The Trump administration, for first time since the Endangered Species Act became law, will take into account the economic cost of protecting particular species ("Feds weaken wildlife safeguards," front page, Aug. 13). The Endangered Species Act protects more than 1,600 species in the U.S. and its territories.
Ecosystems provide humans with a number of services free of charge, including air and water purification, flood and drought control, pollination of crops and other vegetation, dispersal of seeds and nutrient cycling. These services have an economic value. If humans had to pay for ecosystem services based on their market value, researchers estimate that the global cost would be more than $142 trillion annually. In addition, 40 percent of all medicines are derived from plants used for centuries. Every time a plant becomes extinct, biologists lose whatever knowledge we might have been able to gain by studying it.
No matter where you live, how much money you have or whether you are even consciously aware of it, biodiversity works for you. But it is a mistake to reduce conservation solely to concern for our own well-being or to assume that it is acceptable to extinguish species that don't appear to benefit humans. Such an overly economistic approach to conservation is immoral. It makes us selfish, which is the last thing we want when the very existence of so many other life-forms is at stake. Fairly sharing the lands and waters of Earth with other species is primarily a matter of justice, not economic convenience.
We must come together and create the turning point. Let's take on that responsibility.
Melissa Smith, Madison, Wis.
IMMIGRATION
Trump's new rule for poor migrants begs rewrite of Lady Liberty's poem
If President Donald Trump, adviser Stephen Miller, acting Director of the Citizenship and Immigration Services Office Kenneth Cuccinelli and other members of the current administration had their way ("Tighter rules for poorer migrants," front page, Aug. 13), the last lines of the sonnet etched in stone at the base of the Statue of Liberty would be revised to read:
"Give me your Caucasian tired but not your Latino poor, your 250%-above-the-poverty-line masses yearning to breathe free, the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant treasures of your teeming shore.
"Send these, the financially self-supporting tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
Bill Herring, Minnetonka
GUNS
Don't restrict my rights to no effect
President Donald Trump: My support for you in the 2016 election was based totally on your support for the Second Amendment.