Preventing Population Suicide

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Preventing Population Suicide In the 1700’s a group of Dutch sailors came across an island about fifteen hundred miles off the coast of Chile which had about 3,000 native inhabitants. Being a subtropical climate, Easter Island was supposed to be covered in tropical forests with bountiful palm trees and vibrant green shrubbery; however, the Dutch explorers were surprised to find starving natives, barren grasslands with no trees, eroded soil, and minimal native animal species. Around 1200 AD the Polynesian natives had begun to populate the tropical paradise of Easter Island and in a mere 300 to 400 years, the island’s natural habitat had been destroyed. Recent research unveiled by Terry Hunt of Hawaii University, indicates that at the start of the Polynesian colonization, an invasive species of rats had been brought to the Island that fed on the seeds of the tropical Palm trees. The inhabitants cut down the trees to build canoes and spiritual statues at a sustainable rate but, with the rat population at twenty million on a sixteen mile long island, the trees could not reproduce effectively. In turn, the tree loss prevented the construction of canoes for fishing so the natives hunted down the entire land bird population and begun the struggle for survival. The introduction of an invasive species, alone, caused the indigenous of Easter Island to face starvation. Today it isn’t just an island of people that face extinction; it is the entire world population that’s nearing its downfall and, we are struggling with a myriad of factors contributing to environmental degradation. The poison from the dart frog of the Peruvian rainforest contains a chemical that is the basis for a compound that is vital for the process of transplanting human organs. Another essential contribution the natural environment gives to the world is oxygen production and atmospheric recycling. The

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