The answer is yes. Even the efforts of one person can help protect our planet. The issues may be easier to understand if you know not only what you should do but also why you should do it.
Consider the basics. Plants and animals, including humans, need food and water to survive. These needs are met by the natural resources found in the biosphere of Earth. To protect these resources, we need to keep the air clean and the water drinkable. How do we do that?
The soil that covers fields and farms provides much of the food we eat. Human activities such as plowing fields, mining, and building highways can destroy the land. Erosion occurs when wind and water wear away the soil. Soil erosion and overgrazing by animals eventually can turn rich farmland into a desert wasteland. So does this mean we shouldn’t build a highway or plow a field? Of course not. But it does mean we should consider Earth-friendly ways of doing those things.
Today, farmers plow their fields in a variety of ways designed to prevent erosion. They try to limit the amount of water they use for their crops. They keep animals from grazing in just one area. Farmers also plant trees to prevent soil from blowing or washing away.
Another human activity that hurts the land is deforestation. This is the removal of large numbers of trees from a forest. Millions of acres of the tropical rain forest biome are cleared away each year. When this happens, many plants and animals lose their habitat. They may die out, or become extinct. Scientists haven’t even discovered all the organisms living in the tropical rain forest. We may be losing species without even knowing they exist.
According to scientists, every day an estimated one hundred plant and animal species are lost to deforestation. Some scientists predict that about 50 percent of the Earth’s species will vanish within the next one hundred years.