To Court the Nearly Extinct

"They have faced all the tedium of normal biological research, plus the added burden of not knowing if it is all a gigantic waste of time."

Sing it brother.

"Hartfield explained it by paraphrasing a quote from biologist E.O. Wilson, a leading expert on biodiversity.

"The first rule in good tinkering," Hartfield said, "is 'Save all the parts.' "

This quote is attributible to Aldo Leopold , the father of modern wildlife biology. That's Wilson's source. It's the correct one. Saving the near extinct is an effort in futility that, for some of us, must be done regardless of that futility, but with the cost of that knowledge nonetheless. I know it all too well.