Species Displacement in the World

There are many environmental problems in the world today, all of which have serious impacts upon the complicated natural ecosystems and even among the humans who have caused the problems. Although there are a wide variety of environmental crises to choose from, one of the most important and devastating is the loss of forest land and the modification of naturally occurring environments. This is happening all across the globe, ranging in severity from areas of the rainforest being destroyed at a rapid rate to a section of trees being cut down in your own neighborhood in order to make room for a new housing development. Both have long lasting consequences and neither can keep happening at this rate without causing an array of serious issues. Large scale deforestation has been going on for centuries all across the globe.

Any developing civilization will eventually need to modify their surroundings in order to meet their needs, whether it be through leveling a plot of trees or building structures that interfere with natural habitats. Doing so has great benefits for the people of the society, however, it can be detrimental to the natural inhabitants. Doing these modifications to the environment often times takes away the area that these animals were living in, displacing these animals into other areas, possibly forcing them into a habitat that they were not originally part of. If the animals do not move then the problem of animals wandering into cities or towns, causing dangerous conditions for the people living there. An example of this would be the massive bear problem faced by the residents of New Jersey. New Jersey has highly urbanized and densely populated areas in their cities and towns.

Since 1970 the bear population has swollen to over 3,600 which has caused problems with bears wandering into the cities because the bears have no other place to go. Because of this the government of New Jersey has to find a way to deal with the bear population that could include hunting them, using birth control methods, or moving the bears. On a larger scale, the same thing is happening with the rainforests in South America and all over the world. The people who live in the region rely on the rainforest to support themselves through practices such as logging. Because of the unsustainable methods that are being used to cut down trees in the rainforest, vast quantities of the forest have been eradicated in turn causing the species that live there to either relocate or, if they cannot relocate, go extinct.

This is a massive problem because the rainforests are some of the most biologically diverse areas on Earth. Because it is not known exactly how many species there are living in the rainforests of the world it is hard to tell how many species have gone extinct due to human activity, however, some studies suggest that the number is between 4000 and 6000 species going extinct annually. Finding a solution to this problem while keeping in mind our ever-growing population is a monumental task and any solution will not be perfect. One solution that would save ecosystems from total destruction would be instead of building housing developments where the entire sections of land are eradicated and all the species that resided there are displaces, houses could be built across a larger area, spread out in order to leave certain parts of the original habitat intact between houses. This would mean that new homes would still be built, providing a positive aspect for humans, and less species would be displaced, providing a positive aspect for the ecosystem. In larger cities the amount of park lands could be implemented in order to provide a larger area for naturally occurring species to reside in the heavily industrialized areas.

Although these solutions are not perfect, they provide a better situation for the species that are being displaced at an alarming rate in today’s society. Sources: “Estimation of Species Exctinction.” Rainforest Conservation Fund. N.p., 2015.

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