National Wildlife Day has passed, but this conversation is STILL relevant.
If you think about the air we breathe, the water we drink, or the food we eat, then you’d understand how animal, plant, and marine biodiversity keeps our ecosystems functional. Without certain species, life as we know it would be chaotic and TOTALLY unlivable. So I wanted to share some species we need in order to function….
and I promise I won’t make this painful to read.
Marine Turtles
You may have visited your favorite restaurant lately and noticed they started using paper straws instead of plastic? Well-thats because they’re hoping to save the marine turtles. These turtles are being captured for food while their eggs and shells are sold as well. However, a better and more important source of income is for coastal residents through ‘turtle-watching ecotourism’. Can you believe this ecotourism generates three times the income making them worth more alive than dead.
Birds
To make this easy, I’ve got a quote from Melani Driscoll, who is the Director of bird conservation for the Gulf of Mexico and the Mississippi Flyway.
“Birds are important because they keep systems in balance: they pollinate plants, disperse seeds, scavenge carcasses and recycle nutrients back into the earth. But they also feed our spirits, marking for us the passage of the seasons, moving us to create art and poetry, inspiring us to flight and reminding us that we are not only on, but of, this earth.”
Birds are able to store carbon, keep the climate stable, oxygenate the air and transform pollutants into nutrients.
Ants
I’ve had so many ant bites I really should be anti-ant (pun intended), but ants really do help keep this place clean by acting as decomposers and feeding on organic waste, insects or other dead animals. They’re like environmental vacuums. All 1,000,000,000,000,000 of them. Thats one quadrillion btw..and NO I didn’t make that up.
On top of that, they dig little tunnels to help to aerate(literally what it sounds like-AIR out) the soil. This helps so they can bring all kinds of pebbles, nutrients, and what have you in and out the earth.
So next time you see a bird, an ant, or a turtle randomly…say Thank You. Don’t be afraid if people are watching. Yes they’ll think you’re a little weird but that’s okay, LOL.
Sources:
https://www.seeturtles.org/why-are-sea-turtles-important
https://www.birdlife.org/worldwide/news/why-we-need-birds-far-more-they-need-us
