I know this might not come as a shocker to many people out there, but our planet is changing. Climate is getting warmer, droughts are becoming frequent, and the oceans are continuing to rise. However I don’t think people are begining to grasp the concept that our home is changing. Mainly because of us. Endangered species, deforestation, coral bleaching (go look it up), and much more incidents are our doing. There was a point in time that people considered nature as a thing of beauty, and had to be taken care of. However, that was centuries ago and the human race has made many strides to conquer nature and mold it into a man-made realm.
Unfortunately, this has many effects to the creatures here on this beautiful green earth. Due to extreme poaching, not only some species of elephants are becoming extinct, but losing their tusks. According to the Independent, 98 percent of female elephants have no tusks, and an increasing number are being born tuskless because of constant poaching. This is artificial selection in its finest, a forced evolution in which cripples the elephant.
In the sea it gets uglier. Because of environmental ruin, the coral reefs are dying out. In Australia, bleaching caused by warmer water has killed around 67% of the coral, and this might take a good 15 years for it all to regrow according to CNN. You may not care, but this proves to be a problem for sea life, including Dory and her friends. Australia isn’t the only place that is struggling, but also Africa’s reefs. There’s a certain creature called an Abalone, which helps out Africa’s coral reefs. However, due to over hunting, the Abalone are becoming scarce and as a result, the reefs are dying. However, that’s not the craziest story I’m going to tell you. According to Australian scientist, pollution may have triggered turtles getting an outbreak of herpes. Now it isn’t an exact culprit, but scientist have made speculations that some recent pollution is altering the sea turtles of a certain location.
Now I’m usually not the one to sound like a zealous fanboy of PETA or EPA (nor do I tend to), but this is really getting outrageous. Maybe it is because I love elephants or I give a gosh darn about turtles, but something bugs me when we know these facts and yet no one seems to be doing anything about it. I’m not talking about conservationists or scientists who are doing their best to help out, but rather us, the modern people. Whether you admit it or not, we do go a little overboard with pollution and poaching things to death. Back then it was an excuse, considering that hunters and poachers didn’t know that over hunting could destroy an entire species, and the environment around it. However, this is a modern era in which we should know right from wrong. Isn’t it up to us to at least clean up after ourselves and help out our awesome planet?
