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Home: USES: Human Settlements on the Coast: Destruction of Habitats

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Destruction of Habitats

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Destruction and alteration of habitat are recognized as the greatest threat to biodiversity. Marine scientists looking at the problems of oceans and coastal areas at the start of the new millennium declared: "Habitats, of course, have changed naturally since long before the appearance of humanity, but the sheer scale of the present onslaught is unprecedented."

The destruction comes from physical alterations, pollution, and invasions of alien species as well as other biological threats such as eutrophication and red tides. Some phenomena are natural events. But many result from human activities, and most impacts are from land-based activities.

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Dr. Ellen K. Rudolph

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I care deeply about our natural world. In my work as an international conservation photographer and educator I seek to impart to others a sense of the fragility of our world and the necessity for humans to protect our Earth from further destructive aspects of technology and unbridled growth. I am, in that regard, a fervent student of physicist David Bohm's wholeness and implicate order, which offers promising metaphors for reality as an interdependent whole. Western science interprets life as a series of separate problems with separate solutions. Newtonian mechanics is not some [partial] explanation of the way things work -- according to western science it is a [complete] explanation, so much so that all that is left for science is to now fill in a few remaining blanks. We are, in fact, so used to this idea by now that we forget how new a thought this is in human history. But this mechanistic thinking with its 'clockwork' metaphors may not only not be correct; it may distort our perceptions of reality. Ancient holistic ideas decry the cutting up of Nature into manageable, independent parts that can be understood individually and so do I. It has driven me towards an ever-increasing awareness of the need for a fundamental change in our collective perspective from the fragmentary essence of western scientific views to one that recognizes and celebrates the inherent interdependencies of living systems. - Dr. Ellen K. Rudolph

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