Lemurs: Spirits Of The Night
27 Sep, 2021
About 600 miles off the coast of South-Eastern Africa lies the fourth largest island in the world, Madagascar. Famed for its lush green tropical forest, misty highlands, temperate climate and 3,000 miles of coastline, this jewel in the Indian Ocean is home to one of the most exotic creatures in the world – the lemurs.Madagascar's 160 million years of isolation as a landmass has shaped an ecosystem and habitat that's perfectly suited and unique to the existence of lemurs. The lemurs themselves have been on the island for over 40 million years, giving them distinctive features quite different from any other animal in the world. In appearance, lemurs are a mixture of many animals – squirrel, cat, dog, and monkey. Some have faces that closely resemble raccoons or skunks and have many characteristics of apes. But when there are 101 species of an animal, looks and behavioral patterns vary widely.
Lemurs are basically nocturnal creatures and move about at night. "Lemures" in Latin means "Spirits of the night". Lemurs are herbivorous animals and their main diet is plants. 55 percent of the island's plant life constitute food for lemurs. Black lemurs, for example, eat leaves, flowers and fruit. So do the inri, another species of lemur. Insects also form an important part of the diet, especially for the smaller species of lemur. Greater bamboo lemurs live off the inner pith of giant bamboo found in forest pockets of the eastern highlands.
Among the existing species, the diademed sifaka and the indri lemurs are the largest and can weigh up to 15 lbs at the most. The smallest, the pygmy mouse lemur, weighs only 1 oz, making it the tiniest primate in the world.
Man first landed in Madagascar as recently as 2,000 years ago. The fate of lemurs has been threatened ever since. Archaeoindris fontoynontii, the giant lemur weighing as much as 440 lbs, was among the first species to become extinct. Once found virtually all over Madagascar, lemurs are now ensconed into just 20 percent of their original habitat, most of it in the central and east coast highlands. According to a recently released report of the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) Red List of Threatened Species, of the 101 species of lemurs, 22 are on the brink of extinction, 48 are endangered, and 20 are vulnerable.
The threats to the lemur's survival is similar to many endangered animals of the world - a burgeoning human population's hunger for more land which translates into more clearing of forests for agricultural purposes. Poverty-stricken Malagasys have resorted to burning down the nation's scarce forests to grow crops. Hunger has also led to the hunting of lemurs for meat, an unusual occurrence until a few decades ago.
Political turmoil also has taken a toll on the laws and mechanisms that safeguard and conserve forest resources. Armed gangs, working in cahoots with the timber mafia, have taken advantage of the political vacuum to pillage protected forests for ebony and rosewood. Over $100 million dollars of wood stolen in this manner have made their way to China for use in furniture. The immediate fallout is on the habitat of the lemur.
Despite laws protecting the lemurs, the creatures are not just hunted as a delicacy, but for superstitious reasons too. The aye-aye lemur, a 5.1 lbs animal, is considered a harbinger of death by some natives and is quickly exterminated if spotted in the vicinity of their villages.
The ring-tailed lemur is among the most well-known and loved lemur species. It is at the top of the list of the illicit pet trade industry. Found mostly in the southern fringes of Madagascar, this beautiful animal, with an off-white coat and a long zebra-striped tail, is sold to hoteliers and tourists for a ridiculously low sum of $2. Being a popular animal, it is also inhumanely kept in zoos all around the world for human entertainment and profit.
The black lemur is another highly endangered species. There are about 10,000 of them in the North-western parts of Madagascar and in some of the islands off the North coast. The black lemur stands about 38 inches tall and weighs about 5 lbs. The black lemur faces common threats like other lemur species. Man's proximity has brought this species into confrontational situations where they have been killed for raiding crops.
Superstitions sometimes can work in favor of the lemurs. For example, the inri is believed to be carrying souls of ancestors. Villagers refrain from killing them.
But lemurs desperately need protection. Loss of habitat can have serious consequences for the breeding or reproduction of lemurs. The lemurs have very short mating and birth windows that are synchronized to seasons when food availability is at its peak. The female vagina opens up for a very brief period of the day, leaving a small window for reproductive activities. High levels of energy exhaustion during such periods account for high mortality among adult lemur females.
Despite protests from local villages, the Ranomafana National Reserve Park was created by the forest authorities of Madagascar. The Ranomafana reserve is a 15 km strip of virgin forests not far from the east coast setup primarily to protect the lemurs inhabiting it. Similarly, nearly 20 national parks have sprung up in the last few decades – especially along the entire eastern and southern coastal belts – to protect endangered species in those sensitive places where they may come into direct contact with human habitation.
The blue-eyed black lemur, an inhabitant of the sub-tropical moist and dry forests in the north-western tip of Madagascar, is a beneficiary of serious conservation measures. Thanks to the endeavors of organizations that have put into place natural resource management and ecological research programs to monitor and mitigate the loss of valuable forest resources in that region, the rare blue-eyed species of lemur is on a comeback trail and finds itself out of the IUCN’s list of the 25 most endangered primates on the planet.
