Challenge #03067-H159: Take Only Pictures...

Animals go extinct constantly on Earth due to habitat loss and human misuse of the lands and animal stocks. Thanks to the paradox of time, and good ships, they came since the earliest era, and animals being driven to extinction due to human actions were collected and taken to pristine worlds where they could thrive, being careful to introduce the animals in a way that didn't harm, or alter, the local ecology, but rather where the animals could integrate into the ecological system smoothly, so that what was there was not harmed. It was a delicate balancing act done out of love. Animals as small as tiny as the bee hummingbird all the way up to massive mammoths. As quirky as dodo's, to as frightening as tasmanian tigers. And many aquatic creatures as well. Animals from deregger worlds, in similar straights, were also rescued and taken to such sanctuaries to save their species as well. All of these sanctuaries, of course, were in Alliance space.

The deregger ship found these worlds and found many of the animals from their worlds, which had been hunted into extinction for their feathers, fur, and other items which made them insanely valuable for trade in deregger space, but was thwarted by those that guarded the systems. But the dereggers would not go away quietly. -- DaniAndShali

[AN: Not quite an Amalgam story. I engineered things in my pet universe so that time travel is plausible but also functionally useless. It involves FTL travel and relativistic temporal shenanigans, so by the time you get to the era you want, you're too far away to do things. So... not my usual universe.]

There's strange engineered worlds all over the galaxy. Call them... snapshot worlds. They are copies, of a sort. Echoes of another world. Kept by unknown forces known only to others as... the Preservers.

They've never been seen. Their primary goal is twofold - maintain species diversity, and maintain discretion. If any encounters are recorded, it is highly dubious that they are true or factual. Despite the large number of Human accounts to the contrary, there's no evidence at all to support the fact that Humans are at all of interest to the Preservers.

Given Human predilections towards accepting the universe as their automatic property, it's no great effort to figure out why. Thusly, Preserver sanctuaries are amazing example of what the Earth could have been like if there weren't any Humans there to mess things up.

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