Many Species Are Going Extinct, And Here's why

Christopher Jennerwein
3 min readJan 14, 2021

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Northern White Rhino

In todays world, we are currently losing animal species at a rate 1,000 times greater then any other time recorded in human history, where 1 million species face extinction according to ScienceDaily.

The cause of all this is no one but ourselves, humans. Currently we are the Alphas of this planet with over 7 billion living on earth. But all 7 billion don’t know how to keep this world safe for other organisms.

Deforestation in Guatemala

One of the top reasons being loss of habitat, which can come naturally but the main cause is us and our agricultural activities. About 75% of land and 66% of ocean areas have been “significantly altered” by people, according to the IPBES report. These altercations have led to destroying of habitats. Which leads to them going extinct because they no longer have a home.

In one year about 15.3 billion trees are cut down and used as resources for humans, but what we seem to forget is that even though its good for us we don't realize what its doing to other species and organisms around us.

What many people don’t realize is that we rely on these animals quite a lot. They supply us with food and resources that keep us alive. A simple cow has such an impact on our society and who knows how much we could lose if they went extinct.

Our agricultural activities also lead to pollution, another great cause of endangering species. Things like greenhouse gases and things like plastic and gas that pollute our ecosystem.

With this pollution, it makes air quality bad and living conditions bad. many times animals will mistake plastic for food and end up choking and dying.

If humans don’t start being careful we could lose many important organisms that greatly impact our survival and lives. These animals were here before us but we continue to treat them as if they are nothing to us. Whenever governments decide to come up with new conservation goals that’s when we will see change.

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