What Burden of Responsibility Do U.S. Citizens Share For Irreplaceable Terrestrial Treasures Beyond U.S. borders ?

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Earth's complex ecosystem includes some rare and fragile marvels.
In distant centuries when Earth's human population was a fraction of what it is today * the African elephant was able to migrate within the continent of Africa across what are today international borders.
Elephants are threatened, poached for their ivory.

A Ban on Elephant Hunting Has Collapsed. Or Maybe It Never Existed.​

Five bulls from the area around a Kenyan wildlife reserve have been shot and killed in Tanzania in recent months. The countries have very different conservation strategies.
Reporting from Longido, Tanzania. / Published July 3, 2024Updated July 5, 2024


Is there anything the U.S. can do to help maintain a viable wild African elephant breeding population?
If so, should it be done with "public" (government) $funds? Or is private charity better suited?
Or should we accept species attrition as an inevitable intrinsic part of evolutionary history?

Salmon, a continuing dam problem.

More obviously fragile, the Monarch Butterfly whose species life-cycle reportedly includes multi-generational migration.
Migratory monarchs originate in southern Canada and the northern United States, they travel thousands of kilometers to overwintering sites in central Mexico. The butterflies arrive at their roosting sites in November. They remain in roosts atop volcanic mountains on Oyamel trees during the winter months and then begin their northern migration in March, back to North America and southern Canada. Two to three generations of monarchs complete the migration north. Female monarchs lay eggs for a subsequent generation during the northward migration. Four generations are involved in the annual cycle and ..." More at Wikipedia
Species have gone extinct in the past, the Dodo a notorious example.

- What can be done?
- What should we do?
- What should we not do?
- What are the risks either way?

* Some say there are more humans alive today than have died in all previous human history. Thus the term "population explosion".
 
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