WHY to Preserve Our Environment
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How to make an herbarium video Linked below
Why Would You Preserve?
Why is it important for us to preserve our environment? First, what is exactly preserving? Is it not just away to pickle your food like cucumbers or eggs? The act of preservation is to maintain something in its original or its state now. So, this begs the question of why we should preserve our environment/nature. Our environment is just filled with different plants, animals, and other people, and that's exactly why we should preserve it. Think of the place you are living in right now, what would happen if there were not the same animals there, like rabbits that sometime show up in your backyard to graze on your lawn, the lizards who are sunbathing or doing push-ups on your sidewalk, those long lines of ants that are just going no where up a wall, etc. Think of all these little things, and now think of all of them disappearing one by one. Then think of the most important people around you moving away because the environment around you is not suitable anymore.
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This all stems from plants and how you take care of your surroundings. Just like the people and animals around you, everyone needs plants. Not just as food but for oxygen, coverage from the sun, water cycle regulation, etc. This is something that should not be new to you, and may have lost it's meaning to you. So, here is a little reminder of how important the environment is to you as a person. Think of that big tree in your backyard gone, your honeysuckles and orange tree erased, no leave piled to jump into and for you to rake up again, think of no palm treats to hid under or get the perfect photo with, then think of all that grass gone leaving you only with dust and sand. Your environment effects the way you look at the world and shapes you as a person. A lot of the key components to shaping you into the person you are now is from your environment which all start from the plants around you, but that environment might be gone in the next years to come. We are becoming carless, mindless cutting down trees for more room and buildings, burning hillsides from rouge sparks, trampling on the plants that block your way to find a perfect hiding spot, and just not thinking about what we are doing to our surroundings is killing us. We are a dying race and our actions are just enforcing this.
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What can you do?
What Can I Do Now?
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After learning all of this, more than likely, people want to know what can we do to stop this. The first thing is to start volunteering with people who work at nature preserves, collecting trash not just on highways but in your neighborhood, go to botanicals gardens to help, go to nurseries to help, start or help a community garden, or/and make an HERBARIUM.
What is an Herbarium?
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Think of those leaves you kept in books and pressed inside of the books till they were all dry. Although not as rudimentary, that act of preserving plants is what an herbarium does. An Herbarium is a physical catalog of sorts for plants. Herbariums include, where the plant was found, what species it is, and the physical plant itself. This is an incredible way for us to help our environment because the physical plant in the herbarium is preserved and could be used by scientists and then cloned to repopulate a whole species. That is why we have attached a video on how you can make one too.
