debidrogers@gmail Lee Giles Eighth Grade, All-In-One-Homeschool January 12, 2018 Are Animals Important to Us and Our Planet? The future of our planet relies on people understanding the role that animals play in human survival, and how the human footprint negatively affects animals and their habitats. We should protect our wildlife because they have such an important role in our planet s survival. They provide many things for us, like pollinators who pollinate our crops for us. Can you even imagine what the world would be like if we didn t have pollinators? I know that I can t. They also have possibly irreplaceable cures for cancer and other life threatening diseases. If we continue to pollute rivers and destroy forests, then we will eventually destroy our planet. The human footprint is a terrible thing that most people don t even realize that they are doing. Simply throwing away trash that will go into a landfill and poison the ground there because of the pollutants in the plastic, or driving somewhere in your carbon releasing car can increase your footprint. We have tried to get better at reducing our footprint, but it will take a lot more money, time and effort to do it effectively. Animals play a very important role in our world, and it would be impossible to replicate everything that they do for us. Imagine if we lived in space. The people who live and work in space right now have to create so many things that on Earth we just take for granted. Oxygen is something that plants produce, but my point here is for animals. Animals on earth are decomposers, and they take care of all of our dead animals and some of our trash (food wise). If we ever have humans live in space for an extended period of time, then we would have to create a system of decomposition for ourselves. If we ever farmed in space, we would have to take dirt from Earth. Animals contribute to our dirt by dying and then slowly decomposing. Without them then we would have to find a way to make our soil nutritious
enough for plants to grow. Also, we would have to find a way to pollinate plants ourselves, or bring bees or other pollinators into space. Another thing that we use now is medicines. Of the medicines currently available, about 50% are derived from natural products. At least 120 chemical compounds, derived from 90 plant and animals species, are important drugs currently in use in many countries around the world. 4 For example, components of viper venom are used to control blood pressure. These are just a few of the ways that animals are important to us. Another aspect of the role that animals play in human survival is that they feed us. It may seem like a kind of hypocritical idea in this context, but they are so important to us. They fed us for a very long time before we domesticated many animals. And if we overfish our oceans like we are right now, then we will be looking at a world that doesn t have any fish or animals in the wild. And in the ocean we will be left with a sea full of jellyfish. Yes, jellyfish are the survivors of the ocean. In Japan, China and South Korea the Nourma Jellyfish population has exploded, and it is stopping fishers from catching many fish. 2 And here we come across another thing that animals do for us, even though they die in the process, they provide many jobs for us, like fishing and building boats and fishing poles and such. Wild caught fish seem to be more precious to us simply because they have become harder and harder to find. There used to be so many fish that people thought that there was no end to the fish that they caught. Unfortunately, this is not the case. There are limits to what we can take out of the ocean, and many people haven t realized that. Unless we put some effort into saving the fish in our oceans, then we will eventually have an ocean that doesn t have any fish or other animals. People seem to fall into a mindset that we should only be saving animals that are already critically endangered. It is important to save the animals that are endangered already, but we will eventually be seeing a world filled with just a few animals in the wild, if we don t take the steps to ensure that the animals that are still in the wild survive. Salmon in their migratory route have been severely hindered in
the past few centuries, because of the dams and waterways that have been put into place in the past years. This has made their population drop severely. Though there have been efforts to restore them, it has been very hard to help them. The government has been trying to restore the salmon population, but they are discovering that it is much easier to protect a species than to restore them to their former glory.1 Environmentalist ideas may seem like a very recent development to you. But they have actually been a part of America since 1965, when the President s Science Advisory Committee warned President Lyndon Baines Johnson that we are returning to the air a significant part of the carbon that was slowly extracted by plants and buried in the sediments during half a billion years and that this may have a significant effect on the climate. The report foresaw melting polar ice caps, rising sea levels and warmer, more acidic oceans. It unfortunately took 27 years for us to do anything about it, but in 1992 the US finally decided to actually do something. President Bush signed and the Senate ratified the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, dedicating our world to returning our planet and its atmosphere back to the way it was, and trying to prevent more damage. Unfortunately, for the next 15 years, the US did nothing to protect our environment because the opposition to trying to protect our planet. Some said that climate change wasn t real, or that it wasn t worth the money that it was going to cost. By the time that people actually got over arguing, it was too late. What we had put into place was going to happen whether we liked it or not.2 Now we are still trying to save our animals, and our climate, but even if we never put another drop of carbon into the atmosphere, then our ice caps will still melt, and our climates will change. 5 This does not mean that we shouldn t even try to help our animals or to keep our ice caps from melting. It might take a ton of money to save our planet, but it would be worth it, because we would save the human race in the process. Without animals to support our ecosystem, then we would not have a working planet. That s just the truth.
