Connection between Human population growth and over hunting

It is no surprise that world population is rapidly growing. What does come as a surprise is the connection between our population explosion, and the diminishing numbers of endangered animals.
As our population grows, other environmental problems become apparent. As we search for more land, we devestate the forests and other habitats that many animals, including those who are endangered, inhabit. This can be seen in many different forms and different places. The forests of the Amazon are one such example. The monkeys that live in the trees are having to search for homes elsewhere, due to the deforestation.
Poverty levels in developing countries also have a major impact on the animal population. Most animals that are endangered have attributes that makes them targets for hunters, like the rhino has a valuable horn, and sea turtle eggs fetch high prices on the black market. For people who have no other option, hunting an endangered animal is a price worth paying to feed their own family.
In order to solve the situation with the endangered animals, humans need to focus not only on the staggering population rise, but the huge gap between the rich and the poverty stricken.

http://www.populationconnection.org/site/DocServer/Poaching.pdf?docID=150

Overpopulation!!

With each new year passing the world's population is increasing and the fear of overpopulation continues to worry the people of todays society. By 2050 China is predicted to no longer be the largest populated country in the world. With the world's population increasing the question still remains on if our world natural resources will be able to provide for the amount of people expecting to expand within years. Although some do not believe that the growing of years will have in impact on the worlds population, there is still conflict on whether or not the people will be able to survive off the resources that will remain for generations of use. Some say that because "nothing ever continues at a present rate" that their is no reason to worry about overpopulation. I think that there should be great fear of overpopulation, because the world is continuing to become to loose a great amount of its resources now, then why is there not a reason to worry about coming short in the next couple of years and so on. Either way their will eventually become a loss of resources, and the people in that time will have to suffer if we don't learn to limit the amount we use now!

The People Problem

http://edition.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/09/25/overpopulation.overview/index.html

This article is about one of the biggest challenges are world faces, overpopulation. Many of the stresses on our planet is due to our exponentially growing population. Scientist are unsure what the Earth's actual carrying capacity is for the planet, but figure that humans are pushing it to the max.
This relates to what we are studying currently because this article discuss population growth, a major topic of the unit. Personally I do think that we as humans are a large problem to the environments of this planet, but I am unsure how we can solve it completely

World population to reach 7 billion in 2011
According to statistics, the worlds population might reach a total of 7 billion this year at its current growth rate. Along with this growth rate, millions are going hungry, resources are depleting, and global warming becomes more of a threat to our world and our future generations.These characteristics keep showing that we, as a planet, are a ticking time bomb, waiting to hit our peak and crash; just like many species in the past. What should we do? It is clear that something needs to be done before something happens that could put the pure existence of the human race at stake.

Too Much for Egypt!!!!!

Egypt has a dictatorship and the people believe this is what is hurting their country, but the problem is much deeper than the dictatorship. Egypt's population has went from 44 million to more than 80 million in the past 20 years. Egypt is now the most populous country in the Middle East. It's population is growing at a rate of 2% a year. Hosni Mubarak, the dictator of Egypt, has pushed birth contol and smaller families, and these procedures have worked. In 1981, women had more than five children; the fertility rate has slowed down to 3 babies, but three children is still too much. Al-Salam Hassan, a researcher at the Demographic Center of Cairo says, "The attempt to dictate policy from the ivory tower isn't working. To influence people you must involve them in policy. People here don't believe the government is working for them." Because their population is rising so quickly the people are struggling with food shortages, climate change, high oil prices, and youth unemployment. More than 90 percent of unemployed Egyptians are between the ages of 15 and 29, which include the women trying to get jobs. If women are having hard times getting jobs then more children will start being born, which is bad for Egypt economically.
http://www.grist.org/article/2011-02-05-egypt-has-a-population-crisis-as-well-as-a-democracy-crisis

