Local View: If we're caring folks, we care about a bug

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BY JOEL SARTORE

I agree the Salt Creek tiger beetle should be listed as a federally endangered species. But I’m not happy about it.

Just as you would not applaud someone being wheeled into an emergency room, so it is for this, a creature on the very brink of extinction — the beetle numbered roughly 150 at last count.

What the federal listing says is that the city of Lincoln and its residents have been unable to control development in Lancaster County’s saline wetlands, so now the federal government is left with no choice but to step in.

But it’s a last gasp attempt at this point, really. Listing or not, the future of this species and its habitat does not look good.

While we’ve talked a good game for years, retail outlets and suburbia continued to march north unabated. The alteration of water flows into the marsh will change its salinity, ruining it just as surely as a stray bulldozer. And for a creature that’s attracted to light, the new car dealerships along North 27th are hastening its demise each summer with their stadium lighting that burns every night.

On the positive side, the listing will bring federal money that can be used to secure more interior saline wetland, protecting this rare ecotype for all the other species that live there and for future generations of people who care.

But for those who would say, “What good is a bug?” I offer this:  The Salt Creek tiger beetle is truly the least among us. Shouldn’t we show kindness and consideration to all creatures great and small? Or do we alter our behavior only when it’s convenient? When money isn’t on the line? If so, that day will never come.

We live in an age in which we’re drilling for oil in the last best places, an age when citizens allow laws to be passed that actually lower the quality of their water and air. We vote for folks who promise to get us cheaper prices at the pump, rather than confront the ugly fact we use energy wastefully.

Against this background, we know an insect in a marsh is a low priority at best. But this is one of Lincoln’s own, found nowhere else on earth. School kids draw pictures of it. The salt marshes are remnants, but still remarkable and ancient reminders, of what once was, and of the processes that sustain life on Earth.

For the few of us who care enough to speak out, we dream of a day when any community in our country would stand up for an overlooked insect in the most quiet of ecosystems. That will truly be a noble day indeed. For this is really not about a beetle, but about how we as humans relate to the very processes that keep us alive.

Let us not applaud the listing of the tiger beetle. Instead, let us reflect on the damage we are doing the world over to the life processes that we as humans rely on every day, so that our children may live secure in a world that values all life, no matter how small.

Joel Sartore is a Lincoln-based photojournalist who serves on the Grassland Foundation’s board of directors.