• Fact: Over ninety percent of animals have become extinct since the beginning of time.

    Fact: Over fifty percent of marine life has disappeared overall.

    Fact: About eighty percent of these casualties were caused by humans.

    Yes. This information is true. Yes, it’s frightening. It is wrong. Unthinkable. True. We, as a whole, have caused the deaths of millions, billions even, of animals. And what do we have to show for it? Over population, ugly and small “wild” areas, pelts of the murdered, blackened oceans. But hey, we have those leather couches, bear skin rugs, mink coats. We’re still alive, right? Wrong. We are not the only ones that matter. We do not own Earth. As we make our coats, our houses, our way-too-many malls. As we waste our gas so we have to transport more. What does this bring upon the world? We poach, viciously killing disappearing species’. We pollute, our trash ruining the homes of small and large animals alike, what’s left of these homes anyway. Because overall, we lead to one thing. Destruction. That’s it. We kill the animals, destroy their homes, their families, all to build our precious, overpriced, un-needed condos, our mansions. What have we done? Poaching. Pollution. Destruction. The three most common, most selfish wrongdoings we have done thus far.

    What comes to mind when we say poaching? A creep with a mustache in an old safari get-up with a musket? Some random weirdo who chops the tusks off elephants? This is true in some cases, but it’s worse than that. Oh so much worse. Ethiopian wolves, so few already, are still being hunted, whether we say it’s illegal or not, for their beautiful coat. Elephants, for the precious ivory in their tusks, painfully slaughtered to make small trinkets or pianos. Rarely do we wait for the tusks to fall off. The Japanese have already caused River Dolphins to die out completely as they fished for them illegally. Poaching is killing our animals. It’s illegal and wrong, but there are people who do it. Fun, money, whatever the reason, these people kill animals for their own selfish desires. What have they done?

    Pollution has always been a big topic. How it’s bad for our environment, our health. Yes, many of us view it as a huge problem. But think, who of us actually tries to make a difference? There are already so many species, gone thanks to gas emissions that turn once beautiful crystal blue skies to a blue grey storm of stink. Trash buildup turns once amazing natural forests into nothing more than a candy-wrapper-coated, beer bottle infested teenage wasteland! Oil spills have driven some sea animals into endangered species when they were once a plentiful race. These creatures are our brethren, ones we have evolved from, ones who feel as we feel. And we sit by as the world becomes a cold, heaping trash dump. Disgusting.

    Ah, and deliver the final blow. Before going into detail, let us think back. Just ten, maybe fifteen years ago the rainforests were a bountiful, beautiful habitat for millions of plants, animals, and human Amazonian Tribes. They are still there today. Some of them anyway. Today, every seventeen seconds another acre of rainforest has disappeared, those plants that could cure cancer: gone. The animals that could answer so many questions about our past: gone. Now, imagine we let this destruction go on. Let’s fast forwards a bit. In about twenty years, not long at all, the forests all over the world will be half, maybe less, in size. Oxygen depletion, climate change, crops dying. Animals – un- or barely- seen as they creep away to what little wild we have left. Why? Because in building our malls we take away thousands of homes. In making toothpick for decoration of tiny sandwiches, another squirrel is left in the cold. If they made sure it was even out of the tree. What we as people don’t understand is that we are driving ourselves, as well as millions of other species, into extinction. Desolation. Non-existence.

    What have we done? As clearly shown in this paper, we are watching, waiting, as animals die before our very eyes. Poaching, pollution, destruction: we are hurting them as much as ourselves. But we can speak. And just because a fox cannot talk doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be heard. Just because an African Rhino cannot yell in anger doesn’t mean it can’t scream in pain. We need to clean up our acts. Soon. Or we will live in a world with no trees, no wild. No life. Ask yourself, “What have I done? What have they done? What can we do?”