Planet Earth 2 – Deserts – Aoibhe McCarron
Planet Earth 2 – Deserts
Guest Blog by Aiobhe McCarron
In Madagascar, locusts which are normally solitary creatures come together in extreme numbers when the smell the smell of newly sprouting grass. They devour everything and devastate the land causing soils to turn to dust with no plants to bind them, producing vast new stretches of desert every year. This causes struggles for human communities who have lost their livelihoods due to the mass destruction. To me, this is reflective of what we as a species have done to the natural world, devastating animal habitats and food sources for our own benefit.
The Earth’s deserts are getting hotter and expanding at a faster rate than ever before due to global warming caused by humans, this leaves desert creatures short on time to adapt to their ever changing environments and their fate is uncertain. This is not dissimilar to the devastation COVID-19 is causing the human race currently, due to our own actions; we have cause our demise and we cannot catch up with this rapidly growing disease.
