Will Griffiths-Smith

Hello dear board members, I would like to ask you a question. How much do you enjoy the destruction of our planet? As I assume no one here enjoys such things, neither does the wildlife losing their home. From the year 2000, we have lost 7.7 million hectares of natural habitats. There are multiple types of habitat loss, each causing their own unique problems. Furthermore, each type has their own reasons to how they came about; fortunately there are ways to prevent any type of habitat loss from occurring . As long as we can all contribute, we may even be able to revert habitat loss as a whole.

As to the different types of habitat loss, you could break it up into a variety of different categories, but they generally all fall into three main categories: habitat destruction, habitat degradation, and habitat fragmentation. Each of these three categories has some main causes worsening each of them and ultimately causing the destruction of our beautiful natural planet. As to what each of them are, they are quite simple to explain. 

Habitat destruction is quite simple being the destruction of habit by causes such as chopping trees down, or flattening land for space to build. Habitat degradation is making a habitat uninhabitable through means of pollution or introduction of invasive or foreign species. Lastly habitat fragmentation is the dividing of habitats for purposes such as agricultural transportation or creation of new roads or highways. 

The worst part of it all is these issues were caused by our previous generation, and the one before that, and the one before that. We may continue to worsen it but that is by the lead of the older generation. Thankfully we can minimize, or dare I say eradicate the issue such issue by finding the root cause of the issue. But how could we possibly do that?

Well its actually quite simple, everything can be boiled down to a singular point. Human interaction, without us the planet is really good at self sustainability, dare I say perfect at it. But obviously we can't just stop that can we now? What we can do is identify our biggest issues and work our way down from there. Thankfully we do know as much, unfortunately it is destruction of habitat. In 1937 we had 66% of wildlife and habitat left, as of 2020 we only have 35% left. But habitat destruction destruction could fall under many things, so lets break it down . One of the obvious causes is the clearing and flattening of land for cultivation and creation of buildings and cities. Even within that within that there are more other smaller issues being created, trees are being chopped down, land is being turned up through excavation, the equipment in use is creating pollution in the surrounding areas, and animals are being driven out of their homes entering other habitats and becoming invasive species. Of course I could go into great depth about each of those issues but I use you've already had a great sleep. So how can we help to prevent them from ever occurring?

There are organizations that are trying to repair and revert the damage we have caused to our ecosystem. Some more notable ones are WWF, ACF, and Cool Earth. But what can we do to help, we can use greener or less electricity, only drive when needed to, and even simple composting.

All in all, it is up to you to help and no one else can cover you.