Dear Future President,

To start off, I would like to congratulate you on winning the election. Anyway, the reason I’m writing to you is that there are more important problems than what’s always on the news. In the past 50 years, the amount of environmental damage has been devastating. If people were more aware of the problems that face future generations, some of those problems could definitely be eliminated. People don’t always realize how much their actions impact the environment. Even if they do, they do nothing about it. The point is there are a lot of ignored problems in the environment, and that’s just wrong.

There are many well-known endangered species that are only endangered because of human actions. For example, poaching is something that people do that greatly impacts the population of animals like elephants and rhinos. Poaching is when humans kill animals for ivory, their skin, or fur. There is not as much poaching in the U.S as other countries, but we should still make poaching illegal in all parts of the U.S and increase the consequences of it. The act of killing endangered or threatened species is almost always pointless and just for recreation. Because of poaching, thousands of animals are murdered each year and it must stop.

Another thing that some people don’t realize is that animals aren’t the only ones suffering from human actions. Plants also take the fall for our destruction. We cut down trees, burn forests to the ground, and demolish not only the very things that clean the air we breathe, but the homes of thousands of animals and their families. Yes, people might say that we only do it to make our lives better by building more roads and having more farmland, but when you think about it, do we really even need all that stuff? What we do need to cut down is the amount of land that we’re getting rid of!

Mr. /Ms. President there are a lot of things we could do to save the environment. I know the U.S is not the only country that adds on to these issues, but we do have a great impact on them. As of October, 2009, 1,361 plants were listed as either threatened or endangered. And that’s just in the U.S alone! To add on to that, 10 species in the United States have been declared extinct in the last 50 years!

You don’t have to have everyone drive an environmentally friendly car, or recycle every single piece of plastic they see. That would be amazing, but nearly impossible. All you really have to do is start taking small steps towards a big goal. When you think about it, there are about 14,000 to 35,000 endangered species in the U.S alone, we’re filling the word with waste, and doing nothing about it. At this point, I would like to ask you one question; is this the kind of country YOU want to lead?

Sincerely,

Brittany H.