A Plea For Help

 

Today I’m writing to ask for your assistance in a crucial cause.

The world we know and love, our everyday life, and the lives of the creatures, plants, oceans, and streams of the planet are in dire need of a savior. You can be that savior for our planet.

Humans are the cause for a massive amount of turbulence in the world, it doesn’t take an eagle eye to notice that.

Industrial expansion and out-of-control population growth are driving our ever-growing theft of vital resources our blue sphere has to offer. These resources are depleting and because of that, we’re seeing more and more losses of biodiversity in the world around us.

Biodiversity, as I’m sure you’re aware, is classified a few ways but the generic classification is described as the number of species on Earth or within an area, the genetic variation within all these species, and the different habitats available across the entirety of the globe. Currently, due to human activity, we’re seeing losses in biodiversity across the board.

Studies show that over the last 500 years, humans are responsible for the termination and extinction of more than 800 animal and plant species. Throughout history, whenever humans come in contact with large vertebrated animals, known as Megafauna, the extinction rates of these megafauna rise considerably. Evidence of this include, but are not limited to, saber-toothed cats, mammoths, and the dire wolves of North America, as well as, giant wombats, many lizards, and several flightless birds in Australia. Overhunting and loss of land due to humans caused these extinctions.

Habitat destruction is the major contributor to the rising loss of biodiversity today.

Humans have a massive footprint on our planet. We take the natural world around us and destroy it in order to better fit our needs. This shortsighted behavior has caused the loss of natural habitats for many plants and animals, including Keystone animals such as bald eagles and bees. These important habitats become ranches or grazing lands, roads or buildings, or simply empty fields that were once forest but have had all their trees harvested for the timber industry.

Without biodiversity in our world, humans face a dire future.

Things like pollination, renewal of soil fertility, flood control, oxygen production, and of course, water purification all happen thanks exclusively to biodiversity. Without animals like bees to help spread pollen from plants, trees and other plants to process rainwater, as well as plants and algae that use decomposition and respiration to pump out our invariably important oxygen, humans will cease to exist.

Our world is connected and the loss of biodiversity doesn’t simply affect the animals and plants in that ecosystem. It affects us all as one living planet.

Now, of course, extinction is not rare, but this kind of loss and extinction is truly unprecedented. Past mass extinctions were caused by natural disasters or “acts of God” as some might put it. These were events like meteor strikes or colossus volcanic eruptions or series of eruptions (called Flood Basalts). These events, while also tragic, were natural and controlled by nature. 

What we’re witnessing today is completely different. We’re seeing entire species of plants and animals dying at rates far higher than the rates at which we have seen in these past horrific events. In fact, conservative rates see the estimates of current species extinction set at 100-1000 times higher than any past extinction event.

We’re currently causing and living in the sixth mass extinction event. If we don’t act now, we’ll be caught in this extinction and be the cause of our own demise.

Conservation is key to helping slow down this extinction event and (hopefully) help heal our planet back to a healthy state where we’re able to live and thrive in a rich and fully biodiverse world.