Morris Cuomo: I don't know about 5 examples but basically when human population increases, naturally resource consumption increases. As people need more land, food, clean water, fuel, etc and they put out more waste and pollution biodiversity is decreased. So if a thriving wetland is replaced by a new suburb, all of the animals and plants that lived there before die. Many plants and animals are killed directly by bulldozing their habitat, but the effects are much more widespread and indirect. Not only are the wetlands gone, but maybe downstream from the new devlopment other habitats are polluted by wastewater and pollution from the new housing development. One common theme in conservation is the limiting of development in areas where a species is rare or endangered.Some people will argue against conservation saying, "Are you going to make the lives of the red-brown dung beetle more important than the lives of humans?" Those people miss the point in that maybe the dun! g beetle itself is of limited importance by itself in this world, but all things in nature are interrelated. That species of beetle dies, then maybe the birds that fed by eating them also suffer. Maybe the beetles ate a special kind of weed, thus protecting some sort of important plant which houses other species. I'm not a biologist so all of this is just examples thrown out in the air.Finally, population itself doen not have to increase for there to be a ligger demand on the environment. Currently, several BILLION people in India and China who previously lived with little or no electricity, running water, etc all have come to the realization that they too want to live like Americans. And they want to drive cars and watch big TVs and live in a large house and eat 5 times more food than they have been. If every person on earth used the same resources as the average American, the world would very quickly run our of everything. I hope this is helpful in some way....Show ! more
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