The Fragile "Wasteland"

In my high school years, one of the most pressing political/environmental debates concerned whether or not to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil drilling.  It's a perennial hot-button issue that comes up fairly often, but I seem to recall that it was in full swing then.  One particular ignorant and unpleasant classmate of mine keyed in on the fact that I was concerned about and against the prospect of drilling.  He would occasionally taunt me about how silly my concerns were.  "There's just snails and stuff up there," he would repeat with a smug smirk.  How he decided that snails, of all things, were the lone denizen of what is one of the most diverse and beautiful ecosystems in America was beyond me, even then.

The crux (to glorify it as such) of the simpleton's opinion was that the Arctic was a wasteland, nothing lives there, and nothing we can do to it matters, because it's already a dump.  I've heard the same argument made about the desert.

The truth is, the harshness of the desert (or the Arctic) makes it even more important that we preserve those habitats.  The animals and plants that exist there are already living on the edge of extremes - heat and cold, drought and flood, scarcity and plenty.  They have little margin for error.  Their ecosystem is a hard, sometimes brutal one, but they've evolved and adapted to it.  It doesn't take too much change for what is already a harsh place to live to become an impossible place.  

That can mean a slight decrease in water levels that are already low, a decrease in the already small amounts of vegetation growing there, or an increase in temperature.  Or, it can mean introducing new threats to complicate an already precarious existence, such as competition from domestic livestock, or hunting pressures previously unknown to those animals.  Conversely, modifying the habitat to make it more hospitable - such as adding water sources for irrigation projects - can allow other, non-desert species to move in and muscle and native desert dwellers out of their own homes and niches.

The plants and animals that live in the world's great deserts are already masters of living in some of the most challenging environmental conditions on earth.  I feel like the least that we can do is not make life harder for them.