Halving the Worlds Populations

     The World Wildlife Fund released a statistic that everyone needs to see. Since 1970, the majority of the world's vertebrate populations have been cut in half. That's 50% gone. The main cause? Over fishing, hunting and poaching and habitat destruction are the reasons. And what, do you ask, is causing all of this? Do you really have to ask that?

Courtesy of and Copyright: WWF International

     Biodiversity is...
essential to maintain a stable Biosphere. Ecosystems rely on the diversity of their communities to prevent system collapse. The more variety in an eco-system, the less chance a disease or virus has of wiping out the entire eco system. Losing a few species of animal and plant in a system is not good, but with dozens of others to fill in the gaps, things should continue on without too much adjustment. Nature is resilient that way. But they are key species in said system that if lost, have a domino effect on the rest of the organisms living in the collection of communities that make up the eco-system. Nature rebounds and can handle things a lot of the time, as other spices can move up the chain and the system adjusts and continues on.

     What it cannot handle is the constant stress of losing species at a constant or accelerated rate. You see, animals and plants rely on each other. Plants emit oxygen, which animals (and humans) need to breathe. They in turn release CO2, which plants need to photosynthesize and produce more O2. Its a symbiotic relationship and one essential for life on this planet as we know it to continue. But, there is more to the cycle. Animal excrement provides the nutrients for plants and other animals to survive. Dead plants and animals provide more nutrients to the soil, and for fungi and other decomposers, as well as scavengers. This helps breakdown things to the basic nutrients that can be reused in the life cycle. Nothing is lost or gained. Everything is reused. The eco-system sustains itself. Hence the term "sustainability".  One species waste is another spices treasure.

     Once you start going in and removing species from an eco-system, it creates a gap in the cycle. With enough losses, an eco-system can collapse. It can take hundreds of years, if not longer, for a new system to find an equilibrium and be productive again. That is why biodiversity is so important, not only to nature, but to us. Reducing the amount of species in the world only makes us more susceptible to eco-collapse on a grand scale. Over-fishing the oceans, without giving them a chance to rebound, is asking for trouble. More then trouble...its asking for disaster.

     At the rate we are going, the human race is killing off the very thing it needs to survive. We are affecting the oxygen production we need from plants in order to breathe. We are killing the species that are the food for the species that we eat to proliferate. We are poisoning the very eco-systems that we live in, disrupting the nutrient cycle, the carbon cycle, the phosphorus cycle, the nitrogen cycle, the water cycle. We ARE having a negative impact on the planet we need to survive. And people continue to argue about whether science is right or just a bunch of malarkey. The "debate" continues while the proof washes up on our beaches and gets burned up in clear cutting.

Courtesy of Sodahead and D.C.

     You can read the WWF article below. Please share the link with everyone you know. We must act before we cut our noses off to spite our collective faces.

http://wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/all_publications/living_planet_report/living_planet_index2/

Dung Beetle Pic Courtesy:"Flightless Dung Beetle Circellium Bachuss, Addo Elephant National Park, South Africa" by Kay-africa - Own work. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Flightless_Dung_Beetle_Circellium_Bachuss,_Addo_Elephant_National_Park,_South_Africa.JPG#mediaviewer/File:Flightless_Dung_Beetle_Circellium_Bachuss,_Addo_Elephant_National_Park,_South_Africa.JPG