Enviornmental Science - Essay Example

They are extremely fragile environments, and just the presence of man can have serious impact on these islands. However, they are extremely important as protection of coastlines and as habitat for wildlife. Development in these fragile ecosystems affects the wildlife which lives there and seriously changes the ecosystem. Man creates more permanent structures, but builds them on shifting sands. Pollutants alter the local environment and people seriously damage the various structures of the barrier islands with their activities.

For example, even treated sewage alters the nutritive balance and can cause a predominance of algae formation. Human construction causes erosion to accelerate and chemicals kill off whole populations of the fragile food chain. To accommodate development of high rise hotels and golf courses, sand dunes are destroyed and salt marshes and barrier flats are filled in. These are three of the dynamically interacting systems of barrier islands. Allowing the development of barrier islands is an expensive proposition as luxury homes, hotels and condos can be totally destroyed in a hurricane.

The public actually foots the cost of this as insurance rates rise for everyone, and the government provides some insurance which insurance companies refuse to sell. So the ecological damage, which is sometimes permanent, plus the enormous cost is simply filling some developers’ pockets. (1) Marshes and wetlands harbor a wide variety of wildlife and help to create and maintain barrier island systems which protect the coast. New Orleans is a case in point. It has lost more than a million acres since 1930 of its barrier islands and wetlands. (2) The marshes are critical breeding grounds which nurture several commercially important species, including shrimp. (3)More than this, Hurricane Katrina would have done much less damage to the gulf coast with these