Oh worlds~

Biodiversity? What in the world is that? Well, think of what the words ‘bio’ and ‘diversity’ mean. Bio, meaning living things, and diversity, basically meaning different or a variety. Biodiversity, to put in simple, is the variety of living things.

Biodiversity is a word that not many people would care about in the real world, where most go on and live for themselves and their family. But in true reality, biodiversity is not just a word, but it is a system that controls nature and affects not only us, but everything living thing around you. Yes, this includes us, too. When you’re generalizing how our ecosystems work, most just factor in the pros and cons of humans, not many sit and think, ‘hey, what about the other living things here like plants, mosses, animals, fish etc.’. But as a Biology student, it’s come to my attention that even the littlest things can affect many, many different types of species.

For an example, an endangered species in Ontario, the small-mouthed salamander; its habitat is being destroyed and altered so much that it can’t adapt to the new surroundings. The small-mouthed salamander can be found in the Peelee Island in Canada, and is found to breed during the spring in and along streams, temporary pools and flooded ditches. When it is not breeding, the Small-mouthed Salamander can be found living from moist areas mixed with pines and deciduous forests to tall grass. The Small-mouthed Salamander is endangered because we humans decide we can just destroy forests, thinking that they are only plants and trees, but they’re also living things with a various amount of species using that particular forest as their home. As humans cut down the trees, the canopy that covers temporary pools of water, where the Salamander breed, is being dried up way too quickly.

Range map of Ontario where the Small-mouthed Salamander can be found..

When we’re using a piece of paper, think about what nature has gone through, just to get you to that one piece of paper. You’ve got machines, machines that tear down trees to first make a path or a road if you will to get to more trees. While tearing down a path for trees, that machine is also tearing down many species homes! Altering them dramatically. As they tear down more trees to cut down, they are creating wide spaces that may have been needed as breeding grounds for another variety of species.

When you think of salamanders, you say, 'hey, what the heck do they do for US anyways?!' Hmmm, well, for one thing, they might not be helping us DIRECTLY, but indirectly. They help us keep the number of ‘pests’ down such as worms and slugs, but more importantly, they are the prey for bigger animals, in which those are prey for bigger animals and so on, and in time, one of those predators may be one of our prey, it’s the circle of life, just as with any other animal.

It’s quite sad, actually. Do you know how much it’s affecting the poor animals? From firsthand experience, I’ve seen too many animals running across the streets at night when they belong in the forests, hidden in the night, not going across main streets, behind houses! It’s quite a scary thought, but then again, I guess they’re trying to tell us something then, huh? Something among the lines of “HEY, you get to take over our homes, our surroundings, and ruin our lives, so why can’t we sleep in your backyard and eat your leftovers that you so kindly leave out?’ Hah, yeah, that’s exactly what they’re trying to say to us.

So stewards of this world, let me think. NO, not really. No, not at all! We’re ‘trying’ to reverse our actions, but I’m kind of thinking it’s worsening it. How many green bins did they have to make so that WE ourselves can be green, hmm? Tons and tons and toooooons of them, that’s a lot of plastic! We are reusing them, I guess…. The human population can be really stupid at times, but I guess God will spare us since it’s out of our ‘good and repenting’ souls. It's good that we're trying to reverse the effects of our doings for the past whatever years, but obviously it's not enough...

References:

http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/accounts/information/Ambystoma_texanum.html

http://www.rom.on.ca/ontario/risk.php?doc_type=fact&id=92&lang=en http://cfs.nrcan.gc.ca/subsite/glfc-amphibians/ambystoma-texanum http://www.mnr.gov.on.ca/en/Business/Species/2ColumnSubPage/276504.html

Picture sources:

http://www.rom.on.ca/ontario/risk.php?doc_type=map&id=92

http://cfs.nrcan.gc.ca/images/7139

http://www.maniacworld.com/wood-chopper-from-hell.jpg

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