Balance of Nature - Human Intervention

Human Intervention

Although some conservationist organizations argue that human activity is incompatible with a balanced ecosystem, there are numerous examples in history showing that several modern day habitats originate from human activity: some of Latin America's rain forests owe their existence to humans planting and transplanting them, while the abundance of grazing animals in the Serengeti plain of Africa is thought by some ecologists to be partly due to human-set fires that created savanna habitats.

Possibly one of the best examples of an ecosystem fundamentally modified by human activity can be observed as a consequence of the Australian Aboriginal practice of "Fire-stick farming". The legacy of this practice over long periods has resulted in forests being converted to grasslands capable of sustaining larger populations of faunal prey, particularly in the northern and western regions of the continent. So thorough has been the effect of these deliberate regular burnings that many plant and tree species from affected regions have now completely adapted to the annual fire regime in that they require the passage of a fire before their seeds will even germinate.