Many animals and plants are endangered in the world today. These endangered species are threatened with becoming extinct, meaning they will no longer exist on Earth. Examples include the Cuban Macaw and the Sri Lankan Legume Tree. Illegal hunting, and collecting of the Macaw bird for pets, led to its extinction. While the main reason the native Sri Lankan Legume Tree went extinct was due to habitat loss from development in the 20thcentury. The main cause for animals and plants disappearing is often a damage to the food chain due to hunting, habitat loss or even the introduction of invasive species.

Every living thing from one-celled animals to a blue whale needs to eat. Nature is connected and controlled by many fragile food chains. A food chain describes who eats whom in a habitat. When one of the links in a food chain is no longer present -for example, a species goes extinct-the food chain breaks and sometimes this can cause other animals to disappear and the whole system can become imbalanced or even collapsed.

Humans can have disastrous effects on food chains. When people first explored the world, they took animal and plant species from their home countries to the places they explored and settled in. They did not realise the consequences of introducing invasive species. By doing so, they were damaging the natural food chains of the areas they explored.

Nowadays there are strict rules controlling the movement of animals and plants between countries. But some parts of the world are still experiencing problems with invasive species introduced hundreds of years ago.

With rising awareness of how we affect the natural environment, hopefully we can lean to protect these food chains and help them to thrive. Otherwise the continued loss of species will eventually mean our own extinction.

A change to organic dairy forming around the nature reserves could significantly reduce damage done to the areas by nitrogen (氮) produced by solid waste from cows, according to a research.

Concentrated animal farming near Natura 2000 areas was banned in 2002. However, 800 farms still remain in the outer edge of these protected areas, some of which are particularly damaging to the environment.

Researchers looked at 34 organic farms to see how organic fanning practices compared with those large-scale factory farms. They found that cows at organic farms produced 22% less nitrogen in their waste, while the amount of emissions per hectare (公顷) was 53% lower.

"The reason why organic farming is less polluting is that farms generally have fewer cows and don't use fertilizer," said researchers. Organic cows are also put out to grassland more often and aren't given concentrates (精饲料) to the same degree, which also limits emissions.

While organic dairy farms would make a good protective barrier against nitrogen around the nature reserves, this doesn't hold true for organic chicken and pig farms, the research showed.

"Despite the good it would do, not many dairy farmers are likely to make the change," researcher Gerard Migchels said. "The organic sector is currently relatively small. Growth is only possible if there is enough market demand. That would make it possible to come to a realistic price for organic milk J he said.

In 2019, some 40,000 cows in the Netherlands were farmed organically, accounting for just 1% of the Dutch herd of 3. 8 million.

According to a government report, 46% of nitrogen compound (复合物) pollution around nature reserves is down to agriculture, to which dairy fanning contributes 60%. The new law on nitrogen emissions aims to reduce pollution by 40% by 2025 and 74% by 2035.

Most of us use web browsers (浏览器) out of habit. However, there are a lot of similar apps for us to choose in the appstore. They serve the same purpose: visiting a website. So if the differences are minimal, why bother looking for something else?

As a matter of fact, a new type of internet navigator (导航器) , called a private browser, has emerged over the last three years. What stands out is that they minimize the data gathered about us by blocking the technologies used to track us, when most mainstream browsers, such as Chrome from Google, have been trying to develop a new way to target us with ads.

Private browsers generally rely on something called private mode, which is a browsing session that does not record a history of the websites you have visited. Firefox Focus, DuckDuckGo and Brave are all similar private browsers, but with some important differences.

Firefox Focus, available only for mobile devices like iPhones and Android smartphones, is the basic one. You input a web address and, when done browsing, hit the trash icon to erase the session. Quitting the app automatically purges the history.

The DuckDuckGo browser, also available only for mobile devices, is more like a traditional browser. The company says it is more focused on privacy because its ads do not track people's online behavior. When done browsing, you can hit the flame icon at the bottom to erase the session.

Brave is also more like a traditional web browser. It includes a private mode that must be turned on if you don't want people scrutinizing (仔细检查) your web history. Brave is so aggressive about blocking trackers that in the process, it almost always blocks ads entirely. The other private browsers block ads less frequently.

For most people, not seeing ads is undoubtedly a benefit. Brendan Eich, the chief executive of Brave, said, "If everybody used Brave, it would wipe out the tracking-based ad economy".

Count me in.