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habitat destruction — English
A significant or complete alteration of the organic community and/or inorganic components that occur in a specific place at a certain time and constitute an ecosystem (see “ecosystem”, “ecology” and “extinction”). The organisms (animals, insects, plants, microbes and even the humans that happen to live in that place at that time) form a community and a network of interdependence. All the animal and vegetative organisms in an ecosystem are well-adapted to the conditions posed by the inorganic components (rocks, soil, water, atmospheric temperatures, type of climate, and so on). When an alteration is so severe and/or fast, that the organisms cannot adapt to the new conditions, the organic community must move away or die out (see “extinction”). A habitat can be altered or destroyed by nature, either slowly or suddenly. An example of slow natural alteration is the onset of an ice age (that is natural climate change [see “climate change”]). An example of fast, natural alteration is a volcanic eruption or a meteorite strike, but these are, of course, very rare. Alteration caused by human actions (anthropogenic causes) happens fast in geological time although they might appear to happen over a long period in human time. Compare the rate at which a frontend loader removes a heap of sand to the time it takes natural erosion processes to remove a mount of weathering debris (see “erosion”). Humans cause enormous habitat destruction by erecting buildings, creating settlements, installing sewerage systems, road building, the removing of plants where construction has to take place, draining wetlands, converting grasslands into croplands, and so on. In these cases the habitat destruction is immediately obvious, and innumerable millions of hectares of land all over the world have changed irreversible and the natural habitats of innumerable animal and plant species have been destroyed. However, there are more insidious activities which are equally or even more harmful, yet less obvious. A golfing estate is a typical example. From an environmental point of view golf is a far greater threat to the environment than hunting is. The golfing greens, the clumps of endemic, or at least indigenous, trees and natural vegetation between the greens, and the artificial rivulets look so beautiful that the golfing public does not even think about the habitat destruction that has taken place. The establishment of a golf course and – even worse – a golfing estate, implies the total destruction of a natural habitat. The moment a habitat is subdivided into portions, habitat fragmentation (see “extinction”) has taken place and the natural habitat will start to decline and eventually wither away, change into a completely different sysem, or be overrun by a human-made system. Habitat destruction and fragmentation has for many hundreds of years been responsible for most of the species extinction on Earth. Thousands of species have gone extinct because of habitat destruction and fragmentation. Most of the species listed in the Red Data Lists (publications listing all species that are critically threathened, or seriously threatened, or simply threatened) are in danger of extinction because of habitat destruction and fragmentation. The panda bear (which has become the logo for the World Wildlife Fund [WWF]) is critically threathened as a result of habitat loss. Two of the most threatened species in South Africa, namely the Brenton Blue butterfly and the Blue Swallow, are critically threatened by nothing other than habitat loss. However, the most publicised threatened species in South Africa, namely the black and the white rhinoceros, are on the verge of extinction because of poaching and hunting, not because of habitat loss.
