🎣 Overexploitation
Overexploitation is taking too much, too quickly.
When the removal rate is higher than reproduction or regrowth, populations decline and may collapse.
How this affects food webs: Overexploitation is a direct human impact because organisms (animals, fish, or plants) are removed faster than they can be replaced. This interrupts energy transfer between trophic levels and can trigger trophic cascades.
Overexploitation = unsustainable use (take > replace).
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Examples
- Overfishing: populations fall, food webs change — Atlantic cod collapsed by ~99% by the 1990s and is still recovering decades later
- Poaching: removes breeding adults → rapid decline — elephants killed for ivory, rhinos for horns
- Logging: old-growth forests cut faster than they regrow — ancient forests cleared before full ecological recovery
Always link to biodiversity: fewer individuals → fewer species → lower resilience (use a named example such as Atlantic cod or elephant poaching).