Cold-Hearted Arsonists

Slash and burn is a process that has been practiced all over the world for centuries. It consists in burning forests to gain space for whatever purpose, mostly to create fields for agriculture. If it wasn’t for the use of this process we, humans, would have never been able to feed ourselves as easily, but this is something that has got to stop. Slash and burn has been used more and more in areas of the globe such as South America (Amazon) or Africa, where “Madagascar has lost more than 80% of its forests”. Pollution rises, natural resources go to waste and more horrifyingly important: the loss of unique species (animal and vegetable) is irreparable. Breaking away from Africa about 165 million years ago, Madagascar has its own unique species that have been fighting against extinction ever since humans first arrived on the island, 2 thousand years ago, particularly the largest animals. “There have been five extinction waves in the planet’s history (…) the sample polling of animal populations so far suggests that we may have entered what will be the planet’s sixth great extinction wave. And this time the cause isn’t an errant asteroid or mega-volcanoes. It’s us.”

Quotations from TIME’s April 13, 2009 special environmental issue.

Image from WBUR.ORG

Extinction of species

(In the cartoon the person of the left worries about the future, the person of the right does not want to know about him future)/Otter/Iberian lynx 

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Some sorts of animals are in danger of extinction. The main reason is the destruction caused by the human race. Animal traffic is the third biggest business in world-wide underground crime, just after guns and drugs. In the last three hundred years we caused the mass extinction of more than a million different species. Nowadays, people have so busy lives that are left with little time to think about these worldwide problems. The extinction of species is probably one of the most important problems in our days, but few people think about it. Only the people that work in that area take special care with the subject, because they know what’s wrong and if they want to improve or even to resolve the problem, they change their habits, to give to the animals a higher life quality. When we see people in the zoo, laughing because the animals are funny, we think that we are in another world because we’re not used to see these animals. It’s because of this, that extinction problem loses importance. People don’t usually see these animals so they don’t care about their extinction. This idea has to be changed, if this problem continues too many animals will die and that could eventually lead to the extinction of the human race. We have to resolve quickly. This is a case of life or death. Can’t people imagine their future, if we do not change our habits?

Sources:

http://animaisdomundo.com.sapo.pt/index.html

http://www.cartoonstock.com/directory/h/human_destruction.asp

Posted by: Cristiano Alves, number 7