Checkpoint: Local Environmental Issue

The Blue Crab is a native to the waters outside of my home in Virginia Beach. Over the years the Crab population has decreased to dangerous levels. This has been due to overharvesting and environmental damage caused to the Chesapeake Bay. According to TED case studies 75% of the adult crab population is harvested each year. The most substantial damage is due to high amounts of nitrogen and phosphorous that is polluting the Chesapeake Bay. These chemicals are waste products that enter the rainwater from large commercial poultry farms. Chicken manure is contaminating rainwater runoff and polluting the Bay. There used to be forest and wetlands surrounding the Bay that protected it from these pollutants. As human population has grown, these wetlands and forests have been replaced with roads, homes, factories, and towns.

We as a society place our needs above that of our environment. We take without regards to the impact that our actions will have on the rest of the world. Our society is quick to take action to reach our goals. Then we have to find ways to fix what we have inadvertently damaged. We need poultry to feed our population, so we built large scale farms to make poultry abundant and affordable. We did not think it would destroy one of our most precious resources. Solutions have been thought of, but no one wants to pay the price for conservation. In the end nature always loses.

References

TED Case Studies (1998), Blue crab a declining resource retrieved May 25, 2008 from http://www.american.edu/TED/bluecrab.htm