Watersheds Are Inmportant

The Earth is a big watershed where everyone lives in. Many small watersheds are located throughout the world and our lives are affected by them. There are three main reasons why watersheds are so important to us. The first is that watersheds provide drinking water for us, they are natural habitats for animals and lastly they are good for recreational and agricultural uses.

The water that we drink everyday comes from a watershed. The Bay Journal from the United States said that 60 percent of drinking water in America comes from rivers and river-fed lakes, so clean rivers can translate into clean drinking water. If we pollute the rivers and lakes nearby our neighborhood it will not allow us to drink safely. The University of Michigan reported that 1.5 billion people in the world lack clean drinking water and at least 5 million people die per year because they drunk water that had been polluted. If all the rivers in every watershed are maintained properly, it may be enough to supply drinkable water to most of the people in the world and reduce the amount of deaths and sickness every year.

A watershed is also a natural habitat for many animals and plants. As a natural habitat it helps to spread nutrients in the ground and plants can grow to be strong, healthy and supply food to the environment. Plants and animals need each other to survive and both of them need the watershed to provide them with food and shelter. If the watershed is contaminated or partially destroyed, animals and plants may die or animals may leave, and that may trigger a domino effect. The whole food cycle in the habitat would be disrupted and this would also affect us, since plants are the foundations of life. When there are no plants there then there would also be no more rain, because the plants are the ones that provide the water. Once the plants die off, then the water cycle would become upset. The ground would become as infertile as a wasteland. So, not only is the keeping the waters clean important, but maintaining the habitat as well.

Finally,