After reading that 1/3 of the world's primates species "face as serious risk of extinction" (BBC News) and hearing on NPR that international caviar sales are about to be suspended because the sturgeons who produce those eggs are in danger of going extinct, it made me consider how mucking about with the ecosystem like this is a dangerous gamble.

We barely know enough about nature as it is, and I wonder how long we can continue punching holes into it, until the whole thing starts falling apart in ways we didn't expect, because we really don't know how it all goes together.

If we follow Chaos theory were a multitude of minor, seemingly disconnected events can lead to an unexpected result in an entirely different place, what calamity could happen?

In melodramatic moments, I imagine some disaster movie-like plot, where removing enough links in the food chain suddenly causes a rapid collapse of the ecosystem, with mass extinctions of flora and fauna on a grand scale. It'd make a great movie, except that there'd be no happy ending; no way to recover.

I don't actually expect that to happen, but I worry about what will happen.

And I'm saddened by the loss of any creatures through our selfishness and shortsightedness.