Civilization has rocked Earth’s foundations with countless reverberations throughout its wars and climbing levels of technological improvement. Some wilderness areas are still subscribing to the constant disruptive digging of mine shafts, plus global drilling of water and oil wells through the planet's no-longer sturdy crust. There is no mystery behind the increasing worldwide weather and geological disasters. Beneath, plates are shifting. On the surface, much of the world's finest natural resources have been removed, leaving barren sinks (ecologically low-quality habitats) or ecological traps (rapid and/or dramatic ecological changes that drive away life forms or prevent them from settling in) behind.
Wildlife Are Greatly At Risk
Governments and big business continue to attack and commandeer the little remaining safe wildlife habitat, removing their desperately needed resources at increasing rates. Human pride insists that the natural world must be changed into mankind’s images, regardless of the consequences—and they are many. Meteorologists blithely discuss “the butterfly effect”, an idea originating in A Sound of Thunder, Ray Bradbury’s 1952 time travel novel that opened up the endless Pandora’s Box possibilities if a time traveler altered the smallest fragment of the past. Edward Lorenz, meteorologist of “Chaos Theory” fame, later popularized the term for science fiction.
But sci-fi doesn’t help here, and there is no choice of going back in time to prevent the ecological disturbances already foisted upon the world. According to the 2008 Red List of threatened species of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), zoologists have logged over 5400 species extinct as of 2006, and 1,141 of the 5,487 mammals are critically endangered as of 2008. More than half of these are rodents, a required food source for most predators, yet a continuous target of man.
Plant Extinctions Seen Dramatically Increased
The number of plant extinctions is already staggering and scientists are collaborating in an emerging field of study call co-extinctions, meaning something becoming extinct if their host plants disappear.
A CBCNews.ca article of September 2004 entitled Extinct Plants, Animals, Threaten Loss of Thousands More, says that Canadian and U.S. scientists, along with researchers from Singapore, are investigating a list of 12,200 international plants and animals thought to be endangered for this reason alone. Loss of habitat remains the main reason for extinctions, but Biology professor Heather Proctor of the University of Alberta, Edmonton, stated an estimated 6,300 insects, beetles, mites, and fungi, might also not survive. Fifty-six species of butterflies are already known lost.
This Is Everyone’s Concern
As technology spreads, mankind's ability to wreak destruction multiplies. "Business as usual" is ignoring non-human lives on this planet. It is taking far too long for people to ‘get it’; everything runs on synergy. It is necessary for everyone in this current generation to become involved to restore or protect what is left of what previous generations have destroyed—because Planet Earth does not have limitless resources. The fix cannot be left to organizations, it must be grass roots.
It is not yet too late to make major reclamations of habitat for thousands of nearly extinct life forms and stop drowning the world in waste products from a lifestyle of throw-away convenience. If each person resolved to change just one careless environmental mindset or habit, and replace it with one positive one, it could create a major global impact. Edward Everett Hale, a clergyman, author, and man of great accomplishments, is remembered for his popular poem:
“I am only one, but still I am one.
I cannot do everything, but I can do something;
and because I cannot do everything,
I will not refuse to do the something I can do."
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Marie Thomas - Marie Thomas (RieT) is an author in multiple genres, with 18 years in technical writing, and freelance work in science, biographical, and ...
