The trouble with overestimating our importance in the big picture

Consider this little problem:

Forest "balds" are patches of forest that are inexplicably devoid of trees. The more general term for this is "clearings" but we usually use that word to also refer to forest regions which were cleared via human causes such as logging.

The great smokey mountains of the Appalachian mountain region have a bunch of these balds, which exist naturally. It has been hypothesized that these balds are remnants of lightning fires but nobody really knows. What naturalists/biologists do know is that there are several dozen species of wildflowers which exist nowhere else except these smokey mountain balds.

Now, as forests grow naturally, the balds are being overrun by encroaching conifers. As the balds disappear so do the rare species of flowers. In a short couple of decades most, if not all, of these wildflower species will be extinct.

The national forest service is currently the steward of the majority of the great smokey mountain range. Here is the problem: Should the forest service build roads to these balds to allow loggers access to the trees and then push them back a bit thereby postponing the disappearance of the balds and, subsequently, the disappearance of the wildflower species?

If you say YES then you will preserve several species of wildflower at the expense of a large road cutting through several miles of forest and access to pristine forest region by the evil(?) logging companies. If you say NO then you will allow the extinction of dozens or more of a natural species. But let nature take its course.

This is actually a real problem and, by default, the cash strapped forest service is doing nothing, which is probably a good thing.

But this puzzle gets at the heart of my problem with the endangered species act and endangered species activism in general. Rather than create laws that protects a certain SELECT group of animals from going extinct (no one cares about the north american fresh water muscles, which are dying at an alarming rate, because they are barely recognizable as animals and are hidden under fresh water streams out in the mountains) it would make more sense to me to force governments and corporations to learn how to make educated decisions about encroaching on nature. Species come and go at amazing rates in most of the planet's ecosystems and we're missing the forest for the trees when we're trying to micromanage the lives of individual species. The bigger problem is that people responsible for making the kinds of decisions that destroy species are not aware of the consequences of those decisions.

We quibble about which animals belong on which list while mother nature is creating and destroying species at a whim, with a vulcanic eruption here and a meteorological shift there. In the meantime the act's resulting legislation, while saving certain creatures from potential doom, also confuses and angers CEOs, legislaters, and citizens who can't build garages on their own property because it would disrupt the environment of some speckeled bluetit on the endangered species list which happens to be nesting on a tree in her backyard.

Of course, one could argue that we should try to save the species which is endangered directly as a result of acts performed by humans. That seems like a noble endeavor but it assumes that, in our infinite wisdom, we know how to bring a speicies back from the edge of extinction. Typically, all one would have to do is preserve the environment of that species. But, then again whole new species have evolved in large part due to us building barns or concrete skyscrapers or sewer systems. Nature is hardy (hearty?) and it learns to make due with whatever environment it comes across (for a really good example of this, read about the cool new fungus living in the heart of the Chernobyl power plant: We messed that place up pretty bad but living things, previously unknown to science, have figured out how to live there. If we hadn't had a nuclear containment accident there would that species of fungus ever have come to exist? Maybe not.)

If I was in charge of things I would attack the bigger problem: people just don't think about their effect on society. The first step to doing this is to teach everyone that the environment is an incredibly complex system and when we have the power to affect that system, even slightly, we can make some big changes to it (positive and negative). Those changes might result in an environmental system which could be much worse for human sustainability. So when you have that kind of power (like, if you are in a government position, or have several million dollars to invest in new infrastructure) you need to make it your job to know/consider the consequences of using ddts, clear-logging a swath of the jungle, or opening/closing a large area of nature to hunting and fishing. Then, rather than using the law to prevent poor decisions from being made, you use the law to force poor decision makers to use their resources to make things right.

Maybe this method would lead to better self-regulation while shrinking the role of government. But then again, I'm pretty convinced that our ability to create problems infinitely surpasses our aptitude for solving them, so we're screwed no matter what.