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The environment is everything about you. It can be living, like a forest. It can be non-living, like a rock mountain. An environment can be natural or manmade.
There are many kinds of environments. There are cities, small towns and farms. There are oceans, lakes, deserts and forests. Each of these has its own mixture of living things and non-living things. Even man-made environments, such as cities, have both living and non-living things. An environment may have such living things as birds, fish and plants. It has such non-living things as air, soil and water.
Many animals and plants are found in only one kind of environment. Man, however, can be found in almost all environments. He can even visit places where he needs special things to live, such as the moon.
No living thing can live alone. Every living thing depends upon other things in its environment. When something changes, it has an effect on something else. If a non-living thing like water becomes hard to find, plants will be affected. If plants die out, the animals who eat plants will be affected.
Weather, such as temperature, wind and rain, can change an environment. People can change an environment, too. Some things that people do cause no change or only a small change in the environment. For instance, people can walk through the woods and just look. People can cut down only a few trees from a large area and still not change the environment very much.
On the other hand, some things that people do cause a lot of change. They can change a while environment by cutting down a forest.
Not all changes are bad. If we cut down a forest to build houses, plant crops or make paper, this may not be bad. But what if we cut down all trees in all forests to do these things? What if we didn’t save some and replace others? What effect would this have on other living and non-living things in our environment?
It is clear that people have the power to change an environment. What they do has an affect on all the living and non-living things there. This is why it is important to think about the change before we make them. When people make wise choices, the environment stays healthy. Let’s all work together to keep it clean and healthy.
