Environment issues



This week, I read 2 articles about two very different topics. The first one I read about was titled “Turkeys in your neighborhood”, which is an article that focuses on (you guessed it) Turkeys living in neighborhoods. The second article was titled “An environmental movement for times of war too”. This is an article that focuses on the Geneva Convention, Oil farms, and environmental destruction started by man.

The main idea of the first article is that the reason why turkeys are invading our cities and suburbs is due to the fact we’re over logging, and hunting less when we need to hunt more to keep population down. One idea that I found interesting was that because we are expanding and cutting down trees, the growing turkey population has nowhere to go besides for in our backyards. I thought this was interesting because I feel like a VERY easy solution to this problem is to have more people shoot turkeys to regulate the population.

The main idea of the second article is that the causes to some of our environmental problems are man made, such as the wildfires that are rampaging throughout Iraq due to revolts and global warming. In Yemen, destruction of water purification plants lead to a massive cholera outbreak, Killing over 2,500 people and infecting 1.2 million. One idea that I found interesting in this article was that people want to strengthen the legal protection of wildlife during times of war leading all the way back to vietnam. This is very interesting because politicians realized that militaries couldn’t care less for the environment in times of war, so people create the laws to protect it from times of war.

This first article made me wonder how many issues like this have happened, so I looked up some more information about this idea. There are roughly 7 million wild turkeys living in the US right now across 715 acres. A website said that turkey hunting is legal in 49 states, this means that overpopulation of these turkeys should be very rare if not impossible. This means we should start hunting more turkeys to decrease the likelihood of turkeys causing problems such as traffic jams, or chaos in the cities/suburbs.

I agree with the second article in the idea that we need to create more laws to help protect the wildlife and the environment. However, I feel like no matter if it’s war time or not, we should still create laws to protect our environment no matter the reason.

One piece of evidence that supports my view comes from the same article. It states that “ International concern over the widespread deforestation and chemical contamination from the United States military’s use of Agent Orange was reflected in the development of the 1976 Environmental Modification Convention and two articles (35 and 55) in Additional Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions the following year.

In the aftermath of the environmental devastation of the 1991 Gulf War, the question was raised of whether a fifth Geneva Convention should be established to protect the environment in times of armed conflict. Ultimately, interest waned and the question went unanswered.” This shows that in times of war, the environment is just an afterthought and we need to change that. This supports my claim that militaries don’t care about the environment during times of war. We need to change this thought process because we’re impacting the environment in a negative way literally every day.

All in all, I believe that we should think about the environment and help protect it because the way we treat the environment is going to decide how long were going to be able to stay on this earth. We need to take care of it and help protect it no matter the time whether it be in time of war or peace.


Citations:
Poon, Linda. "Turkeys in Your Neighborhood? Get Used to It." Citylab, 26 Nov.
     2019, www.citylab.com/life/2019/11/
     wild-turkey-where-live-population-how-many-cities-suburbs/602563/. Accessed
     10 Dec. 2019. Walker, Kira. "An environmental movement for times of war, too." OPENCANADA, 27
     Nov. 2019, www.opencanada.org/features/
     environmental-movement-times-war-too/. Accessed 10 Dec. 2019.
Belko, Brian. "5 Startling Stats About the Turkey Populations in the U.S."
     Wideopenspaces, 26 Feb. 2015, www.wideopenspaces.com/
     5-startling-stats-turkey-populations-u-s/. Accessed 10 Dec. 2019.




Comments

  1. Ms. LaClairDecember 11, 2019 at 10:22 AM

    Are turkeys not being hunted as much? Are there rules that regulate turkey hunting that explains why there aren't that many turkeys being hunted?

    If there were laws/rules created to protect the environment as related to wartime, who would regulate and enforce these laws?

    Make sure you include internal citations for the websites, not just the hyperlink.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. AnonymousDecember 16, 2019 at 8:13 AM

      Yes, There are rules that regulate turkey hunting such as hunting seasons and the amount of turkeys you can kill to bring home. These rules have played a very large part in the growing population of turkeys.

      I feel like the UN would be the ones enforcing these laws or even the countries in war.

      Delete

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