When I was a child, I visited the village in India where my father grew up. As we strolled down dirt roads, he reminisced on his barefoot youth. I don’t remember much of what he said — I was too busy looking for reptiles in the shrubs. Later that day, we came upon a gaggle of children surrounding a snake. For a split moment, I felt like the luckiest kid in the world, elated to stumble upon my favorite animal in the wild. But the other kids didn’t share my joy. Instead, one of them beat it to death with a stick while the others celebrated. I broke down into tears.

Three decades later, I’m willing to forgive them. Each year, snakes kill 60,000 people across South Asia, and many more around the world. It’s entirely reasonable, even natural, to fear reptiles, but that fear has curdled into something nefarious. Eradication campaigns, combined with the pressures of habitat loss and climate change, have pushed global reptile populations to the brink; 1 in 5 reptile species now face imminent extinction. This is a moral, ecological and medical calamity. Reptiles and other frightful creatures have saved untold lives, and it would be a huge mistake to hasten their demise.

The world’s “creepy-crawlies” are responsible for some of the most consequential pharmaceutical breakthroughs of the past century. ACE inhibitors, a first-line treatment for high blood pressure, were derived from the venom of the yarara, a 5-foot-long pit viper native to South America. In the ’60s, researchers noticed that workers on local banana plantations would faint when bitten by the snake, a sign of rapid-onset hypotension. By 1981, researchers had isolated the pressure-dropping compound from its venom, created a synthetic formulation, and won regulatory approval for captopril, which became the pharmaceutical company Squibb’s first billion-dollar drug. As an internal medicine doctor, I have administered this exact medicine to countless patients; worldwide, 20 million people rely on this class of drugs, known as ACE inhibitors, to avoid heart attacks and chronic kidney disease. They are a medical miracle.

Federal funding for obscure reptile research can pay big dividends. In the 1990s, the United States Department of Veterans Affairs financed a study of gila monsters, hoping to understand how these venomous lizards go for long periods without food but maintain stable blood sugar levels. The investigation led to a remarkable discovery: Gila monster venom contains a peptide that stimulates insulin production. That’s how scientists eventually synthesized GLP-1 agonists like semaglutide (which are sold under the brand names Ozempic and Wegovy), which have revolutionized diabetes management and weight loss, while demonstrating other positive clinical effects across the body.

The modern pharmaceutical industry has long been powered by nature, and there’s no signs of this changing — even as artificial intelligence transforms drug development. One-third of all small-molecule drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration from 1981 to 2014 were derived from naturally occurring compounds, forged by the great furnace of evolution. Recombinant hirudins, for example, are a class of medicines used to treat patients with allergies to traditional anti-clotting drugs; they originated in the salivary glands of blood-sucking leeches. Snails may hold the secret to new painkillers that don’t possess the addictive qualities of opiates. Enzymes derived from deep-sea bacteria have been used to make tests for COVID-19. The most undervalued creatures often hold the most miraculous secrets, but we won’t untangle those mysteries without protecting neglected species, preserving research funding and partnering with the communities who live closest to nature.

We can’t study animals if there are no animals left to study. The planet is in the midst of a mass extinction event, precipitated by human actions. In the last 50 years, nearly 75% of wildlife populations have declined. To save what’s left of nature, governments must follow through on their 2022 commitment to conserve 30% of the world’s land and sea by 2030, an initiative known as “30×30.”

The U.S. government must also reverse its short-sighted policies that are cutting research funds. Scientific inquiry, no matter how strange-sounding or unfamiliar, is rarely “wasteful” or “frivolous.” Federal funding for big, out-there ideas has led to breakthrough discoveries like mRNA vaccines. Often, the most transformational research begins with an unusual grant proposal, probably deemed too risky for private funding. When scientists are empowered to follow their curiosity, everyone benefits — but somebody has to be willing to take a chance on them. If we stop investing in medical research today, we forgo the life-saving discoveries of tomorrow.

Scientists, for their part, must open themselves up to new partnerships and perspectives. In remote corners of the world, communities possess tremendous knowledge of local flora and fauna, but few medical researchers from academia or the healthcare industry have ever bothered to ask them about it. Many of these communities are reasonably skeptical of outside researchers, who have been known to patent traditional remedies without compensating the original source of knowledge, a practice known as “biopiracy.” It’s long past time to bridge that gap — between science and tradition, Global North and Global South — and cooperate in a mutually beneficial way.

