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 “The Disenfranchised Poor”

by Sandra D. Lynn

            I used to faithfully watch the program “Nature” on public television. Every Sunday evening I would sit down in front of the TV and learn about the private lives and mating habits of squids or parakeets or lions. It was fascinating, and I enjoyed it, but something was missing. Finally, one evening “Nature” was to present a program entitled “Aspens.” Aspens are so lovely with their shimmering leaves and greenish white trunks against a cobalt sky, and they are intriguing, too. I was all set to learn about a different sort of secret life, about why aspens in a grove are clones, or why they are often the first trees to reappear after a fire, or how it is that they have photosynthesizing trunks.

 I was disappointed. The program was not really about aspens at all but about the animals that inhabit their groves, as if the trees themselves were a mere backdrop. I can understand that deer and hawks are exciting to photograph, but it did seem to me that the show could have done better by the trees whose golden autumn glory is a perennial photographic favorite. If I had been scripting the show, I would have included not only shots of mountainsides where gold is struck every fall but also of young aspens springing up like phoenixes from the ashes of wildfire or close-ups showing why the aspen leaves “tremble,” which is the source of the trees’ scientific name, Populus tremuloides, which means “quaking” or “trembling” poplar. When I thought about why that program didn’t do justice to its subject, I realized that it wasn’t because trees are not as photogenic as animals. The real problem was that when most people think about “nature,” they think about animals, not plants. This is a problem not only in television programming but also, far more significantly, in public funding for conservation.

            Talk about taken for granted. Plants provide the foundation for terrestrial life, yet they are afforded little protection under U. S. environmental laws. In an article entitled “Conservation’s Disenfranchised Urban Poor” published in BioScience, the authors point out that plants are the poorest, most “underprivileged” group with respect to funding for recovery under the Endangered Species Act. Each plant species listed as endangered received less than half the amount provided per species for the next two most impoverished groups, amphibians and invertebrates. In other words, the animals at the bottom of the priority heap, such as rare salamanders and beetles, would get more than twice as many of our tax dollars as the rare plants that may form the basis of their habitats. The authors write, “No other group simultaneously receives so much attention with respect to listing action (approximately 50 percent of all listed species are plants) and so few resources in support of recovery efforts.”

            The bias in favor of animals is striking. Three times as many plants in the U. S. are considered “endangered” as animals, and one third of our national flora is thought to be at risk. Yet, plants are only half as likely to receive listing protection as animals. In 1998 the Fish and Wildlife Service reported that in fiscal 1995 all endangered plants, approximately 800 species, received only 12 percent of recovery funds. In addition, while it is illegal to kill any animal listed under the ESA without a permit, listed plants can be deliberately destroyed without a permit and without mitigation of the damage to the plant population or their habitat. This apparently comes from historic legal precedent, in which animals are considered to be the property of the monarch or society, while plants are seen as the property of the landowner.            

            Now, what does all this mean to conservationists? It doesn’t mean that we should do less to save endangered animals or that animals should receive less attention in television programming or other forms of public education. It just means we must remember that

• all living things (not just the most noticeable or appealing ones) are fundamentally important when it comes to priority decisions about the use of public funds
• animals don’t stand much of a chance without the plant world; plentiful oxygen, carbon dioxide intake and use, food production, clean and available water—plants are vital to all these processes and resources for life
• plants are beautiful, complex, fascinating--and sexy, too. But notice this—when people talk about the process of sexual reproduction in plants, they use the cliché phrase, “the birds and the bees,” as if flowers had nothing to do with it! 

The data in this article comes from  “Conservation’s Disenfranchised Urban Poor” by Mark Schwartz, Nicole Jurjavcic, and Joshua O’Brien, published in BioScience, July 2002, and also from the Native Plant Conservation Campaign, 1722 J. St., Suite 17, Sacramento, California 95814.

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