Effect of People on Other Species
Posted on January 8, 2007 Comments (1)
We’ve Seen The Future, And It Is Us:
Human habitation has been, and is increasingly, playing a direct role not only in the extinction of species, but in their evolution. By our own actions, we may be accompanied into the future by ever more diverse pests and pathogens, and may leave behind what we value most—elephants, tigers, and others of the earth’s great megabeasts.
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Where we have industrialized agriculture, weeds have evolved to chemically mimic our crops to avoid the herbicide. Insect pests have evolved resistance to DDT and to the pesticides that have followed. We have countered with genetically engineered crops. Already there are insect species resistant to the defenses of those crops. When we add new species of crops, insects in turn rapidly switch to those.
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Where we have industrialized agriculture, weeds have evolved to chemically mimic our crops to avoid the herbicide. Insect pests have evolved resistance to DDT and to the pesticides that have followed. We have countered with genetically engineered crops. Already there are insect species resistant to the defenses of those crops. When we add new species of crops, insects in turn rapidly switch to those.
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June 29th, 2008 @ 10:56 am
“Experts say the grass was probably made into silage, then fed to cattle during the winter months. The herbicide remained present in the silage, passed through the animal and into manure that was later sold…”