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Thom's blog
Why the Web of Life is Dying...
Could you survive with just half of your organs? Think about it. What if you had just half your brain, one kidney, half of your heart, one lung, half a liver and only half of your skin? It would be pretty hard to survive right? Sure, you could survive losing just one kidney or half of your liver, but at some point, losing pieces from all of your organs would be too much and you would die.
Well, this is exactly what’s happening to the web of life on Planet Earth right now. Like the human body, our planet is a living organism, and like the organs in the body, all of our planet’s species are interconnected. They form the web of life. And, just like the human body can survive with just one kidney or one eye, our planet and the web of life can survive without a few species here and there.
But, like with the loss of organs in the body, there’s eventually a point at which the biological systems of Planet Earth that support human life will just stop functioning if it loses too many species and thus too badly frays the web of life. And that point could be coming a lot sooner than most people thought.
According to a new report from the World Wildlife Fund, a staggering 52% of the world’s mammals, reptiles, birds, fish and amphibians disappeared between 1970 and 2010. We’re not talking about just a few species here and there. After all, species extinctions are normal. They’re part of the web of life, too. But, losing 52% of mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians in just 40 years is not normal.
It’s a sign of the devastating toll that human activity is having on our planet and its many ecosystems. And, that 52% statistic doesn’t paint the full picture of what’s really going on here, because every time a species dies off, the web of life unravels just a little more and loses more of its balance.
-Thom
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