By Amani Mabano
All organisms modify their environment, and so do humans. As the human population has grown and the power of technology has expanded, the intensity and nature of this alteration has drastically increased. Most of all ecosystems are dominated by humans, and no ecosystem on Earth’s surface is free of prevalent human influence (Vitousek et al., 1997). This is an Epoch called Anthropocene (Lewis & Maslin, 2015), where species extinction is happening at unprecedented rates (1,000 times faster than it should without human activities). Thus, humanity is responsible for the sixth mass extinction, the only one caused by a living organism.
Four major anthropogenic activities are key drivers of this biodiversity loss; (i) habitat loss and fragmentation, (ii) global climate change (iii) invasive alien species and (iv) natural resource overexploitation (e.g. over-hunting, over-fishing)…Read more>>
