50 years laterthe river rouge

By Sid Bostek

river rouge, our home. What a wonderful place it is. Where people work and children play. It looks so innocent, but is it. No!

Every day forests in our water shed are cut down for our own greedy purposes. A nice green pasture one day is a parking lot the next. What is to become of our future? Only time can tell.

But I can guess.

When it comes to land use my worst case scenario is that Michigan would have another industrial revolution. We would

began to make industry are main use of land and factories would be built everywhere. Deadly gases would be released into the air, chemicals into the water. It would be a nature-al disaster.

In fifty years the human race has taken over almost all green

spaces in the river rouge. This means that all the animals’ habitats have been destroyed. Since the animals have nowhere

to go they are forced to make their habitats in society. This is already going on where we live with coyotes. If it’s already

happening, imagine it in fifty years.

The worst-case scenario for animals in fifty years that I can think of is if more and more invasive species came in until they killed all the animals that already in the rouge watershed. It is totally possible. If there are already as many invasive species here as

there is, in fifty years they could kill all of the indigenous species off.

When it comes to plants the worst is already happening. 1,256,550 forest hectares have been destroyed this year! At this rate, in fifty years there’s not going to be any forest left. Imagine

the world without any green spaces. That’s what our future holds.

Not having a pretty world isn’t the half of what losing our forests will cause. 2,491,646,985 tons of carbon dioxide emissions have bin released into the air this year. Without plant life to suck it in and turn it into oxygen we will slowly be suffocating with every

breath.