MAN - THE ENDANGERED SPECIES

It took just seventy 'years till 1914 for all the passenger pigeons in the wuld to disappear. The last moa was one of the hundreds eaten year by year. by the first settlers in New Zealand. The last elephant bird probably lived over three hundred years ago. And the hunters of South Africa shot the very last quagga in 1883.
  All  these animals, and countless others are dead as the dodo that waddled its last on
the island of Mauritius in 1681. When we see pictures of these fabulous creatures in books it sends rl shiver down the spine to know that it was man who plundered their habitats or hunted them all to extinction, only to satisfy his selfish and insatiable greed.
 Could this happen to all that remains of our planet? Could there ever be a last tiger or elephant, rhinocE'ros or arange-outange - or even a last tree? Yes, there could. Today, thousands of species are endangered: And because man not only hunts them for their meat and skin but also destroys their habitat, one of the species that is doomed to face extinction is man himself. In a world where other animals can't
 live .. man can't live.
How long can our earth sustain us if we go on using everything, for everything we need, as if there is no tomorrow? Animals are killed for meat and skin, trees are cut down for paper, plants are uprooted for food, minerals are dug from the ground. But even nature's abundant larder is not inexhaustible. If we don't take care of
 what we have left, soon there'll be nothing left to plunder. Taking care of what we have left means trying to strike a balance between our needs and the needs of every other living thing on earth.