We all have something to learn from these communities, not just about healing, but about coexistence. This Earth Day, may we all resolve to admire the exquisite variety of life on this planet; meet the strange and fearsome with curiosity rather than revulsion; and remember that we are one small part of nature, rather than masters of it. All living things on this planet are connected, our fates all intertwined. Saving the world’s reptiles isn’t merely an act of altruism — it’s an act of self-preservation.

Neil M. Vora is a practicing physician, a senior advisor at Conservation International and the executive director of the Preventing Pandemics at the Source Coalition.

Reports that the White House may propose nearly a 50% cut to NASA’s Science Mission Directorate are both mind-boggling and, if true, nothing short of disastrous. To make those cuts happen — a total of $3.6 billion — NASA would have to close the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, and cancel the mission that will bring back samples of Mars, a mission to Venus and the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which is nearly ready to launch.

Every space telescope besides the Hubble and the James Webb would be shut down. According to the American Astronomical Society, some cuts would include projects that help us understand the sun’s effects on global communications, a potential national security threat.

Casey Dreier, the policy advocate for the Pasadena-based Planetary Society, says, “This is an extinction-level event for the Earth- and space-science communities, upending decades of work and tens of billions in taxpayers’ investment.”

In addition, NASA as a whole would see a 20% cut — just as we are moving forward with the Artemis program. Artemis is NASA’s step-by-step “Moon to Mars” human spaceflight campaign. Artemis II is set to launch sometime next year and will send four astronauts on a lunar fly-by, the first time humans have been in close proximity to another celestial body in more than 50 years. While it seems likely that Artemis will continue in some fashion, a 20% overall agency budget cut won’t leave any part of NASA unaffected.

The president promised a “golden age of America”; his nominee to head NASA promised a “golden age of science and discovery.” This would be a return to the dark ages.

Taking a blowtorch to space science would also have little effect on the federal budget while setting back American leadership in space — and the inspiration it provides across political divides — by generations.

The Astronomical Society warns that our cutbacks will outsource talent “to other countries that are increasing their investments in facilities and workforce development.” And, as Dreier points out, spacecraft would be “left to tumble aimlessly in space” and billions wasted that have already been spent. “Thousands of bright students across the country,” he wrote recently, “would be denied careers in science and engineering absent the fellowships and research funds to support them.”

Here’s the dollars-and-cents context. NASA’s budget since the 1970s “hovers” between 1% and 0.4% of the federal discretionary spending, according to the Planetary Society’s analysis, yet for every dollar spent, NASA generates $3 in the national economy. NASA’s giveback was worth nearly $76 billion in economic impact in 2023, supporting more than 300,000 jobs. In California alone, NASA and its associated partners in industry and academia provide more than 66,000 jobs, more than $18 billion in economic activity and $1 billion in state tax revenue. NASA’s bang-for-the-buck is astronomical, pun intended.

Cutting waste is one thing. Evisceration is another. When it comes to science — from public health to climate change — the current administration is doing the latter, not the former.

Meanwhile, China continues its space ambitions, with plans for a human lunar campaign and its own “sample return” mission to the Red Planet. For now, fortunately, the bipartisan support for NASA seems to be holding. Democrats and Republicans in Congress, led by the Planetary Science Caucus, have spoken out against this attack on NASA. And the Planetary Society has engaged thousands of passionate activists to fight this battle.

Humans yearn for connection to the universe — so we watch launches on social media, we follow the tracks of rovers on Mars and we marvel at creation in pictures transmitted from the James Webb Space Telescope. We borrow telescopes from the public library and look to the heavens.

Bending metal — the actual process of making rovers and spaceships and telescopes — drives economic activity. Fascinating results — the data from space science missions — fires the imagination.

We choose to go to space — sending humans and probes — and we pursue knowledge because curiosity is our evolutionary heritage. We explore other worlds to know them and, in doing so, we discover more about ourselves.

If you agree, let Congress know. That may be the only backstop against dumbly going where no budget has gone before.

Christopher Cokinos is a nature-and science writer whose most recent book is “Still as Bright: An Illuminating History of the Moon from Antiquity to Tomorrow.”