Shoppers wary of GM foods find they're everywhere

Shoppers Wary of GM Foods Find They're Everywhere

Scientists say most of the food people eat is genetically modified including corn, cotton, and soy. 3 more GM foods have been approved by the Agriculture Department and even salmon could be GM for human consumption sometime this year. GM products are said to "boost" crop production and help developing countries get more food. These foods are said to be so safe that they do not need to be labeled as genetically modified, you can't taste or see a difference in them! Organic food companies argue that the GM seeds "float" over to their farms and contaminate their crops, but their protests haven't made much of a difference to the government. Its more of an ethical issue for these food wary consumers. Genetically engineered crops were first introduced in 1996 with less than 7% of the total corn crops to be GE, and now, over 70% of our corn is GE. Dan Barber, a chef, believes messing with nature always has collateral damage, and over time the more we genetically modify foods, the more organic foods will become compromised.

Trees poisoned on Auburn campus

For almost 130 years, the two “living” oaks on Toomer’s Corner have been central to Auburn University’s ecosystem, providing a place to meet, celebrate, mourn, or merely enjoy nature. However, it has been recently revealed that, as of approximately early November, the oaks were poisoned, and may not survive. On January 27^th, a man called in to a Birmingham radio broadcast, claiming to have used lethal amounts of a shrub pesticide on the trees. As a precaution, soil tests were performed two days later, with the results proving conclusive. The caller was telling the truth. In an attempt to help save the trees, charcoal is being placed around the trees’ main root systems; this, scientists hope, will absorb enough of the pesticides for the trees to survive.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/02/16/alabama.auburn.trees/index.html?hpt=C2

Forest Fires

http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/natural-disasters/wildfires.html

In the article which was located on national geographic, it states that the more fuel found on the forest floor, the larger and more intense the fire will be. Therefore, if fires are surpressed, and litter accumulates on the floor, when a fire does errupt, it will be devestating to both the forest as a whole and any human dwellings found in the path. For the United States, fires occure on an average of 100,000 wildfires per year, which transforms into over 5 million acres of land destroyed by fires. This staggering number would be lessened if fires were not surpressed, but allowed in a controled environment. The articl later states that fires are an important part of forest livlihood, particularly because it stops the build up of shade tolerant trees, and lets the healthier trees thrive without overcrowding.

Controlled Burn

As many forest fires in the area are being tamed, another fire begins. This fire however is deliberately set, by professionals. At Claytor Lake State Park, with conditions favorable, experts in forestry conservation began setting fuel fires throughout a 15 acre space to eliminate unwanted species from the area. The decision to go on with the controlled burning was extremely controversial, due to the ongoing brush fires in the area. The controlled burn went on without any problems and valuable nutrients were added to the soil, as well as opening the area to sunlight, reducing overcrowding and helping prevent future forest fires in the area.

http://www2.wsls.com/news/2011/feb/16/7/controlled-burn-claytor-lake-state-park-despite-re-ar-847600/

Brushfires in Charlotte Area

Brush and wildfires are often a problem throughout the United States. Drought and other environmental dangers make land more vulnerable to fires and as a result cause extreme damage. From February 11th to the 14th, Charlotte fire fighters fought more than 20 brush fires throughout the region. The serious damage lied in the burning of the soil and damage to farm land and forests; though the damage could have been much worse. The fires were caused by high humidity, high winds, dry weather and hot temperatures. Could these have been prevented with controlled burning? This could possibly be true, but no one really would expect such a natural disaster to occur in this region at this time of year.

Brushfires Across Charlotte Region

A KEYSTONE SPECIES

Species selected for conservation efforts should be chosen by seeing how much impact that species has on their environment and by preserving the most different genes as possible. Species that are important to their area are called keystone species; a dramatic change would be see if keystone species went extinct. The Eulemur Coronatus, known as lemur, is responsible for the ecosystem in Madagascar, and Madagascar contains 80% of endemic species, which are species that only are found in Madagascar. Lemurs are an endemic species and phylogenetic relationships show that lemurs are very unique from other primates. Therefore, they will contain a least amount of shared genes and more distant genes. This explains that protecting them alone will not just give a better spread of diverse genes, but the ecosystem they maintain contains many other different species and genes that will also help increase the spread of diverse genes. For these reasons, there should be more effort to help these small animals.

http://scienceray.com/biology/ecology/eulemur-coronatus-a-keystone-species/

Hundreds plant trees in Tarboo to help salmon habitat

Link!

