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What A Tangled Web We Weave

Although humans are the most (self-professed) advanced form of life on earth, we are still very much dependent (whether we like it or not) on the web of life for our survival. We may needlessly take our trees for granted, and needlessly clear cut our forests, but they selflessly take our exhaled carbon dioxide and turn it back into breathable oxygen. We also rely on the web for our source of food. Without plants and animals within the web, we would not have enough nutrients for our bodies to survive. Yet here as well, we destroy our food crops by using genetically modified farming, the use of pesticides and by injecting animal food sources with growth hormones and penicillin.

Most of us, at one time or another, have drawn the proverbial food chain diagram at school. You know the one that shows the lion who eats the gazelle, who eats the grass, that gets its nourishment from the soil, that consists of organisms that help replenish the soil, and help decompose animal and plant remains? The purpose of this exercise, was to illustrate how we are all interconnected and dependent on one another. Unfortunately, somewhere along the line, man forgot the importance of these web relationships and began causing human inflicted factors that threaten the web and our very existence.

This being said, sadly enough, the complete list of human causal factors affecting the web of life are far to exhaustive to list here, but here are a few of the top ones: encroaching urbanization, global warming, the use of chemicals, invasive species due to human activities, genetic engineering, nanotechnology and overpopulation.

Today, species are going extinct at an unprecedented rate, and relationships within the web are also being disrupted by human interference at the same unparalleled rate.

Think of the web of life as being like a car or the human body. If there is a breakdown in one part, it may have detrimental effects on the whole. The web of life can compensate for some of the team players going extinct some of the time (as nature adapts), but in some instances like with Keystone species, the absence of their crucial role in the web, (like the absence of a quarterback in a football game), would result in dramatically altering the ecosystem forever.

Just like most environmental problems, there are solutions. The most simple way to make change, is to extend the old adage, "Do onto others as you would want done one to you", except in this instance, we need to extend this passage to reflect all participating members of our ecosystem (both big and small) not to just humans. So next time you pass a by a cow or even an ant, respect them for the part they play in preserving our existence.

Posted by lazina at 7:01 AM

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