Vasquez Says His Letter Didn’t Oppose Bird’s Endangered Tag

Aldo Leopold wrote: “The last word in ignorance is the man who says of a plant or animal, ‘What good is it?’ If the land mechanism as a whole is good, then every part of it is good, whether we understand it or not.”

The controversy surrounding the endangered gnatcatcher is not simply about the species, but survival of the “land mechanism” or, as we now call it, the ecosystem, which the species depends on and has come to represent.

The gnatcatcher is only the more politically visible of a vast number of plants and critters that compose this now-fragmented ecosystem. Many less visible species are passing quietly into extinction as local development continues expanding.

The Clipboard in The Times regularly features a local bird species and shows its breeding locations (or habitat) over a map of Orange County. A careful look at these locations reveals they are limited to the few remaining open spaces, such as cultivated fields, parks and land not yet developed.

For the gnatcatcher, it is perhaps not too late. In our pursuit of wealth, let’s keep the treasures we still have and preserve the last refuges for the wildlife among us. We will be the richer for it.

RICHARD ALAN BORKOVETZ, Huntington Beach