It is amazing to see what happens when certain animals are (re)introduced into a habitat. I refer to a nice youtube video by Sustainable Human (http://sustainablehuman.me), titled “How Wolves Change Rivers”.
The video has had more than 12 million views and is nicely done. if you are interested, have a look at the video.
We look at an example where wolves change a complete habitat by chain reaction. However the underlying message is much more important and the effects are much wider than this video shows. We have to ask ourselves the question why the wolves disappeared in the first place…
Human killed than, for fur and out of fear they would attack cattle, sheep and people. So ultimately, the initial story went like this:
Man shot wolves, certain animal species started thriving due to the lack of natural enemies, animal patterns changed due to the wolves absence and ultimately the land changed.
What we see in this video is the reverse situation or somewhat like it.
The lesson learned from that is that mankind is actually the one that changes their habitat – on a daily basis. Certain species disappear, other species thrive and patterns change. It is a massive chain-reaction and we see the effect that our own species has on the planet. The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) has several articles about biodiversity and extinction. And climate change is a part of the whole impact humans are having on the planet. You believe that there is no man-made climate change? Well, I believe there are “natural” cycles, however facing a story of how some wolves change a complete habitat, can we really believe that 7 billion of us have hardly any impact in habitat alteration and climate change?
Now here's some troublesome thought: Habitat alteration goes apparently both ways. Ie Animals change habitat or the habitat changes the animals. We can see that happening with the spread of certain animals or plants as climate and habitat is changing.
When will the habitat alteration have an impact on us? You say it has already? I might expand on this thought, but not today.
