Habitat Destruction Plot

Finally starting another environmental plot post. The first one I did was about deforestation. This one will be about habitat destruction in general.
Forests are mentioned the most when people talk about protecting habitats. But forests are definitely not the only habitat that's being destroyed by human expansion.
Wherever people build new homes or clear land to grow crops, some area of natural land was destroyed.

It may not seem like it, but deserts are incredibly fragile areas. If something disturbs desert land, it takes an incredibly long time to heal. There aren't many plants or much rainfall to re-sculpt the natural landscape. In areas of Nevada, such around Reno, housing is spreading deeper and deeper into the desert hills.
Perhaps you've heard of the Dust Bowl? This happened when farming expanded into the Great Plains. People took their machines and tore up the grass and thick layers of sod beneath. The problem is that this tangle of grass roots was holding the soil down. And once the grass was torn out, that dirt was free to blow away. And it created a huge cloud of dust over much of the country. Let's not forget the huge dust storms that came with it. Houses were buried. Yeah. Not fun. And try breathing with all that dirt blowing everywhere. A lot of people had to move.
Tundra is another one. Oil drilling is a big problem up there (a lot of oil is in wildlife preserves, which are supposed to remain untouched). The problem is that these factories and the massive pipes used to transport oil are right in the way of migration routes. Migrations of hundreds of thousands of caribou travel across the tundra every year, and when a huge pipe cuts across the land, it makes it hard for them to get to their winter and summer homes. And with the melting ice that comes with climate change, many arctic animals have enough trouble surviving as it is without the threat of oil leaks, roads, and pipes.
Wetlands are also in danger. There is hardly any pristine wetland habitat left. A lot of it has been filled in to build houses. The problem is that wetlands are homes to thousands of different species, and are often important stops for migratory birds. They are also essential for cleaning our water and providing buffers for storms that come in from the oceans. Some of the fish we eat, like salmon, use wetlands to get big and healthy. Wetlands are also excellent carbon sinks - even better than forests. That means that they can hold carbon out of the atmosphere, so there is less carbon in the air contributing to climate change.
I'll cover other water habitats in later posts. But rivers, lakes and oceans all suffer if the surrounding habitat suffers (from erosion, runoff, litter, and so on).

The fact is, there are too many people, and not everyone can live in their own separate house with a yard. There's isn't that much space on the planet for humans, let along all the other species that need land to live.
Multi-story apartment buildings do save a lot of space. It's actually a very environmentally-friendly way to live (especially if it's built sustainably). I took an eco-footprint test once, and had a very sustainable lifestyle, except for housing (even though I live with 2 other people).
People need to stop developing new land whenever they run out of space. We can't expand forever. We need to learn how to compact our development, and reuse space that's already within cities. We need to reign in developers who want to build on every spot of land they see.

Farming is another big cause of habitat destruction. Try to avoid buying food that was grown on cleared land.

As for how to use this in a story, I think a lot of what I mentioned in the deforestation post applies. You can twist things around to fit the habitat of you're choosing. And all of the consequences will vary as well.

Hoot is a book/movie that talks about stopping a development that would destroy burrowing owl habitat.
And there's all those movies and books I listed in the deforestation post.