This past week has been extremely chaotic and overwhelming for me with my project. I bounced all over the place on ideas, and toyed with drastically changing my topic. However, the dust has finally settled and a clear vision of how I want to proceed has emerged. The setbacks I faced the past week were due to my thesis and research question not being clear enough. I realize now that I struggled with this so much because I wanted to solve and research all the problems instead of narrowing in on a more clear and concise focus. My new research question focuses in on the specific factors listed under “threats” on the IUCN red list for each of the top 5 countries with the most endangered species. Under this category I can then evaluate which of the top 2 factors are similar within Ecuador, United States, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Mexico. I am fascinated that these countries are the top 5 countries with the highest number of endangered species but more so I am shocked that the United States is within this group. It is the only developed country within the top 5. The other countries are developing nations and therefore I am not too surprised that they are experiencing a large loss of biodiversity. But the United States allocates a lot of money towards awareness and conservation for endangered species. So why are we so high on the list? Have we already caused so much irreparable damage that the programs and laws we have enacted have not even made a dent in helping our species? I find this to be fascinating when looking at it in comparison to the other countries. Ecuador did not surprise me too much because it is home to the Galapagos which contain one of the most threatened ecosystems within the world right now. I really am excited to delve deeper into these countries culture and examine the reasons why they have so many species listed. I have found many amazing articles that I need to go through more thoroughly to pull out more information and begin to analyze it. Hooray to finally forging ahead…!