Saturday, September 26, 2009

What have we done?

Take a look at this picture. This is a sad reality for most of the species on earth nowadays.



Over the years, humans have slowly impacted our environment and its species
As our world moves forward; creating new and innovative ideas that bring convenience to ourselves we are oblivious to the negative impact it has on biodiversity. Human activities are held largely responsible for our ever changing environment as well as the threatened species in it. From cutting down trees to over fishing, we are only risking the well being of our environment.

Although we've come far to get at this point, we've effected the earth more negatively than we'd have liked. Human activities such as fishing and agriculture have affected the ecosystem through the damage of their habitats. Face it or not- we're all guilty of contributing some kind of harm towards one specie or another. Human activities such as hunting and forestry are only a few factors to the reason why we have a threatened ecosystem.

As you've noticed, there has been a huge growth of human population over some time now.So you're asking yourself, how did this disaster come to be? Well, it started with the increase in the human population. The need for resources such as food and lumber increased in exchange for our survival. However, with the booming businesses of fishing and lumber industries, our biodiversity was left to suffer due to the increasing demand of resources from humans.

Along the way, habitats have been destroyed because of our invasive ways. Species such as deers have been forced to adapt to different habitats because of the on going transformation of their surroundings. Without their proper habitats, maintaining a healthy environment for them to produce actively decreases along with the resources available for them to sustain life. The lack of these essential eventually lead to the extinction of a variety of species. According to the World Conservation Monitoring center, the highest cause of animal extinction is due to Habitat Destruction



Aside from human population and habitat destruction being factors to our threatened biodiversity, activities such as hunting have caused a disruption to our ecosystem. The disturbing part of this is the fact that the majority of hunting is done illegally, also known as poaching. Over hunting has led to the extinction of many species, these vast majority of extinct species then create the domino effect, which occurs when the food chain is derailed and all of its involved organism are affected.


By now i think that most organism on this earth look to us as their mortal enemy, the people who bring darkness and despair to their lives- if we were stewards of the world I doubt we would even be in this mess!

The whole ecosystem is affected by one another, when human population increases, the need for resources also increases to suit our needs. When there are more of us, the more accommodation is needed for us to sustain our survival on earth, but we are oblivious to the harm we bring to the rest of the species we live with. The majority of the re-occurring issues we face today that involves biodiversity can simply be blamed on humans. We are, in my opinion, the most intellectual beings on this earth, with such power I think that we have the potential to serve it with the dignity it needs.

Sources

http://canadianbiodiversity.mcgill.ca/english/conservation/activities.htm
http://www.usaid.gov/our_work/environment/forestry/
http://www.fathom.com/course/21701785/session2.html
http://earthtrends.wri.org/updates/node/310http://images.google.ca/images?gbv=2&hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&sa=1&q=endangered+polar+bears&btnG=Search+images&aq=5&oq=endangered+&start=0

Blogs I commented on:

Tammy Nguyen: http://tammy-bioblogtingz.blogspot.com/
Priscilla Chen:http://priscillasbioblog.blogspot.com/

5 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. Hey Angela! I agree with your points about the negative effects towards the biodiversity of our ecosystems. Your examples really show how we are slowly destroying our world. I think you could've expanded on some of your examples, but overall it was very good and well presented.


    MY URL:
    http://caseyabasiscool.blogspot.com/

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  3. Angela, I completely agree with your point of view. The human poulation has indeed effected the Earth more negatively than we would have liked. I liked how you expanded on the chain effect- and explained clearly how the increased human population has a large impact on the environment. The section in which explained how animals must find humans as their mortal enemny quite humourous. I totally agree! Many people these day's do not care at all for the other animals in the world. We are taking much for granted, when we shouldn't. The extinction of animals should signal the human population that our actions do have a consequence. Although the consrequence will not effetc us directly immedietly, time will come where humans will regret their actions. We should think about our chilren, and the kind of world that we want them to live in. Parents would never provide their children a home in a trash site, would they?

    "We are, in my opinion, the most intellectual beings on this earth, with such power I think that we have the potential to serve it with the dignity it needs" I espiecially like how you concluded your blog. Your insights are very interesting, and it was a pleasure reading your work.

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  4. Hey Angela! I like your blog. It is very simple but it is still very informative. Your blog was very.. "blog-like" as you incorporated your research notes into your owns words and even own opinions. I agree that the growth of human population has caused extinction of other species because we demand more and we are guilty of this. Keep up the good work! <3

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  5. "By now i think that most organism on this earth look to us as their mortal enemy" I couldn't agree more. It is all fine and dandy that we have so much at our fingertips (wood, oil, metals, minerals, meat from animals, land, etc.) but when we overuse these resources and take it all for granted-- that's where we should draw a line. As the saying goes, we should take everything in moderation - including harvesting the resources from our planet earth.

    Thanks for the great insight into the topic & the sad picture + smart graphs. I feel really bad because we're horrible at caring for the world. It's time for ACTION!

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