Environmental Issues In Thomas Jefferson's Mammoths

During Thomas Jefferson’s life, he claimed that mammoths still roamed in the wild west of the United States. While current generations would find this laughable, and Jefferson never did prove this claim true, he thought it natural to think that mammoths would wander through the plains of Nevada. Around the same time, it was once routine for flocks of passenger pigeons to block out the sun, but now just as with Jefferson’s mammoths, younger generations cannot even truly imagine the phenomena. Shifts in the world’s ecosystem are natural, but when generations become used to the degradation of nature over time, it becomes an issue with conservation efforts. Shifting baseline syndrome, this issue of generations becoming accustomed to current states,

Millions upon millions of different organisms make their home in the ocean where humans cannot see them. But just because they remain invisible does not mean that do not play a vital role in the understanding of ocean life. Scientists collect and study the different specimens to understand, track, and predict changes within a certain species, identify between male and female, as well as discover new species entirely, and unravel relationships between multiple species (Smithsonian). But the ocean provides not only for the organisms living within in it, but also for humans who depend on the ocean more than many would first think. The ocean produces over fifty percent of the oxygen humans breathe, as well as regulating earth’s temperatures (Smithsonian). Thus, as the Sant Ocean Hall illustrations, valuing conservation becomes not only vital for scientists and environmentalists, but also for the regular human who would not normally think twice about the importance of the

How far back should humans be willing to look to restore nature to its pristine state? Is that even possible, and if it is, should humans even attempt it? Josh Donlan published a paper in the journal Nature in 2005 that stated that the first time baselines shifted to compensate for a loss happened with the mega fauna extinction. He proposed to bring the mega fauna back in order to restore the pristine state of nature (Mooallem). Donlan’s proposition was met with the obvious criticism. Not only impractical because of the resources needed to bring the mega fauna back, the current ecosystems would not be adept to handle the mega fauna as they had since adapted to thrive without them. If then, it is infeasible to return nature to its pristine state, what should our conservationist efforts focus