Wildlife conservation is the practice of protecting endangered plant and animal species and their habitats. Among the goals of wildlife conservation are to ensure that nature will be around for future generations to enjoy and to recognize the importance o fwildlife and wilderness lands to humans. Many nations have government agencies dedicated to wildlife conservation, which help to implement policies designed to protect wildlife. Numerous independent nonprofit organizations also promote various wildlife conservation causes.
Wildlife conservation has become an increasingly important practice due to the negative effects of human activity on wildlife. The science of extinction is called dirology. An endangered species is defined as a population of a living being that is at the danger of becoming extinct because of several reasons. Either they are few in number or are threatened by the varying environmental or predation parameters.
There are three major kinds of habitat loss:
Habitat destruction: A bulldozer pushing down trees is the iconic image of habitat destruction. Other ways that people are directly destroying habitat, include filling in wetlands, dredging rivers, mowing fields, and cutting down trees.
Habitat fragmentation: Much of the remaining terrestrial wildlife habitat in the U.S. has been cut up into fragments by roads and development. Aquatic species’ habitat has been fragmented by dams and water diversions. These fragments of habitat may not be large or connected enough to support species that need a large territory in which to find mates and food. The loss and fragmentation of habitat make it difficult for migratory species to find places to rest and feed along their migration routes.
Habitat degradation: Pollution, invasive species and disruption of ecosystem processes (such as changing the intensity of fires in an ecosystem) are some of the ways habitats can become so degraded that they no longer support native wildlife.
These are the few major threats to wildlife:
Climate change: Global warming is making hot days hotter,rainfall and flooding heavier, hurricanes stronger and droughtsmore severe. This intensification of weather and climate extremes will be the most visible impact of global warming in our everyday lives. It is also causing dangerous changes to the landscape of our world, adding stress to wildlife species and their habitat. Since many types of plants and animals have specific habitat requirements, climate change could cause disastrous loss of wildlife species. A slight drop or rise in average rainfall will translate into large seasonal changes.Hibernating mammals,reptiles, amphibians and insects are harmed and disturbed. Plants and wildlife are sensitive to moisture change so, they will be harmed by any change in moisture level. Natural phenomena like floods, earthquakes, volcanoes, lightning, forest fires.
Unregulated Hunting and poaching: Unregulated hunting and poaching causes a major threat to wildlife. Along with this, mismanagement of forest department and forest guards triggers this problem.
Pollution: Pollutants released into the environment are ingested by a wide variety of organisms.Pesticides and toxic chemical being widely used, making the environment toxic to certain plants, insects, and rodents.
Perhaps the largest threat is the extreme growing indifference of the public to wildlife, conservation and environmental issues in general. Over-exploitation of resources, i.e., exploitation of wild populations for food has resulted in population crashes (over-fishing and over-grazing for example).
Over exploitation is the over use of wildlife and plant species by people for food, clothing, pets, medicine, sport and many other purposes. People have always depended on wildlife and plants for food, clothing, medicine, shelter and many other needs. But today we are taking more than the natural world can supply. The danger is that if we take too many individuals of a species from their natural environment, the species may no longer be able to survive. The loss of one species can affect many other species in an ecosystem. The hunting, trapping, collecting and fishing of wildlife at unsustainable levels is not something new. The passenger pigeon was hunted to extinction early in the last century, and over-hunting nearly caused the extinction of the American bison and several species of whales.
