[Coral-List] Impact of listing 66 coral species on coral research

[Douglas Fenner]

Sure, fine.  How much detail do you want??  In my previous message (and in
our discussion months ago) I pointed out that many or most of the things
that are killing coral are caused by humans or at least made worse by
humans.  Releasing sewage on the reef, sediment runoff from road
construction, building construction, fertilizer runoff from farms, sediment
runoff from farms, overfishing, CO2 released in the atmosphere by human
activities that causes warming that causes mass coral bleaching.  Catching
aquarium fish, using blast fishing and cyanide.  African dust, caused in
part by desertification in the Sahel, due to increasing human populations
and overgrazing.  Increasing pollutants in the dust, due to people doing
things like burning plastic  The list is very long indeed, way too long to
all be listed here.  All caused or increased by humans.  All end up killing
corals one way or another.
     People do things that destroy reefs and kill corals.  Endangered
listing makes it illegal to do those things.  People who do them decide
that they would rather not be fined or go to jail.  They stop doing them,
so the corals stop dying so fast.  (For things done in outside the USA, the
endangered listing can lead to funding projects, such as to teach people in
north Africa not to burn plastics and efforts to reduce overgrazing)
     Listing has prevented extinction in hundreds of species, for instance
no species of sea turtle has gone extinct since listing (though some are
still declining towards extinction like leatherbacks, others like green sea
turtles in Hawaii are not only no longer declining towards extinction, they
are recovering very well.)

     Cheers,  Doug



On Thu, Dec 13, 2012 at 6:04 AM, Eugene Shinn <eshinn at marine.usf.edu> wrote:

> Thanks Doug for correcting me. So it is not about restoring staghorn
> but preventing extinction. So explain how listing will prevent
> extinction. Gene
> --
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