Saving the Scruffy and Savage
Generally the farther someone lives from a threatened animal, the easier it is to think good thoughts about it. City dwellers donate a lot more money to save tigers than do Bengali villagers, who may inadvertently and unwillingly donate farm animals and even kinfolk to tigers. The villagers have cause to see themselves as more threatened than the tigers are.
Alaskans have some feel for the problem, as debates about wolf control always draw heated comments from people living in wolf-free zones of the lower 48.
Then there's the cuddle factor---cute critters are easier to save than ugly ones. One of the most endangered animals in Britain is the giant raft spider, yet somehow people don't flock to the cause of a four-inch arachnid. The World Wildlife Fund uses the panda, an appealing-looking endangered animal that lives far from most WWF donors, as its symbol.
The foregoing is a gentle way of warning that many people are going to have trouble supporting the next big push in animal conservation: according to New Scientist magazine, soon the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service will announce a program to protect sharks. Strong controls will affect recreational and commercial fishing for sharks, and some species will be completely protected.
Among the fully protected kinds will be hammerheads, tiger sharks, and great whites---three notorious man-eating sharks.
This is about as far from cuddly as you can get. Compared to a hammerhead shark, a ravenous grizzly bear looks warm and fuzzy. In fact, compared to a shark, it IS warm and fuzzy. NMFS and the other organizations taking up the cause of sharks worldwide will have their work cut out for them.
Yet take it up they must; however emotionally difficult, it is scientifically necessary. Human activity has nearly accomplished what the best efforts of millions of years of other life forms, from dinosaurs to viruses, has been unable to do: sweep sharks from the seas.
Some of this has been deliberate; the New Scientist article notes the rise of "shark kill" sportfishing tournaments "after the movie Jaws was released." Sharks became a desirable trophy, and wiping them out---at least near recreational areas---a desirable goal. Some species have also become desirable food items; where once shark appeared in disguise as "whitefish" or nameless in fish and chips, it now appears by name on trendy menus. The popularity of shark fin soup has led to extensive and lucrative fisheries---but only the fins are kept. The shark carcass goes back into the ocean.
Some shark loss has been incidental. Florida's lemon sharks need mangrove swamps as nursery areas, but resort developers have had a greater appetite by far for shoreside property. In the mid-1970s researchers caught and tagged about 2000 lemon sharks each summer; now they can find 30 or 40.
The shark species apparently most threatened don't frequent far northern waters (though quite respectable great white sharks have been caught near Ketchikan), but Alaskans won't be unaffected. It's really one big ocean that laps at all shores, and pulling the top predators out of that ocean can be like pulling the top stone out of an arch.
So, before life in the seas is upset in unpredictable ways, various agencies have set themselves the apparently thankless task of making people think kind thoughts about sharks. They'll be pointing out what has happened on land when predators were exterminated; that should enlist New Englanders who can no longer keep a garden growing because of burgeoning numbers of white-tail deer. They'll say, with truth on their side, that more people die from bee stings than shark attacks every year---though that may cost them the support of beekeepers.
Their ultimate argument may be that a sea without sharks is a sadly diminished thing. Yet I suspect that when they ask for funds, conservation organizations will enlist more donors from Kansas than California.
