New rules announced by the Trump administration will significantly weaken the way the nation’s Endangered Species Act is applied, according to Stony Brook’s famed marine ecologist Carl Safina.
In a New York Times op-ed published August 13, Safina argued that the new rules would potentially open the way for mining, oil and gas drilling and development that could be disastrous for the world’s dwindling biodiversity.
“It used to be that animals did not need us,” Safina wrote. “Now they do. Unless we value their existence, the modern tide will engulf and obliterate them. Their survival — like our great-grandchildren’s — is a moral matter.”
Safina, who holds the Carl Safina Endowed Research Chair for Nature and Humanity in the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, is a vocal advocate for endangered species whose recent book Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel (2015) delves deeply into the intelligence and emotional make-up of animals.
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