275 parents and students helped saved over 5,000 native trees to help restore the salmon and wildlife habitat in the Tarboo Watershed in Jefferson County. Over $25,000 was raised for this cause. The volunteers planted 25% of the 110,000 trees planted since 2004. Northwest Watershed Institute (NWI), reports that there is a 60%-91% survival rate of the seedlings/seeds planted. This preserve is on a 316 acre Tarboo Wildlife Preserve is permanently protected by the conservation easement held by the Jefferson Land trust. The children and families love planting these trees, its a fun activity that builds friendships and saves teh salmon habitat.

Forest Fire Kills 40 in Israel

On December 2^nd 2010, a forest fire in northern Israel killed about 40 people. Many of these deaths occurred when a bus with prisoners and prison guards were on the way to help with the people in the area, went up in flames. The Carmel Forest area cleared about 500 people earlier that day including 500 Palestinian inmates from Damon prison. The fire occurred around the Druze village of Osafia, the Haifa University, a hotel, farm and residential property. There is still an investigation over the cause of the fire. Causes could be from Israel’s previous hot summer with little rain and the spread has been inferred to have spread from strong winds. This relates to what we have learned about in this unit because of our discussions on forest fires and different types of forest climates and biomes. I think that the cause of this fire was the build up of flammable chemicals that were collected on the ground from the long summer of little rain and hot climates.

http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2010/12/04/israel-wildfire.html

Smuggler Ruining Habitats

Traffic busted a man attempting to smuggle over 40 different animals through the airport. The man had rare tortosises, snakes, spiders, and squirrels. This occured in Thailand, a country who claims to have improved their defense against such incidents.Traffic claims that countries need to buff up their security systems and crack down on black market sales of animal species.
To me this was very shocking because a man almost got away with ruining habitats and possibly adding to the endangerment of some of those animals. If we don't do anything about smuggling it will only get worse and eventually we will disintergrate almost any habitat.

Link To Article

Surviving the Mass Extinction

The mass extinction event is when scientists believed a great meteor wiped all dinosaurs from the face of the Earth; however, were all dinosaurs vanished? It was determined that the age of dinosaurs ended between 65.5 and 66 million years ago but University of Alberta researchers found a dinosaur bone fossil in New Mexico and found out that it was a femur bone of a hadrosaur as being only 64.8 million years old. That means this dinosaur was alive about 700,000 years after the mass extinction. To find this fossil, the researchers used a new direct-dating method called U-Pb (uranium-lead) dating that tells the researchers the age of the fossil bone and the type of food the dinosaur eats. During this dating method a laser beam unseats minute particles of the fossil, which then undergo isotopic analysis.  Living bones contain a small amount of  uranium, however,during fossilization (less than 1000 years after death) bone is enriched in elements like uranium. The uranium atoms in bone decay spontaneously to lead over time and once fossilization is complete the uranium-lead clock begans.

El Nino's Lil' Sis

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El Nino's little sister, La Nina, has caused Australia's third wettest year on record. La Nina produces extreme rain storms over the Pacific and Southeast Asia. The floods have affected an area the size of Germany, including 22 towns and over 200,000 people. The flood is focused mainly in the Australian state of Queensland, which has some of the leading coal producing mines for steel production. With three deaths and thousands of people made homeless, the total effect of the floods is still uncertain. With Australia just beginning its wet season, officials are fearing what else is on its way.

Triceraaatooops, I Am Your Faaather

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An ancient fossil of a dinosaur was found in Alberta. It weighed as much as an African Elephant and was over 8 feet long. This massive horned dinosaur was one of the oldest members of the Triceratops family...It was thought to have lived 5 million years before the triceratops though. When studied closer it was found to have been too different from the other Pentaceratops family, it was a new species that was similiar to the Triceratops family. Longrich (paleontologist) thinks it was the ancestor of the Triceratops and the Torosaurus. This fossil was found in the Cretaceous period, which was over 74 million years ago.