Pros & Cons of Using Pesticides to Collect Rain Forest Species

Anatomy

• To fully understand the species that live in the rainforest, scientists must study their anatomy. By analyzing the enzymes, proteins and inner workings of rainforest species, scientists could potentially develop important medicines or at the very least understand the rainforest ecosystem better. In order to study a creature's anatomy, scientists must kill the creature, and pesticides allow them to do so without damaging the animal the way hunting or trapping it may.

Elusive Animals

• Many animals in the rainforest are elusive and may be able to avoid human contact. This ability to hide may make it difficult for scientists to capture animals directly. Pesticides allow scientists to remove themselves from the situation and eliminate their presence as a factor in the capture of the animal. In this way, scientists may be able to find some of the thousands of species that remain unclassified in the rainforest.

Death

• In order to collect a rainforest animal using pesticides, the animal must be killed by the poison. This means that scientists are unable to study the habits of the creature, losing potentially valuable insight into how it lives. Because many rainforest species may have low populations, killing a member of a species may even threaten the continued existence of the species, especially if scientists try to collect multiple specimens.

Pollution

• Using a pesticide to collect specific species may inadvertently kill non-target animals in the process. Residual pesticide left after the collection could continue to kill animals. If the pesticide washes into a stream or river, the pesticide could kill animals far away from the original site. This threatens the ecosystem of the rainforest and could have unintended consequences beyond the simple collection, killing other animals, even endangered species.