3 examples of ecological catastrophes caused by human error.

1. Extinction of life on Easter Island.

For many years, a lot of scientists debated on the history of Easter Island. Because of its location, for centuries it remained completely cut off from outside world. Recent research show that in it’s best years it served home for more that 15,000 people. But when Netherlands sailors discovered its existence on Easter Sunday in 1722, they were stunned by small, dying population of approximately 1,000 inhabitants. At that time they were desperately fighting for survive on completely deforested island which could not provide food anymore, which finally resulted in huge rate of cannibalism among people living there. But why did it happen? The theory stated by Jared Diamond – American evolutionary biologist, shows that it is very probable that Easter Island inhabitants are fully responsible for their own extermination, which was caused by excessive use of wood. He also states that a large part of it was used to build and transport hundreds of Moai statues located around the island, which currently are the main tourist attraction on Easter Island.

2. The great hunger in Ireland.

Not everybody knows that potato, which currently is in top 5 of crops grown by human and still one of the biggest sources of food in the world, wasn’t grown in Europe until Columbus discovered America in 1492 and brought it to his homeland aside with a lot of spices and tobacco. From that time it remained the main source of food of European people until XX century and was considered as a wonderful plant that should end the hunger in Europe forever. But what human didn’t expect, was that huge monocultural cultivation of potato may result in one of the biggest famine disaster in history of mankind which actually happened in Ireland in the mid XIX century. It was caused by a microorganism called Phytophthora infestans, brought to Europe on ships coming back from United States. The plague quickly spread across continent and destroyed most of the potato crops. This wasn’t very harmful for most of countries, as far as they could feed their citizens with grain plants,. But in Ireland, where potato was the majority of crops, it resulted in true disaster which, according to the newest research, caused death of more than 2 million (20%) of people who inhabited Ireland, and forced millions to abandon their houses and emigrate.

3. Drying the Aral Lake (Aral Sea)

In 1918, the Soviet authorities decided that in the dry tracts of the desert, along the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers, they will start planting cotton on a large scale. Their goal was to make the Soviet Union a leading cotton manufacturer in the world. They believed that cotton would become "white gold" and the basis of the economies of the republics of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. The construction of canals crossing the desert areas of Kara-kum began in the 1930s and was conducted against all the rules of hydrological architecture. As a result of it, from 30 to 70% of the water collected by the Syr-daria and Amu-Daria rivers irretrievably seeped into the soil or evaporated, reaching neither crops nor the lake. The amount of water reaching the Aral Lake was steadily decreasing, without counteracting the effects of evaporation. It is estimated that by 1960, 20-50 km³ of water instead of feeding the lake, soaked into the ground. Until that time Aral Lake was the fourth biggest lake on Earth. In it’s not very deep waters it hid rich flora and fauna. Aral was one of the most important fishing spots in the former Soviet Union, it fed people and gave hundreds of workplaces in the fishing industry. No effort has been done to stop the process of drying, so the surface of the lake began to decrease systematically. Since the 1960s, the water level has fallen by about 20 cm per year, in the 70s by about 60 cm, and a decade later by 90 cm.

Nowadays Aral Lake lost more that 80% of it’s original size. This resulted in death of most of flora and fauna, mesoclimatic changes, degeneration of river delta ecosystems, increase in the number of sand and salt-dust storms, destruction of the fishing industry, shortening of the growing season and decrease in field productivity. Nowadays the two former largest Aral fishing ports: Moynak on the Uzbek side and Aralsk in Kazakhstan, are tens of kilometres from the shore. The history of the Aral Lake shows what man, his megalomania and ignorance can lead to.