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The world we live on is a beautiful place. Sparkling oceans give way to shimmering, rolling deserts, while lush forests change to enormous mountain ranges. Due to our choices as the human race, this beauty is rapidly diminishing. Deforestation, habitat destruction, poaching and general disrespect towards our environment threaten this wondrous place we call Earth.
The Earth is in Trouble, with a capital T. In direct correlation of poor human decisions, precious species are rapidly diminishing across the globe. Because of habitat destruction around the globe, more and more plants, animals, and insects are becoming endangered or extinct. Hundreds of acres of precious rainforest are being clear-cut and burned to make way for livestock grazing and crop farming. Without direct action in these areas, soon our Earth will be a wasteland.
Have you ever heard of the Philippine eagle, or the giant otter? Pretty soon, you will only be able to see or learn about them in books. Giant otters, for example, once thrived throughout the Amazonian rain forests and down through Brazil's Pantanal, the world's largest wetland. Today, they are only found in the most remote backwaters of South America. Excessive hunting for their amazing fur, second only to severe habitat loss, has reduced their numbers to an estimated 2,000 to 5,000 in the wild. The largest threat to giant otters is habitat loss from human settlement and pollution. Protecting giant otters requires securing their food supply, which is a wide selection of fish, from piranhas to flatfish. The fish stocks of the Pantanal are massively pressured by habitat destruction and over fishing.
In the rainforest, the soil is nutrient poor, unlike the farmland of the Midwestern plains of North America. Almost all of the nutrients are in the living trees and foliage that grows from trees. When farmers clear-cut, remove, and burn trees and foliage for livestock grazing and crop farming in the rainforests, almost...