Environmentalists and other stakeholders have put in place different coping mechanisms to ensure that the ecosystem’s equilibrium is not altered to the worse. It is true that of greatest concern to the fight against environmental degradation and the balancing of the ecosystem has been the need to control animal population that has increased with over 80% in the last two centuries. Overcrowding of animals has no doubted changed patterns within the ecosystem. As result of overcrowding in the wild settings environmentalists have designed numerous ways of reducing the animal population. One of these strategies has been to eliminate certain species of animals that they consider worthless.

The practice of species elimination has been supported and opposed in equal measure. Conserving the environment remains everybody’s duty. However, human beings have ignorantly assumed control over nature and sought to determine the fate of other animals in the ecosystem through species elimination Nation Research Council US. Species elimination has no justification and should be opposed with the vigor it deserves.

Environmentalists have defined an ecosystem as the shared environmental setting in which biological communities live and generally all physical, chemical and survival features that define both its living and the non-living things. Different examples of environments in which organisms live have been put forward to exemplify what an ecosystem is. These include fish ponds, forests, the sea and estuaries. Recent research works have defined an ecosystem as a geographical setting inhabited by distinctive animal and plant species that have adapted and can therefore cope easily with the environmental conditions of the geographical setting.

Due to the wide nature of the concept of ecosystem, it is very difficult to differentiate which particular settings in which animals live are rated as the true ecosystems. However, scholars in this area gave stressed that as long as an environmental setting is shared by animals of different species, such a setting qualifies as an ecosystem (National Research Council, 85). Furthermore, differentiation of ecosystems has only been possible when a setting is segmented in terms of what a particular study seeks to research on in the wider environmental setting.

There are various species of animals and plants that have been earmarked for elimination. For instance, there has been a push to have a number of wild predators like wolves, lions and wild bears eliminated from ecosystems in which the reassured white-tailed dears (Johnson 34). According to proponents for this elimination, there is need to eliminate mountain lions, wolves and the bears from the ecosystem in order to allow comfortable breeding of the white-dears. The reason prompting this elimination is the fact that white-tailed dears have multiplied first thus requiring larger grazing areas. The proponents recommend that after the elimination of the mentioned three species, tree planting exercise on the plants that the white-tailed dears feed on should start. The fundamental question that opponents ask in regard to this situation is whether human beings have control over what nature selects. Is it right for human beings to assume the role of deciding the fate of other species to the point of selecting which one should be eliminated from the ecosystem?

It is accepted world over that there is need to conserve endangered and threatened species of animals and plants (National Research Council, 92). There is a big difference between endangered and threatened species within an ecosystem. Threatened species constitute key types of animals within a category which are at the risk of getting endangered. Once a species is endangered, it is at the brink of getting extinct. In Florida for instance, the sea turtle is both an endangered and threatened species. Nature and complexities of extinction of species, man is has been ranked as the top most cause in the endangering of many species of the world.

Scientists and environmentalists have been at the forefront in ensuring that endangered and threatened species are preserved and cushioned from harsh environmental conditions. This, however, is not the justification for human beings to dictate and decide which species of the animals or plant is worth or not worth living. Human beings are living things like other species and should not undermine the existence of other species.

Various arguments have been advanced by proponents and opponents of elimination of species for purposes of stabilizing the ecosystem and favoring species considered valuable than others. The views of the proponents of species eliminations have revolved around the need to conserved and ensure the survival of valuable species. There are plants, the proponents assert, that provide medicine to human beings and should not be allowed to perish in favor of flourishing useless plants. They believe that some species of animals have no economic value and their existence causes the environment more harm than good. In a nutshell, the opponents of species elimination have argued on the basis that it is not moral for human beings to partake in the elimination of other species. They believe that human beings should be patient and allow nature to it due course in its legendary role stipulated in the theory of natural selection.