Article Analysis Essay on Defaunation in the Anthropocene

Introduction

The interesting things about the articles and interviews are that they helped in understanding how different species have become extinct because of changing global environment. However, it is not clear how the environmental changes made some species to be extinct. The impacts of defaunation have also not been explained by the article thus making it confusing on the impact and how it may affect the future species considering that these environmental changes are still taking place.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Save 25%

The use of Jaguar as a bio-indicator of the tropical forest ecosystem helps to understand the increasing nutritional availability. The nutritional levels in the tropical forests range from the single species to the ecosystem level. Some of the articles indicated the manipulation experiment of Jaguar so that it can keep surviving in the changing tropical environment. The Jaguar has to be aware of the presence of food all the time considering that some species are becoming extinct and it has to keep on feeding. The animal species is also aware of the weather changes so that it can understand when to get the food easily and when it would be difficult to hunt.

Defaunation is the process through which animal species are becoming extinct. These changes are as a result of the alterations of the global environment. According to the Frontier articles by Dirzo, a total of 322 species are extinct since 1500 and the remaining animals are still under the threat of declining amidst the changing global times. The entire ecosystem in the tropical forests is affected by defaunation. As the environmental changes take place, the plant species are also affected. Some of them may dry completely due to weather changes and become extinct.

There is a connection on managing the grazing land to avoid defaunation. When the animals are grazed without being shifted from one place to the other, they consume all the grass and small bushes around the land until it is completely dry. The animal species which are found in that region are likely to be scorched by the heat of the sun as they do not have the grass which protected them. Others step on by the animals and they end up dead. The more the grazing that is conducted in a single place, the higher the chances of losing the species in that area.it also leads to the loss of biocultural diversity.

Conclusion

From the articles, it is clear that the people who do science are deep researchers are dedicated to their work. In the case of Dirzo, he has written lots of articles and conducted various interviews concerning defaunation and the tropical forests. He must have been very keeping and dedicate to his work to get all the information he required. These people also leave a knowledge gap so that people can research more and get curious concerning some information.

There were various questions which I developed from reading the articles. Such included: what can be done to improve the fauna situation not only in the tropical forests but as well as the grazing lands to avoid the loss of biocultural diversity? Is the environment change a global threat or is it just a myth that people hold? Can global change be avoided? Whether any intervention can be done in the forests especially the tropical to maintain the nutritional levels?

Work Cited

Dirzo, R., et al. "Defaunation in the Anthropocene." Science, vol. 345, no. 6195, 2014, pp. 401-406.