Over the whole history of the earth, millions of plants and animals have disappeared. The major reason might be the natural causes such as climate changes and some catastrophic events. However, something is different recently. Today, with the development of human civilization, human activity exerts a strong influence on the cause of the endangered species. We are looking into how the reason why plants and animals are endangered relates to human activity. There are four reasons in the following passage.
First, some species are endangered because of the destruction or the degradation of their habitat. As is known to all that most species are adapted to a specific environment, if they lose the habitat they got used to, they cannot survive. Human beings want to develop enough residential area to live in, industrial area to work in as well as some agricultural places to grow crops in. Many forests, grass land and deserts are destroyed for people’s own purpose. Also during the operation and the construction, some accidents such as oil explosion and some pollution will certainly happen. For example, the acid rain has destroyed many residential habitats for some fish and some plants themselves. Also the water pollution dirtied many pure lakes and rivers which leaded to some extinction of the marine animals. The destruction and the degradation are really killers that threaten a lot of individuals of some species.
The second major cause of endangered species is the illegal wild animal trades. In spite of some laws passing to be against these trades, there are still many illegal trades all over the world in order to gain some benefits. Sometimes people hunt the wild animals for food. But in the most situations, they hunt wild speci...
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...animals are introduced abroad or to a new habitat on purpose or by accident. And they will be a threat to those plants and animals that are originally grown there. The example that European rabbit were sent to Australia and caused many species to die can explain it quite clearly.
In conclusion, the four major reasons which are destruction of the habitats, illegal wild animal trades, over exploitation and the competition with the domestic and introduced species matters a lot. These human activities cause the imbalance of the biological chain. As well as they are breaking the diversity of the whole nature. We human beings should be very careful because all these major reasons are related to our behavior. We are the only creature who can change the severe situation. Our activity is the main cause of the extinction of some plants and animals in the current world.
The latter half of the twentieth century was host to the greatest and most widespread advancements in environmental awareness in human history. It was during this time that people began to consider the effects of their polluting cars and their wasteful habits. People began to realize that something must be done to curb humans’ negative impacts on their surroundings and thus the environmental movement was born. One of the most important factors that resulted from this expansion of environmental consciousness occurring over the last several decades has been the protection of endangered species. Much has been done in the legal world to ensure the continued longevity of our planet’s diversity, including two major policies: CITES and the Endangered Species Act. Each of these policies has approached the welfare of endangered species in a different way, with varying degrees of success. Each strategy will be summarized and analyzed, beginning with the CITES treaty, as it was enacted before the Endangered Species Act. However, before examining the function and effectiveness of each strategy, it is important to understand the history behind each one of them.
Disease, pollution, and limited distribution are factors that threaten various plant and animal species. Also, if the current rate of forest loss continues, huge quantities of plant and animal species will disappear.
Mr. Middleton, a journalist, compiled an article describing, in his opinion, the flaws of the Endangered Species Act. He then attempts to back his opinion with studied analyses, researched facts, and testimonies. To summarize Middleton’s (2011) perspective, “Rather than provide incentives for conservation and environmental stewardship, the Endangered Species Act punishes those whose property contains land that might be used as habitat by endangered and threatened species” (p. 79). This quote is broad and generalized yet draws in readers and forces Middleton to spend the rest of the article backing this statement with more logic based facts.
.... Some animals face endangerment because of human’s hunting activities and because of the climate changes. Due to the endangered rare species, people solve this problem by bringing these animals back to their natural habitat.
Habitat destruction, deforestation, ozone depletion, global warming, and poaching. These actions and ecological happenings are creating a world where animals are going extinct at rapid rates. Our world is on the brink of what scientists believe is the sixth mass extinction. Unlike the five previous mass extinction, the latest one killing a majority of the dinosaurs, the main causes for this current extinction are anthropogenic reasons, not natural events.
The human race has a seemingly impossible challenge before them. While many focus on huge social issues such as terrorism and world hunger, which are completely valid and important issues, many have forgotten about the state of humanity’s neighbors within our very planet. Earth is in the midst of its sixth great extinction, keyed as the Holocene Extinction after the current epoch the planet is in. The Holocene Extinction, starting between 9,000 and 13,000 years ago, is the most recent since the Cretaceous-Tertiary mass extinction, during which the dinosaurs were wiped out (Heymann, Chibante and Brooks). Such knowledge of our current ongoing mass extinction event is not well known among the common populace. The simple fact is that the human
There are several main reasons why endangered species proceed towards extinction. Greta Nilsson wrote an article for the encyclopedia about endangered species. In the first part of her essay, she focused on the four main reasons that put plants and animals on the endangered species list: destruction of habitat, exotic animal exchange, overhunting, and competition between nat...
