When we take resources from our environment, we don’t always consider the potential consequences. Choices that seem like they wouldn’t affect the environment that much can actually cause far more damage than we realize. Sometimes altering even one part of an ecosystem can throw the entire ecosystem off balance and alter it completely, generally for the worse.
Silliman’s and Bertness’s article discusses how altering one part of an ecosystem can throw off the entire ecosystem entirely. Their article mentions how increasing or decreasing the number of a certain part of the ecosystem can alter the rest of the ecosystem. Reducing the number of a species on the upper level of a food chain for example, can increase the number of species on the lower levels of the food chain. Plant life can also be altered which can change the ecosystem type, altering the levels of certain chemicals in the environment, which in turn can affect the wildlife present.
Silliman and Bertness mentioned how overfishing off the east coast of wildlife such as crabs is severely affecting the stability of marshes. The presence of blue crabs is crucial to the preservation of the marsh ecosystem. Although crabs are considered a delicacy by many, we need to be more conscious of how much we take from our ecosystems. If we take too much, there will be nothing left to take.
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