#3

The news article that stood out to me most was this article about Grizzly Bears in the New York Times (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/10/science/grizzly-bears-deaths.html). It talks about how the death rates are climbing in the Grizzly Bear community due to things like trains, cars, poaching. A large number of the Grizzly Bear population is dying off every day due to humans invading their homeland and thinking of them as nothing more than a monster or trophy to have displayed in their cabins. I am an avid animal lover so this is heartbreaking to me and specifically why I choose this topic rather. People don’t seem to care enough about protecting wildlife and think that their life is less valuable than humans. Realizing that every animal has a place on this planet for a reason and a job to do to keep the animal kingdom and the environment stable. Animals have just as much as an important contribution to the balance of the environment as the human race. Each and every animal keeps other certain animal populations stable in order to keep that habitat running smoothly. With humans contributing to the killing of animal populations and disrupting the balance of the already natural causes such as competition for resources, predation, and disease among the animal kingdom that are also impacting populations. For example, if we killed off all the coyotes in a certain area the population of bunnies could increase which could then lead to a decrease in vegetation in that area due to an overwhelming number of rabbits, not leaving enough vegetation for other plant-eating animals and the whole balance of that habitat would get thrown off. We need to start valuing the lives of animals just as much as we value the lives of humans. (302)