Stugazine

Today, Habitat loss is possibly the greatest threat to the natural world. It has been estimated that by 2032, 70% of earth’s surface will have been destroyed or disturbe by cities, roads, mines, and other infrastructures of human civilization. A great majority of this habitat loss and degradation is caused by human activity. For example, deforestation is a particular concern because tropical rainforests are home to the world’s biodiversity. Biodiversity is important because greater species diversity ensure natural sustainability for all life forms including humans. The more mankind destroys habitats, the less species diversity there will be. In other words destroying the habitats of other species, we are destroying ourselves. In this article we will discuss about various facts and figures, causes and how the average person can help halt habitat loss and degradation.

Ants:

If you’ve ever eaten outside, you’ve probably had at least one unwelcome encounter with ants. Or, accidentally stepped on a fire ant hill. However, as pesky as these insects are, they’re vital to our existence. Ants aerate soil and recycle nutrients by digging tunnels, which also aids in decomposition. In fact, ants turn up more soil than earthworms. Therefore they play a major role in keeping soil healthy enough to facilitate plant growth.

By digging around in the ground, ants also reduce the need of chemical fertilizers and irrigation. They aren’t just vital for helping staple crops thrive – if you love coffee or chocolate, thank ants, because they have proven to be essential to the production of both. In addition to rummaging around in the dirt, different ant species perform various other important duties. Some ants transport seeds to nutrient-rich nests – an activity that spreads seeds and in turn helps plant life thrive. Many ants enjoy eating far peskier creatures than themselves, including bed bug eggs, fleas, larvae, flies, and even some deadly parasites and insects that spread disease to humans.

If ant went extinct, the most people wouldn’t notice for first week or so, but the scientific community would be in a panic. To the layperson, an increased presence of spiders would be one of the first noticeable effects. Soon after that, birds that normally eat ants would begin competing each other and with spiders over alternative food sources. Because ants are near the base of the food chain, an inevitable chain effect would ensue, ultimately leaving very few species unaffected. Humans would suffer greatly due to failed crops, because without ants, most soil would not be healthy enough for cultivation. Food prices would skyrocket and there would be a global food shortage, and because of these factors, rioting and violence would likely become commonplace. Effects such as these would arguably constitute the mere beginning of a world without ants.

Bats:

One in every five wild mammals is a bat, and they’re one of the biggest consumers of insects on the planet. Just by doing what they do, bats help to keep insect populations under control, and without them, there would be a lot more bugs. Bats benefit farmers enormously by reducing the need for chemical pesticides and by saving billions of dollars of crops annually.

Frogs:

Whether you love them or hate them, frogs deserve some credit for their role as bio-indicators. This means that they are useful for indicating the health of their ecosystem. A frog’s porous and permeable skin allows substances in its environment to seep into its fatty tissue. Because frogs live both in water and on land, they help bring attention to contaminants in terrestrial and aquatic habitats. They are often the first animal to respond to biological hazards, therefore cautioning humans about nearby dangers and giving us more time to react. Evelyn S.Gonzalez of florida international university pointed out in a May 2017 article for Phys.org that 30% of the Earth’s frog species are at risk of extinction. In addition to frogs being bio-indicators, she noted several other reasons they are worth saving. For one, the extinction of pretty much any species is bound to disrupt an ecosystem on some level, and frogs play especially important roles in their ecosystem. Frogs also eats insects, including disease-spreading mosquitoes, which helps to keep these populations under control. Many animals eat frogs, including birds, fish, monkeys and snakes.

Honey Bee:

Honey is delicious, but that’s not why humans need honeybees. These hardworking insects are critical to sustaining life on Earth because of pollination, which is the transfer of pollen from the male part of a flower, the anther, to the Female part, the stigma. By pollinating plants that can’t pollinating themselves or achieve it some other way, honeybees enable seeds, nuts, and fruits to grow. Much of the earths plant life depends on this invaluable service that honeybees happily provide free of charge.

Honeybees are extremely efficient when it comes to getting the job done, because they focus on one particular plant species at a time, which ensures the adequate distribution of pollen. There are around 100 crop species that feed 90% of the global population and 70 of these crops rely directly on honeybees for pollination. Without honeybees, many plants would go extinct, and one third of our plant based staple foods would no longer available, including broccoli, pumpkins, blueberries, almonds and apples. Since the late 1990’s, conservationists have become increasingly concerned about the potential disappearance of honeybees and for good reason. The planet is losing honey bees at an alarming rate due primarily to factors related to human activity.

Importants of large Animals (Pandas, Elephants, Orangutans….)

Let us take Elephant as our example here, Elephants are the largest mammals in Asia and Africa and because of this they play a really unique and often irreplaceable role in their ecosystem and we know the Asian elephant better let’s look specifically at the Asian elephant. Elephant’s footprints can fill with water during rain and this helps other small animals to access the scares resources at the same time these actions create micro habitats for lots of other creatures like frogs which can lay eggs in the water. And really a single elephant footprint can eventually turn into a miniature worldfull of life.

And because of their size and strength elephants make short work of large fruits with shells that are difficult to crack and other animals benefit from the fruits that drop on the ground as the elephants are foraging. And finally the plants themselves benefit because elephants are gardeners so without these elephants doing their thing in the environment a lot of these small animals would not survive.

Human induced threats

As the world population has grown from 1.5 billion in 1900 to nearly 7.5 billion people today, unsurprisingly the land use has changed. Habitats have been destroyed in favor of agriculture, forestry, fishing, urbanization and manufacturing.

Humans historically exploit plant and animal species for short-term profit. If a resource is profitable, we develop more efficient methods of harvesting it, inevitably depleting the resource. As is currently happening with fishing and logging. The exploited species then needs protection. The difficulty is that the demand then outstrips the supply, and so the resource value rises. This increases the incentive to extract the resource and leads to the final collapse of the population. As happened with whales, elephants, spotted cats, cod, tuna and many more species.

Human activities are polluting the air and water. Toxic discharge into the water from industrial processes unsurprisingly has a negative effect on the local aquatic species by killing, weakening or affecting their ability to reproduce. Phosphorous and nitrogen in fertilisers run-off agricultural fields and pass into rivers. These surplus nutrients cause algae to bloom, which then starves other aquatic species of oxygen and light, causing them to die.

Acid rain is one consequence of humans polluting the air. This causes lakes and water bodies to become more acidic, killing off fish, mollusks, amphibians and many other species.

Huge impact humans have had on planet Earth is the introduction of alien species to habitats. In fact, it is estimated that on any given day there are 3000 species in transit aboard ocean-going vessels! Alien species can cause problems in a number of ways.