Our environment and ecosystem suffers a new, uncharted issue: humanity, and its cause and effect. People and what they do to their planet have raised quite a few eyebrows in the past decade.

The most dramatic issue is habitat deconstruction or fragmentation. Cutting down trees to clear plots for suburban sprawl and breaking up an ecosystem into small areas contribute in disrupting a system that may not survive the partitioning.

It is now widely accepted that people’s activities are contributing to global warming, mostly from the buildup of gases in the atmosphere. The “greenhouse effect” is proving to change weather patterns in our lifetime. The recent warmth has been greatest over North America and Eurasia. Seven of the eight warmest years on record have occurred since 2001 and the 10 warmest years have all been since 1995.

Which leads us to pollution, some of it unavoidable, as the effects are invisible and not always obvious for many years.  By then, it can have devastating long-term effects. The impact of acid rain in fresh waters and forests of northern and central Europe are a case in point.

Lastly, there is the transportation of species to non-native lands. Human beings are to blame for bringing their favorite plant or pet to their new home. This introduction of species has caused havoc in many lands, particularly islands where the ecosystems have evolved isolated from others.

The naturalization of foreign species may help repair a problem, such as zebra mussels’ ability to clarify fresh water. But their invasive reproduction cycle causes more damage than it is worth.