Species Endangerment

Endangered species, we often hear that words and seem it familiar to us. Yes, endangered species is a population of organism especially animals which is at risk of becoming extinct. International union for conservation of nature (IUCN) has calculated and has a red list of threatened species which contain data about the criteria of endangered species. Many factors have threatened many species in the world especially human. Many of their activities can affect the amount of species in the world. But many people didn't notice this big problem. This problem become big and dangerous because it have many dangerous effect for our animals, environment and human. These are several factors that cause endangered species.

First, habitat destruction. This problem can caused by nature, but nature only change animals and plants habitat in slow pace. Not in human, human change species habitat in fast pace, this result in species endangerment. Their habitats are destroyed for human importance. Habitat is a place where animals need to live in but human destroyed it. Human usually destroyed several place and change it into something for their importance like a tropical forest, in there live many animals such as birds, owls, ferrets, cats, dogs, insects and many more. Then, human change the forest into building, road, city, field, etc. Nowadays, many forest had destroyed, burned, cut and cleared. All for human importance. Not only forest habitat, but also sea, wetlands, prairie and mountain have received impact from human activities.

Second, Overhunting. This problem is make by human. Human are need the benefit from animals, but human often hunt animals until the species only remains in small amount even to extinction of the species. For example Dodo bird and thylacine(tasmanian tiger), both of them are hunted until no more species remains. Both of them are extinct due to the overhunting. The overhunting that happens in this period is Whaling and animal trade, whaling is hunting whale for its meats and oils. But whale hunter usually hunt whale until species of whales become extremely low in sizes. Fortunately, a international moratorium has abide whaling. I think whale hunters still whaling this time although the moratorium abide it.

Third, Pollution. Pollution come from industrial, domestical or agricultural wastes in form of chemical wastes like Pesticides, too many carbon dioxide, mercury wastes, etc. These wastes will affect environment and then causes habitat destruction which destroys wildlife. There are direct impact to the animals too, if human litter on the land or sea animals will eat those wastes then died. In food chain, if one organism eat an poisoned food, then the predator of that food eater will be poisoned too. At last it cause death and species endangerment.

Fourth, Natural disasters. Several natural disaster such as volcano eruption, tsunami and many more can cause endangerment too. For disaster it will not affected much on widespread species because if animals in one region get suffered from disasters, other same animal in other region won't feel it. But, it will affected much on endemic species, species that only exist in a region and it's not exist in other region. If a region with endemic species get natural disasters, many endemic species will feel and dead, it will decreased the amount of endemic species and become endangered.

Fifth, Introduced species. Human often introduced species intentionally or accidentally to an area. Introduced species is place a species to another area where the introduced species haven't exist. This is not a small problem, it's big. The Impact is come from the predation and competition with the new species. For example, a large fish is put into a pond while the other fishes in the pond are small and weak. So, the large fish will compete with the small fish to eat food and usually the small fish will lose and get a little food or nothing. Beside that, there will be a chance that the large fish eat the small fish. From time to time, the large fish will dominated the pond and the small fishes will get endangered. From the example, we get that introduced species will 'Invade' native species and get the native species to endangerment.

That's the factors of endangerment from human and nature. The impact to other animals will be seen in food chain. If one animal in food chain become endangered or extinct the population of the predator will decreased. For example, a bird is eated by falcon, if the bird population become endangered, the falcon population will decreased too if the falcon often eat on the bird.

Human will get very bad impact from endangerment. Human get benefits from wildlife and now many of sources of those benefits get endangered. For example, whaling cause whale endangerment, people get meat and oil from whale. If whale population still decrease, people cannot get more meat and oil. Same as crop plants, the endangerment factors will cause plant pollinators, who distribute seeds become endangered by habitat destruction affect the crops, crop plants that everyday are pollinated by pollinators like bee and fruit bats will reduced seeds distributed by pollinators and cause the crop plant itself become endangered.

So, what can we do with these? several factors are inevitable so we can cope the endangerment. Many people and organizations have cope endangerment. Organizations like greenpeace has cope. Other people, to cope this problem has protect endangered animals from overhunting and introduced species and repair the destroyed habitat for endangered animals. They make In-situ and Ex-situ conservation. I'm sure you can do this too.