So I'm reading Yahoo news and I look over at the ad. It said something about wildlife studies being "pork barrel" spending aka. a pointless waste of tax money. I could go on and on about wildlife and the importance of the environment for it's own merit, plus the benefits we reap on this planet because of the interconnected web of life, but I really don't think these arguments would get through to these people. So I got to thinking about the canary in the coal mine. The old miners would bring a canary down with them, being smaller and more sensitive to the air quality and other environmental factors, the canary functioned as an early warning system. If something happened to that bird the miners knew they had to either get out of there, or change something in their environment or they would be effected next. The wild lands and wildlife research often acts as a canary early warning system for people. If all the fish and frogs drop dead, don't drink the water right?

Back to the mines, what happens when no one pays any attention to the canary? The carbon dioxide just sneaks up and kills everyone. What happens when no one wants to pay for the canaries anymore? Then it is only a matter of time then until humans are in crisis because there was no warning and no ability to prepare. Then people die. That doesn't seem like a very effective plan to me. I'd call cutting wildlife research spending short sited, but that would just be a nice way of calling them blind.