This can refer to any way that humans take too many of the Earth's natural resources.
First of all, let's talk about hunting.
There have been some impressive accounts of humans hunting species to extinction. For example, flocks of passenger pigeons used to be so massive that they darkened the sky from horizon to horizon. And yet today, there isn't a single one left. Humans killed all of them.
Here's a quick topic to think about. A keystone species is a species that is essential to its habitat. If that species disappears, the entire area will be drastically changed. For example, when sea otters almost disappeared along the California coast, it dramatically changed the kelp forests. Otters eat sea urchins. When otters disappeared, sea urchins multiplied like crazy and ate all of the kelp. No kelp, no kelp forests.
Sometimes people hunt for meat. Sometimes they hunt for trophies. And sometimes it's for some medicinal property that may or may not actually be effective.
If people hunt for meat, that is understandable. But even that can be damaging depending on what animals people are hunting, how they hunt, and how many people are hunting.
Humans can act as predators, but we don't usually hunt in a way that promotes natural selection. A hunter who's going out to shoot a buck usually wants the biggest stag with the fanciest horns. Whereas a mountain lion will go after the sicker looking animals. So, humans are more likely to kill off the biggest and strongest animals, which can lead to an imbalance in a species.
Some hunting is legal. But when people hunt animals that are protected, or they hunt in areas where no hunting is allowed, it's called poaching. There is little danger of humans hunting deer to extinction (at least at current rates). But when it comes to elephants or rhinos or any other rare species, every individual that's killed puts the species at greater risk. Large animals like elephants reproduce very slowly. It's harder for them to bounce back when their numbers are low.
And a species that has a low population also has a lower genetic diversity. This means that if a disease comes along, they are less likely to have individuals that are resistant to it.
Despite measures to protect endangered species, people still kill elephants to make ivory carvings, or rhinos to grind up the horn into so-called medicine. These are only a couple examples.
Eastern medicine is especially notorious for this, because many of these "medicines" call for parts of rare animals. Many animals are being pushed to the brink of extinction for fake medicines.
Some animals, like bears whose bile is prized for medicinal reasons, are kept alive so their internal fluids can be harvested through tubes. I don't know if that's better or worse than being killed outright, but it's terrible either way.
Poachers can be extremely dangerous and have been known to kill rangers.
But on the positive side, people that used to be poachers can actually turn around and become rangers. Some of the best rangers are poachers, because they understand how poachers think.
Most people don't poach because they hate animals and want them to all disappear. They're just trying to provide for their families. If they're given a different way to do that, they won't have to poach anymore.
Helping local communities support themselves is an excellent way of protecting the wildlife that live around them.
Many native people used to live in perfect balance with nature until "modern humans" screwed everything up for them.
A different kind of poaching doesn't have to do with killing animals, but with capturing them. There is a fierce exotic pet trade in some parts of the world. It exists in plenty areas of the united states. A lot of states don't really have restrictions on owning something like a lion. Some of them don't even have many guidelines for it (It's bad in Illinois, Ohio, and Texas, for example).
It's one thing if a person can provide for the full needs of an adult lion throughout its entire life. Including space and enrichment. But most zoos don't even do that, let alone individual owners.
When animals are caught from the wild, it is usually very destructive and inhumane. About 90% of wild caught pets die before they are even sold. And then many more die because people have no idea how to care for them.
Here's a different one. Buddhists will sometimes buy and release animals. The idea is of course to save an animal from captivity or consumption. But this has become horribly twisted in some places.
There are people that go out and catch wild animals specifically to sell to people who will release them again. And many of those animals are harmed or killed in the process. Some animals are simply caught again once they've been set free.
And many of these animals are set free in places that they can't survive in, so they die soon after their "release."
And in some cases, released animals can take over and destroy the habitat.
It's not just animals that suffer from poaching. People will strip moss and lichen from wet forests, to sell as decorations.
And they will hack up ancient redwood trees to harvest the beautiful knotted bruls that grow on the trunks.
Do you think that ancient tree will survive something like this?
War is another terrible thing for wildlife. For example, some parts of Africa are hit hard by multiple civil wars. And the armies will go out and kill all of the wildlife to feed their soldiers. War can spell doom for wildlife preserves.
Then of course there's deforestation, which leads to countless other problems. Trees regulate our climate. They remove carbon dioxide (a greenhouse gas) from the air and store it in their wood and leaves. They also pull water up through their trunks and out through their leaves, which adds moisture to the air. When we cut down huge stretches of forests, we are making a drier climate with more carbon dioxide.
We are still clearing massive amounts of rain forest every day. A lot of it is to make way for farmland. And rainforests have very poor soil, which means they are terrible for growing crops.
What is there to do?
After all, I don't think you're out there chopping down trees or poaching animals.
For this, it's very important that we're aware of where our products come from. Try not to buy stuff with palm oil, which is a major crop that is planted where there used to be rain forest.
The problem is these ingredients are in everything, and they go by many different names It's very difficult to avoid them, and it takes some research. Some markets try to offer products that avoid harmful products like palm oil.
Palm oil is one of many things to avoid. I won't list all of those here though. That will require more research than I have time for at the moment.
What stories have used the theme of over-harvesting? (Or related topics I've discussed)
Well, this is a popular topic.
Princess Mononoke
Fern Gully
Bambi
Avatar
The Lorax
Star Trek 4: The Voyage Home
The Rescuers Down Under
The Tiger Rising, by DiCamillo
The Jungle Book, by Kipling (specifically the Kotik story)
The Two Towers, by Tolkein
Endangered, by Schrefer
How would you use this theme in a book?
There are plenty of examples to draw from.
There are plenty of stories about deforestation, like Princess Mononoke, Lord of the Rings, Avatar, Fern Gully, and The Lorax. They usually end up being a fight between people who want to cut down trees, and people that want to protect trees. Princess Mononoke is one of the few that brings out the complexities of the battle. It's satisfying to have evil people want to destroy nature, but that's not usually how it works in real life.
Movies like The Rescuers Down Under take on poaching.
The Tiger Rising looks at people who keep big animals, like tigers. Spoilers: Most people who want a pet tiger just want to look macho, and they have no business taking care of an animals like that.
Bambi, of course, is one of the iconic works against hunting. Honestly, I don't see hunting as a bad thing. At least, no worse than killing a cow for a hamburger. If people are against hunting deer, then they should also be against raising animals for meat (brief digression - in my opinion there's nothing wrong with eating some meat, since it does have some important nutrients. The problem is that we eat way too much meat).
Star Trek 4: The Voyage Home takes on the extreme end of over-harvesting: Extinction. In this movie, it turns out that humpback whales have some friends that live off-planet. So when humpback whales go extinct, those off-planet friends bring havoc to the Earth.
What other ideas can you come up with?
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