What Species Do We Save? by Mia Jardine
Across the globe, over a million species are at risk. Without the budget or resources to save them all, one must beg the question “which ones do we save?” I read a BBC article detailing a project in the U.K. which proved to be a success when two spoon-billed sandpipers were born, members of possibly the most endangered bird species on the planet. Getting to this point took the people running the project 10 years to achieve. The utmost precaution is taken to ensure the chicks don’t fall dead, like wearing hairnets around the enclosure so no hair falls in and entraps them. Both the birds have “shovel-shaped bills”, an identifying characteristic of their species. This is the first time in a decade that these sandpipers have been bred in captivity. The eggs that came before them were imported from Russian nesting grounds when only a few hundred of them existed. This was the first step the “Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust” (WWT) took to protect this species. So why did we save those species and...