Conserving

(When talking about land Mark twain once said) "They don't make it anymore" and this is certainly true. Three different ways that we are destroying the land we do have are agriculture, mining and development.
Agriculture- the dangerous pesticides and toxic fertilizer people use make their crops grow faster or bigger are then picked up by rain water and it washed into rivers, ponds and underground water supplies. This can then get into our drinking water causing serious health problems and illnesses. Furthermore when we clear forests and fields to plant our crops we destroy ecosystems and animal's lives. Plus we take away all of the diversity in the crops. Especially when we clear rain forests we are taking away all the exotic different trees and vegetation replacing it with usually one type of tree that is planted for miles and miles. One of these industrial plants that are planted in great masses is the Palm Oil Tree. Thousands of mile of diverse rain forest were cleared to create this gigantic orchard of the same kind of tree.
Mining- Strip mining is one of the most destructive ways of mining. It involves removing a strip of land, extracting the nonrenewable resources underneath and then replacing the land. This can be a problem because it makes the soil almost totally infertile and prevents plants from growing there for many following years. In addition it makes the soil more vulnerable to being washed away and eroded.
Development- When people expand and build farther and farther into bucolic natural settings, building roads, factories and houses all the time. This drives animals out of their natural habitats it also means people are farming and mining more.