7 Things Nobody Told You About Animal Species Are Disappearing, And We The People Are The Problem.
Animal Species Are Disappearing, How to save the animals?
Animal Species Are Disappearing, the problem is people…
Please also Note…Animal Species Are Disappearing,
And We The People Are The Problem
Biologists estimate there are between 5 and 15 million species of plants, animals, and micro-organisms existing on Earth today, of which only about 1.5 million have been described and named. The estimated total includes around 300,000 plant species, between 4 and 8 million insects, and about 50,000 vertebrate species (of which about 10,000 are birds and 4,000 are mammals).
Why are species disappearing?
- the ongoing growth of human populations and unsustainable consumer lifestyles
- increasing production of waste and pollutants
- urban development
- international conflict
Animal species are disappearing and we the people are the problem for Global biodiversity is being lost much faster than natural extinction due to changes in land use, unsustainable use of natural resources, invasive alien species, climate change and pollution among others.
Land conversion by humans And We The People Are The Problems, resulting in natural habitat loss, is most evident in tropical forests and is less intensive in temperate, boreal, and arctic regions. Pollution from atmospheric nitrogen deposition is most severe in northern temperate areas close to urban centres; and the introduction of damaging alien species is usually brought about through patterns of human activity.
Seven different animal species are disappearing, including species of the sea (or marine) turtles that grace our ocean waters, from the shallow seagrass beds of the Indian Ocean to the colorful reefs of the Coral Triangle and the sandy beaches of the Eastern Pacific. While these highly migratory species periodically come ashore to either bask or nest, sea turtles spend the bulk of their lives in the ocean. WWF’s work on sea turtles focuses on five of those species: green, hawksbill, loggerhead, leatherback, and olive ridley
Over the last 200 years, human activities have tipped the scales against the survival of these ancient mariners. Slaughtered for their eggs, meat, skin, and shells, sea turtles suffer from poaching and over-exploitation. They also face habitat destruction and accidental capture—known as bycatch—in fishing gear. Climate change has an impact on turtle nesting sites; it alters sand temperatures, which then affects the sex of hatchlings. Nearly all species of sea turtle are now classified as endangered, with three of the seven existing species being critically endangered.
Animal Species Are Disappearing World’s Most Unusual Forests 8 of the problem is people.
“The clearest way into the universe is through a forest wilderness,” wrote John Muir. From Madagascar’s giant baobab trees to the green bamboo groves of China, the variety of such portals into the sublime seems endless. Check out these views of eight unusual forests around the world, along with a glimpse of the wildlife that depend upon each for survival.
Cross River Gorilla
Native to the rainforests and lowland montane forests of Nigeria and Cameroon, this gorilla is losing its habitat to logging and forest clearing for livestock pastures and agriculture. Only 100 to 200 remain over about 3,000 square miles of territory. Roads built to facilitate development have also given poachers easier access to the gorillas.Native to lowland rainforests of southeastern Brazil, these long-furred primates are at risk of extinction owing to loss of
Boreal Caribou
Around 32,000 caribou inhabit about 1.5 million square miles of Canada’s boreal forest. That’s a lot of room to run, but it’s less than half the area they roamed in the 19th century, when boreal caribou numbered in the hundreds of thousands. Their population continues to decline with the destruction of the forest for mining, oil and gas development, and logging. This decrease led the Canadian government to declare the species endangered in 2012.
Maned Sloth
Maned sloths spend their lives in the trees, munching twigs, leaves, and buds. It’s no myth that sloths are slow movers: The average sloth covers about 40 yards a day and is awake for only four to nine hours. Sloths are native to the Atlantic Forest of eastern Brazil, which has nearly vanished to make room for grazing, coal mines, and other development. Only 7 percent of the Atlantic Forest remains in Central and South America.
Milne Edwards Sportive Lemur
The population of this lemur, which is native to the deciduous forests of western Madagascar, has dropped by about 50 percent. The cause is habitat loss: the burning of forest to clear land for livestock grazing.
Asian Crested Ibis
This beautiful bird was once abundant across eastern Eurasia and Asia, but loss of its woodland and wetland habitats, along with overhunting, drove the species to the brink of extinction. By 1981, the remaining wild population was down to just seven birds in one forested area of Shaanxi province in central China. Current estimates put the population at around 500 in China, and efforts are under way to reintroduce a captive-bred population to the wild in Japan.
Red-Cheeked Gibbon
As tropical evergreen forests in Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia have fallen to road building, plantations, and other development, this gibbon’s numbers have declined. The Seima Biodiversity Conservation Area in eastern Cambodia and surrounding forests are home to what may be the single largest remaining population—between 2,600 and 3,400 groups of three to five gibbons each. At Seima, conservationists are collaborating with local communities to enforce anti-logging laws, monitor wildlife, protect local land rights, and improve household incomes in ways that sustain the forest.
Jaguar
Jaguars are the biggest of the big cats in the Americas: Fully grown males weigh in at 250 pounds. They were once found from the tip of South America to the southern United States, but loss of woodland habitat has reduced their range to central and northern South America, and deforestation remains the biggest risk to the animals’ survival. There are an estimated 15,000 jaguars in the wild today.
Okapi
The okapi, a horse-size relative of the giraffe, has been a protected species in the Democratic Republic of the Congo since 1933. But logging of its equatorial rainforest habitat, poaching, and mining have cut okapi numbers more than 50 percent in the past two decades. Breeding programs at dozens of zoos are helping to conserve the species. The rainforest of the Okapi Wildlife Reserve in northeastern Congo is also home to a number of species at risk of extinction, including chimpanzees, forest elephants, and leopards.
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