Q: Should we interfere in the process of evolution?

Q: Should we interfere in the process of evolution?

Me and my friend were talking about baby sea turtles in which I told my friend that sometimes they die if seagulls or predators come and eat them on shore when their born. She then told me what if you go and try to help them reach the shore by picking them up and placing them next to the water so they could swim out to sea or scare off the predators on land. I also told her that there are still predators in the sea that could eat them or kill them. This lead me to think if we should interfere in evolution or survival of the fittest. What do you think?

If that species were on the brink of extinction, what would you do?

A: Technically speaking, we cannot interfere with the process of evolution because it is not linear and there is no end goal. Everything we do (or don’t do) may affect how species evolve, but evolution will continue on regardless of our actions.

One could use this logic to argue that species are going to live and die no matter what we do, but that ignores the fact that all species on Earth are explicitly reliant upon one another. As the most technologically and intellectually advanced species on the planet, we are the only ones with the ability and duty to consider how our behavior affects the rest of the planet.

It may not always prove beneficial or efficient to save every species we can, but the sheer numbers of those we have wiped off the planet gives us a sort of “biological debt” that we owe Earth. It doesn’t matter if we’re successful (because success in evolution will probably never be definable); the most important thing is that we try.