There were 5 mass extinctions in the past, with the latest one more known to man, the Cretaceous-Tertiary mass extinction that caused the wiped out of the dinosaurs. Though the latest one happened 65 million years ago, something representing this phenomenon of mass extinction is underway in our era. While past mass extinctions were caused by natural forces, and asteroid, climate change and sea level’s changes were thought to be the culprit, this time the actor behind is not natural, and it is us Human Beings. It might occur to many that the current trend of animal extinction has no consequences on us, but in fact it is not true. Many of the endangered species does matter to us significantly. In this paper, using examples of some neglected critical endangered species as main headings, I will look into different forms of human activities that had led to their losses, and also more importantly how these losses could have impacted on us.
The term endangered is used by international and national organizations to define plants and animals currently in danger of becoming extinct. Although the term endangered is universally used, the definition of an endangered species is greatly varied. In most cases, the factors causing an organism to become endangered are human- related. When discussing the causes of endangered species, it is important to understand that individual species are not the only factors involved in this dilemma. Endangerment is a broad issue, one that involves the habitats and environments where species live and interact with one another. Although some measures are being taken to help specific cases of endangerment, the universal problem cannot be solved until humans protect the natural environments where endangered species dwell. Back in the fall of 1973 Congress passed the Endangered Species Act, the point of which was to identify the plants and animals in the most trouble and come up with plans for saving them. The effort has probably been as controversial as it has been successful (Institute of Advanced Studies 39). Of the more than 1,400 species designated as endangered, only 18 have recovered to the point where they've been taken off the list. Upon signing the Endangered Species Act on December 28, 1973, President Nixon stated "Nothing is more priceless and more worthy of preservation than the rich array of animal life with which our country has been blessed" (Environmental Protection Agency). And now that scientists have cloned the last surviving member of a rare breed of cow, some fear that the public's sense of urgency regarding vanishing species might fade. Why not just clone more owls, the thinking goes; but that, say wildlife experts, would be only a quick fix. "Cloning would provide us with individual animals but not the home to introduce them to in the wild," says Jeff Flocken, endangered species outreach coordinator at the National Wildlife Federation. "Whatever's causing a species to decline, whether it's exploitation or destruction of a habitat, would continue to put that species at risk of being exterminated" (National Wildlife Federation ).
Humans are destructive. Not a lot of us think about how what we do affects the world around us. We almost act like we are the only ones on this planet. We go around polluting and destroying our world with no regard for our actions. The things that live out in the wild are paying the price for it. Every day that passes there is another animal or plant that is placed on an endangered list. This is happening at an alarming rate. Because of man’s desire to expand and conquer their surroundings, there are animals and plants that are on the brink of extinction that will not be around for our kids and future generations to enjoy if something is not done about it now. This problem has been going on for hundreds of years. There are animals and plants that can only been seen in paintings or early photography. It is because of our early ancestors that we have this problem today and we have to do more to prevent more animals and plants from disappearing forever.
Through millions of years of evolution, well-balanced habitats have co-evolved to provide for the wide variety of species and their needs. Trees have adapted to weeds, weeds have adapted to the predation from herbivores, and so on up the food chain. Similar scenarios are seen throughout the world. Through the process of natural selection, specific species or broad species families will go extinct. However, these occurrences have largely been due to the natural flow and evolution of time. It wasn’t until recently that dominant species, such as humans, have taken the course of nature into their own hands.
By trading continuously since so many years the existence of these animals is lowering down and therefore now these species come under the category of endangered species which further now has resulted
Biodiversity loss can lead to extinction, and hurt human life. It is our responsibility to take care of the environment. We bring in machines that harm the environment and destroy animal life. We need to limit ourselves on how much land and resources we consume. There are major issues that are causing species to become extinct and hurt our way of life and other animals do to the change in food chain.
Everyone’s all seen those wildlife shows on tv. The shows on National Geographic and such, showing animals in beautiful environments, everything lush and growing and nothing at all wrong that could threaten these creatures and places. But, have anyone seen the other side? The side where all these beautiful creatures and plants starve, are decimated by predators that have never been there before, and sometime even become poisoned by their very own homes and habitats? Of course no one has. That doesn’t mean that its not happening. It is happening, and its happening everywhere. And guess who is to blame? People. Society. Humans as a race pollute the environment, hunt animals simply for their parts, fish way more than humans will ever need just for the sake of money, introduce new species to new places for our own gain, and even purposefully destroy entire regions just for human expansion. And its starting to take its toll. While it is true that nature is constantly in flux and certain species come and go, humans are causing more species to disappear in the past few hundred years then nature has ever caused since the age of the dinosaurs, and therefore it is up to humans to repair the damage caused, be it cleaning the environment and habitats of these creatures, or taking more direct action to protect and preserve the species that are on the brink of extinction.
In our world today we have approximately 26,021 endangered species. Endangered species are organisms that may possible become extinct. The term 'endangered species' refers to all species that fits this description. However some conservation biologists and scientists normally use the term ‘endangered species’ to refer to species that are put on the IUCN(International Union for Conservation of Nature)Red List. Many factors can be looked at when considering the conservation status of a species. Factors such as human threats or environmental threats can cause a species to become endangered.