Human Consumption vs. Nature and Wild Life
Often time, climate change and global warming are only discussed in reference to humans and their world; however these factors are also having very negative effects on wildlife. In fact, about one-fourth of mammals are considered to be ‘threatened’, while the numbers are only slightly less in the case of birds, where more than a thousand different species are also considered to be threatened. This is a very severe and crucial situation, especially because thousands of species have not even been discovered or documented as of today! Unfortunately, we may lose some very precious creatures to our large consumption habits and to our lack of concern for our ecosystem.
Loss of habitat, rising temperatures and pollution, are playing the biggest factors in the reduction of wildlife. Sadly, our wildlife has been attempting to keep up with these changes by adjusting and evolving, however sometimes these adjustments do not get made in time and frequently many species’ numbers have become significantly less. The loss in numbers has also been affected by:
- the consumer lifestyle
- increase in waste and pollutants
- growing urban development
These effects are not far from home, for those who live in the United States. In fact, our coasts have met with a large decrease in the population of sea turtles that live along our shores. Unfortunately as beaches become more urbanized, there is less room for turtles to lay their eggs and a less of a chance that the baby turtles will get to make it to the ocean. This is mostly because baby turtles depend on the light of the moon to guide them to the ocean, and with all the lights that shine onto the beach, the turtles frequently lose their way and end up never making it. Regrettably this could be reversed if people paid a little more care to ensure that their lights faced down, and were placed at a location that could not threaten nesting turtles.
There are many other species that are suffering from unfortunate fates, similar to sea turtles. For example, polar bears are losing much of their habitat as temperatures rise and cause their habitat to ‘melt’ and shrink. Also, many bird species have had population decreases because of growing urbanization which has made it difficult for them to bear young successfully.
We at Starry Night Lights, encourage you to take these facts into consideration and to take whatever steps possible to improve this circumstance, in order to protect our planet and its many treasures.
This entry was posted on Friday, February 22nd, 2008 at 6:23 am and is filed under Starry Night Lights, Wildlife Lighting, environment, global warming, sea turtle friendly lighting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
One Response to “Human Consumption vs. Nature and Wild Life”
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February 23rd, 2008 at 9:31 pm
I had no idea the number of endangered mammals and birds was as so high, nor that such a tiny change (simply changing the direction of our lights) could make all the difference in the survival of a species. People, please think about the little things!