose our preeminence in astronomy? The Germans are threatening to locate the observatory in Chile. What if our unemployed astronomers end up working at McDonald’s and plastering their cars with pathetic “Gaze American” bumper stickers?
