Pollution+Agriculture=Habitat Destruction

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This website is to give you a brief depiction of what habitat destruction is and what causes it.

Habitat destruction is the process in which natural habitat is rendered functionally unable to support the species originally present. In this process, plants and animals which previously used the site are displaced or destroyed, reducing biodiversity. Agriculture is the principal cause of habitat destruction. Other important causes of habitat destruction include mining, logging, and urban sprawl. Habitat destruction is currently ranked as the most important cause of species extinction worldwide.^[1] It is a process of environmental change important in evolution and conservation biology. As the name implies, it describes the emergence of discontinuities (fragmentation) in an organism's preferred environment (habitat). Habitat fragmentation can be caused by geological processes that slowly alter the layout of the physical environment or by human activity such as land conversion, which alters the environment on a rapid time scale. The former is suspected of being one of the major causes of speciation. The latter is causative in extinctions of many species.

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In the simplest terms, when a habitat is destroyed, the plants, animals, and other organisms that occupied the habitat have a reduced carrying capacity so that populations decline and extinction becomes more likely. The single greatest threat to species worldwide is the loss of habitat. Temple (1986) found that 82% of endangered bird species were significantly threatened by habitat loss. Habitat destruction, often sugar-coated by the phrase of "land-use change", is the primary cause of loss of biodiversity.

Biodiversity hotspots are mostly tropical regions that feature high concentrations of endemic species and, when all hotspots are combined, may contain over half of the world’s terrestrial species. These hotspots are suffering enormous habitat loss, as each hotspot has lost at least 70% of its primary vegetation.Most of the natural habitat on islands and in areas of high human population density has already been destroyed (WRI, 2003). Islands suffering extreme habitat destruction include New Zealand, Madagascar, the Philippines, and Japan.South and east Asia—especially China, India, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Japan—and many areas in west Africa have extremely dense human populations that allow little room for natural habitat. Marine areas close to highly populated coastal cities also face degradation of their coral reefs or other marine habitat. These areas include the eastern coasts of Asia and Africa, northern coasts of South America, and the Caribbean Sea and its associated islands.Regions of unsustainable agriculture and/or unstable governments, which may go hand-in-hand, typically experience high rates of habitat destruction. Central America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and the Amazonian tropical rainforest areas of South America are the main regions with unsustainable agricultural practices or government mismanagementAreas of high agricultural output tend to have the highest extent of habitat destruction. In the U.S., less than 25% of native vegetation remains in many parts of the East and Midwest. Only 15% of land area remains unmodified by human activities in all of Europe