tell us why "this should not be"; as each species is eliminated, 
the prospect for environmental catastrophe increases, and this 
sphere becomes a lousier place to live. 
Why won't this approach sell to the inquisitive mind? Why, as 
we pile up more scientific data, won't diversity prove to be 
the confuting evidence for the importance of preserving threat- 
ened species? It will, if (and a very large “if") we can trans- 
late diversity into terms s that the general public can assimilate 
and understand. We need, perhaps, a Rachel Carson--that rare 
translator of scientific jargon into common terms--to explain 
diversity to the masses. When we can convincingly show that a 
community of 100,000 individuals of 12 species is a more unstable 
One than a community of 100,000 individuals of 20 species, we 
will have public support in our concern for threatened species. 
Then, and only then, can we forgo essentially emotional appeals 
(like my appended poem) for salvage of those species on the brink. 
REQUIEM FOR THOSE WHO TOTTER ON THE BRINK OF DOOM 
He stalks among the untrodden ways 
Of Minnesota's primeval wood; 
A beast whom there are few to praise, 
And almost none call "good." 
The timber wolf, that creature dread, 
Is on our Threatened Species List; 
As a species, now almost dead-- 
And most say he will not be missed. 
But -it is not right, this wish of Man, 
The wolf into extinction to send. 
It was not Evolution's immediate plan 
That this animal's existence should end! 
The same is true of the Indiana bat, 
Which Homo seems destined to extirpate, 
Unless its "evil" image we can 
Somehow--someway--negate. 
Who can make an osprey again 
When the last one is gone from its native shore? 
How will we re-create the prairie chicken when 
The last prairie is no more? 
What of the bird with the ivory bill, 
Near elimination from this earth? 
And when the jack pine woods are still, 
What was that last Kirtland’s warbler worth? 
