Rashid's Blog: A Place for Inquisitive Souls

“ It’s not Easy Being Green”

                                                            Kermit the Frog

For a frog it certainly it’s not easy being green, when they are part of a high school biology class experiment, that dissects them so young kids can see the frogs’ insides and to maybe understand their own insides. It isn’t easy when a frog’s habitat is paved over to make a parking lot at a new shopping mall, or a new community is developed, or their habitat is plowed under because of another species need for food, or when habitat is taken to widen highways, to create new roads so people can get from their new homes to work and get to the mall and the food store. And what habitat that is left is being effected by toxins applied to the soil in the form of fertilizers, pesticides and human and animal waste which is making it way…

They are bug-infested wastelands. Wet and soggy places unfit for agricultural crops. Areas that should be made “useful” by drainage. Or at least those were the prevailing attitudes before the value of wetlands became widely recognized. In fact, government policies actively promoted the drainage of wetlands in the 1800s and much of the 1900s, with various incentive-based programs aimed at “reclaiming” swamps and other “overflowed” lands. Public funding was also provided for drainage activities. However, wetlands are now universally recognized as valuable providers of ecosystem services, playing critical roles in water purification, flood control, storm protection, nutrient removal from agricultural runoff, carbon storage, fishery support, and providing habitat for rare plants and animals. Thus, today many conservation agencies are actively working to identify, manage, protect, and restore wetlands. Many of these efforts are focused on the protection of systems that have been little impacted by human activities, or…