The effect that the Human Footprint has on our planet is very important. The Human Footprint is a way that scientists measure the effect of humans to our planet.6 For example, consider carbon emissions. If you drive to work, on average your car emits 20 pounds of carbon dioxide per gallon. The average car emits 6 tons of carbon in its lifetime. That, multiplied by the average number of American citizens, is 195,795,612 tons of carbon dioxide, which is about 1,973,587 whales, by the way, emitted by the United States alone. What about China? Or India? We all have an effect on our planet. If you lose a candy wrapper when you re at the beach, then where does it go? It might end up in the stomach of a bird or fish. Or maybe it will end up in a trash patch. Or it might simply sink into the ocean floor and compost, but the chance of that happening is very low. Even if it did, then it would take years and years for it to decompose. If just 100 people did that, then it would be a trash heap on the ocean floor. And now we are back to the fish and marine animals eating trash. Let s just say that it is never a good idea to litter on a beach or anywhere really. In the Amazon and other forested places, the animals that live there are being threatened. By what, you ask. Cows! Surprise! Yes, it s really true. Our rainforests are being threatened by cows and other grazing animals that require lots of grass land. It may not seem like a big deal, I mean, we are just replacing animals with more animals, right? Actually, turning rainforests into grassland is really damaging to the environment. It drives out the plant eating creatures that used to live there, and that in turn drives out the animals that used to prey on those small animals. The farmers will also plant grass that is an invasive species to the rainforest, and depending on the plant, it can be very damaging. I am not saying that the farmers are the cause of deforestation. They are simply trying to do their jobs and earn some money. It is this ignorance that endangers our planet. If we all knew what we were doing to our planet every day, then we would no longer litter or say that trees do not matter. Another way that we are destroying our rainforests is the fracking and mining in the Amazon s Great Basin. The catastrophic mess that the great oil companies have left behind has damaged the rainforest and its people more than you can imagine,
yet the companies still say that they are going to continue taking more and more natural gases and oils that our planet cannot possibly dilute safely. Both of these reasons are taking their tolls on the rainforest. It has destroyed so much of the most diverse spot in the world.7 How could we let this happen? I cannot stress how much these animals are needed in our world. Even losing one species of fish or one little sloth species that didn t seem to matter, will matter eventually. Losing one species will affect our entire ecosystem. If, for example, we lose the bobcats that live here in America, then the animals that they eat, like rabbits and birds, will grow out of control, and the plants that they eat will become harder and harder to find. Then, the other animals that rely on those plants would die off, and then the animals that ate those animals would starve and die off too. It is a never ending circle of starvation and death for our plants, animals and fish unless we stop it. In conclusion, we should protect our wildlife, and try to reduce our footprint because of all these reasons.. The after effect of this may cause your children or grandchildren to live in a world that has only a couple places that animals will still run wild. In this world, we take so much for granted. I could tell you a hundred stories of endangered animals that I came across in my research. Like a rhino species that is so endangered that there are only four left. Or the story of the Great Auks that disappeared due to over hunting, both for the birds themselves and their beautiful eggs.3 Or the mountain Gorillas that are so majestic. Or the Pygmy Sloths that can fit in the palm of your hand and are limited to a small island in the Pacific. The world that our children inherit should not be devoid of animal and marine life.
Works Cited 1. Chris Martin Bhar Overview, The Human Footprint World Wildlife Fund, 2018 https://www.worldwildlife.org/threats/the-human-footprint. Print. 2. Wilcove, David S., No Way Home, Washington: Shearwater, Island Press, 2008 3. Fidenci, Pierre, Overview Endangered Animals International, 2011 http://www.endangeredspeciesinternational.org/overview4.html. Print. 4. Pooley, Eric, The Climate War, True Believers, Power Brokers, And The Fight to Save The Earth, New York: Hyperion, 2010 5. Thornhill, Jan, The Tragic Tale of the Great Auk, Toronto, Groundwood Books, 2016 6. Kurlansky, Mark, World Without Fish, New York, Workman Publishing, 2011 7. Klein, Naomi, This Changes Everything, New York, Simon and Schuster, 2014