Every year several hundred to several thousand plant and animal species become extinct, most of these in connection with tropical deforestation. Loss of forest cover is itself a major ecological problem because forests play a crucial role in regulating water cycles, local climate, and the balance of CO2 in the atmosphere. The genetic resources lost by extinction have both an economic value for medicine and agriculture and an ecological value because they increase diversity in ecosystems and are the basis for future evolution. We face difficult ethical questions about other species’ right to exist and the subjugation of nature as a basic tenet of industrial society.
Europe also has its share of endangered species and ecosystems, such as the wolf, certain birds of prey, virgin coniferous forest and various species of fish and marine mammals. Conservation of nature often conflicts with agriculture and forestry interests, making this a good topic for discussions and debates. The conflicts of interest in tropical deforestation could, for example, be compared with the situation in the reader’s own country.
The ocean ecosystem is a vital resource for most European countries, but its ecological balance is threatened by the petroleum industry; fish farming; fisheries; pollution by industry, agricultural runoff and sewage; and depletion of the ozone layer. Marine pollution sometimes becomes dramatic, as it did in the spring of 1988 when the marine alga Chrysochromelina polylepis caused widespread fish death in the waters around Scandinavia. Research later showed that the alga becomes poisonous at particular concentrations of nitrogen and phosphorus, the result of agricultural and other pollution from Skagerak, the Baltic Sea, and the northern Scandinavian coast.