Animal Extinction Animals Are Dying There are several environmental issues that have impacted our world today and have caused severe effects to Earth. We must remember that we are not the only ones that live on this planet, because there are other species out there that are receiving the consequences of our mistakes. I am talking about animals and to be more specific, animal extinction. We are killing animals in an unnatural way. We mess with the fabric of nature when we excessively kill animals for profit (fur, taxidermy, etc.). After the total disappearance (extinction) of carnivores, we will leave the world with the herbivores which use to be prey. Now, prey (herbivores) will start breeding and feed totally on plants which later will diminish them. Without plants, we can’t breath, no shelter, and pollution will be from bad to worse. This in turn will put our species (human) to extinction. There are a lot of volunteers helping extinct animals and many ideas have been brought up to repopulate the extinct species. Some endangered animals are being held in captivity which provide them with food, water, toys and more species that they can play with. Endangered animals are also being trained to protect them selves so when they are fully grown and have been put to their natural habitat, they can protect them selves from wild species and not get hunted by humans. Most countries have laws now to protect endangered species. In some extreme cases, e.g. the panda, countries have set up entire breeding programs to ensure the survival of the species. The state of Hawai'i recently had massive areas declared conservation areas because of the threats to many unique native species. Another way is by just donating money to these programs that help the animals voluntarily. Atoms bond mainly because they want to become happy. In order to become happy the atoms must have a full outer shell of eight electrons. An atom might have one extra electron in which case they would need to give that away, unless an atom has almost enough electrons (let’s say seven) to become full they would need to borrow an electron. The goal of bonding is to make the atom stable and happy. There are different forms of bonding such as ionic and covalent bonding. Ionic bonds are bonds that are formed between two atoms, usually a metal and a non-metal through loosing or gaining an electron. The cations (positive) in the metal and the anions (negative) in the nonmetal attract with each other and form an ionic bond. Covalent bonds are usually between two non-metals. Covalent bonds involve atoms that SHARE electrons, these atoms do not loose or gain electrons but instead will share them to gain a full outer energy level. The chemical compound I chose was carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide (chemical formula CO 2 ) is a naturally occurring chemical compound composed of two oxygen atoms covalently bonded to a single carbon atom. I chose this chemical because the CO2 level is high and will get a higher if we kill predators, because there will be no animal in the wild to kill the preys that eat plants. We need plants to take in CO2 and breath out oxygen but if animals are eating the plants there will be nothing breathing in the plants. Carbon Dioxide 2 CO (g) + O 2 (g) -->2 CO 2 (g)