"ScrAPES #16- To Save the Environment, Let’s Put Humans on Birth Control"

Article-  To Save the Environment, Let’s Put Humans on Birth Control, Niki Rust and Laura Kehoe, July 19 2015, http://qz.com/452614/to-save-the-environment-lets-put-humans-on-birth-control/

Topic: Family Planning 

Summary:
     The human population is increasing; threatening 14% more of our plant's species along with  causing 52% of species extinction. Conservationists are being called out for their lack of concern to  reducing the population. It is stated that we are causing a lot of damage to our environment: ice free lands, climate change, and sixth mass extinction are all done by us. Family planing and providing female education is a suggested method to save our environment. Females who have access to education and family planning will have fewer children; reducing the population by 2050 of 1 billion. Also, wildlife conservation is being mixed in with family planning. For example, Women are trained to give out contraceptions in rural villages close to protected areas. This helped to reduce the ecological footprint by 267 global hectares by introducing family planning. Challenges that are being faced are the annual cost of $8.1 billion to distribute family planning around the world, and meeting the demands of suppling contraceptions; religion and cultures are limiting females from education and contraceptive use. In the article, the writers want conservationists to look at population growth as a major concern; in the hopes that they see that in reducing population can create sustainability and protection to our environment. 
     I chose this article because I wanted to learn on how reducing our population helps the environment. What I found interesting is that conservationists are not considering population growth a major concern. I can connect to this article to one of our readings in the environmental text book; reading about population growth and its effects on the planet, and about the importance of family planning. 
    This article is important to environmental science because this helps to show that female education and family planning does help to reduce population size, which in turn helps to reduce the use of natural resources and species extinction, protecting our environment. The next step is to try to spread the word of the importance in family planning and saving our environment. Now we should conduct more research in finding ways to better our environment.