Chapter 9 (Kwasi Obeng-Dankwa)

Chapter 9 puts us in Reserve 1202, in Brazil, where there are 25 acres of rainforests not available to farmers and ranchers. It is controlled by the Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project which is run by Tom Lovejoy. His research is supposed to compare his reserve to the main rainforest area. While we have 50 million square miles of acres of land, we humans have inhabited more than 25 million. We are then introduced to Mario Cohn-Haft who has seen a decrease in the biodiversity of the mainland. Humans actions such as forest deforestation are expressed in this chapter and blamed for the decrease in the biodiversity of rainforests. For example, Terry Erwin claimed that there used to be 30 million species of arthropods but this number has continuously decreased.

This chapter focused very much on the extinction of species. Throughout the chapter, statistics on the number of animals going extinct are stated multiple times. For example, it states "By the end of the day you could have heard a hundred and fifty species of birds and only seen ten... Right now I'm hearing only two bird species(178)." ... this means that something like five thousand species are being lost each year(186)." Both of these quotes show the focus of the chapter on extinction. Human effects from previous chapters are now shown with the decrease in biodiversity. The theme that connected with the chapter the most is: Humans alter natural systems. As stated before, because of human effects such as forest deforestation and global warming, other species are finding their habitats inhabitable and not suitable for survival anymore.  When talking about the Anthropocene era that we are in, the book states "... the world is changing in ways that create barriers-roads, clear-cuts, cities- that prevents them from doing so(189)." This quote shows the true horrors of human influences. This is because many species not being able to survive in changing climates and atmospheres and even those that can are not able to migrate because of human structures such as cities and roads. Ultimately, even the species that are able to survive but are in search of new habitats are not able to do so and are caged in difficult habitats. The effects of humans on this Earth becomes more apparent with each chapter and the effect are more devasting each time.