I wanna tell you about everything that happens next. About who you meet and lose over the summer, and the man who comes in by pure chance during fall. What gets rekindled in spring and dies again later that winter, and every small piece of the puzzle in between. I know you’re dying to know but you’ll see for yourself, so don’t worry about it.
But I will tell you this: Two years from now you’re going to be at a concert and his band is opening, but unlike what you’ve always hoped you won’t be the girl next to the guitarist. She’s cute, he seems to like her. You and him will make eye contact at a few points during the night but not a single word will be exchanged.
And honestly? You don’t feel a thing.
I’ll tell you this too: It doesn’t end with a melodramatic goodbye, or a happily ever after, nor does it end with an explosive fight or a vow to never speak again.
It ends with a flicker of a long burnt candle finally being put out.
I certainly agree with your panda post, but I have a question. How do you feel about the big cat's huge vulnerability to extinction? Are they a species that we should save instead of pandas or am I looking too far into it?
As a general rule, predators are extremely important for the survival of an ecosystem, and big cats are no exception. Predators regulate prey populations - usually many, many species of prey, which trickles down through the food web in a process that is known as a trophic cascade. Simply, it means that if the predator numbers decrease, their prey increases, which means the prey eat more, breed more, and can actually wipe out their own food sources - to the point that not only are the food species extirpated, but the prey population can collapse from lack of food and also vanish.
Big cats do breed easily in captivity and out (generally) - more easily than pandas - and they play a crucial role in ecosystems. They face some of the same problems that pandas do, since they, too, are charismatic megafauna, but they also have the benefits that aren’t really working with panda conservation.
Since big cats are large, wide-ranging predators, loads of other species can be protected within reserves set aside for them. They have the public eye, and can garner money and interest for conservation initiatives that otherwise wouldn’t get any attention. They are well-known and popular, bringing money in to zoos and other facilities so they can run conservation programs as well.
People love them. People want to protect them. Conservation is actually working. And their loss would be much more detrimental to the environment than the loss of pandas