But serious challenges remain. In addition to rapid habitat loss, climate changes may pose the biggest threat to the survival of lemurs. A study found that 60 percent of the 57 species examined may find their habitat reduced by an alarming two-thirds in the next seventy years solely due to climate change.
Habitat Destruction
27 Sep, 2021
Habitat destruction is the process in which natural habitat is rendered unable to support the species present. In this process, the plants and animals which previously used the site are displaced or destroyed, reducing biodiversity.Habitat destruction by human activity is mainly for the purpose of harvesting natural resources for industry production and urbanization.
Clearing habitats for agriculture is the principal cause of habitat destruction. Other important causes of habitat destruction include mining, logging, trawling and urban sprawl.
PRIMARY CAUSE OF EXTINCTION
Habitat destruction is currently ranked as the primary cause of species extinction worldwide. It is a process of natural environmental change that may be caused by habitat fragmentation, geological processes or by human activities such as the introduction of invasive species, ecosystem nutrient depletion and other human activities.
In the simplest terms, when a habitat is destroyed, the plants, animals, and other organisms that occupied the habitat have a reduced carrying capacity so that populations decline and extinction becomes more likely. Perhaps the greatest threat to organisms and biodiversity is the process of habitat loss. Organisms with limited ranges are most affected by habitat destruction, mainly because these organisms are not found anywhere else within the world and thus, have less chance of recovering. Many have very specific requirements for their survival that can only be found within a certain ecosystem, resulting in their extinction. Habitat destruction can also decrease the range of certain organism populations. This can result in the reduction of genetic diversity and perhaps the production of infertile youths, as these organisms would have a higher possibility of mating with related organisms within their population, or different species.
HOTSPOTS
Biodiversity hotspots are chiefly tropical regions that feature high concentrations of endemic species and, when all hotspots are combined, may contain over half of the world’s terrestrial species. These hotspots are suffering from habitat loss and destruction. Most of the natural habitat on islands and in areas of high human population density has already been destroyed. Islands suffering extreme habitat destruction include New Zealand, Madagascar, the Philippines, and Japan. South and east Asia—especially China, India, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Japan—and many areas in West Africa have extremely dense human populations that allow little room for natural habitat. Marine areas close to highly populated coastal cities also face degradation of their coral reefs or other marine habitat. These areas include the eastern coasts of Asia and Africa, northern coasts of South America, and the Caribbean Sea and its associated islands.
Regions of unsustainable agriculture or unstable governments, which may go hand-in-hand, typically experience high rates of habitat destruction. Central America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and the Amazonian tropical rainforest areas of South America are the main regions with unsustainable agricultural practices or government mismanagement.
Areas of high agricultural output tend to have the highest extent of habitat destruction. In the U.S., less than 25% of native vegetation remains in many parts of the East and Midwest. Only 15% of land area remains unmodified by human activities in all of Europe.
RAINFORESTS
Tropical rainforests have received most of the attention concerning the destruction of habitat. From the approximately 16 million square kilometers of tropical rainforest habitat that originally existed worldwide, less than 9 million square kilometers remain today. The current rate of deforestation is 160,000 square kilometers per year, which equates to a loss of approximately 1% of original forest habitat each year. Other forest ecosystems have suffered as much or more destruction as tropical rainforests. Farming and logging have severely disturbed at least 94% of temperate broadleaf forests; many old growth forest stands have lost more than 98% of their previous area because of human activities. Tropical deciduous dry forests are easier to clear and burn and are more suitable for agriculture and cattle ranching than tropical rainforests; consequently, less than 0.1% of dry forests in Central America's Pacific Coast and less than 8% in Madagascar remain from their original extents.
PLAINS & DESERTS
Plains and desert areas have been degraded to a lesser extent. Only 10-20% of the world's drylands, which include temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands, scrub and deciduous forests, have been somewhat degraded. But included in that 10-20% of land is the approximately 9 million square kilometers of seasonally dry-lands that humans have converted to deserts through the process of desertification. The tallgrass prairies of North America, on the other hand, have less than 3% of natural habitat remaining that has not been converted to farmland.
WETLANDS
Wetlands and marine areas have endured high levels of habitat destruction. More than 50% of wetlands in the U.S. have been destroyed in just the last 200 years. Between 60% and 70% of European wetlands have been completely destroyed. About one-fifth (20%) of marine coastal areas have been highly modified by humans. One-fifth of coral reefs have also been destroyed, and another fifth has been severely degraded by overfishing, pollution, and invasive species; 90% of the Philippines’ coral reefs alone have been destroyed. Finally, over 35% mangrove ecosystems worldwide have been destroyed.
HUMAN CAUSES
Habitat destruction caused by humans includes conversion of land to agriculture, urban sprawl, infrastructure development, and other anthropogenic changes to the characteristics of land. Habitat degradation, fragmentation, and pollution are aspects of habitat destruction caused by humans that do not necessarily involve overt destruction of habitat, yet result in habitat collapse. Desertification, deforestation, and coral reef degradation are specific types of habitat destruction for those areas (deserts, forests, coral reefs).
DRIVERS
The forces that cause humans to destroy habitat are known as drivers of habitat destruction. Demographic, economic, sociopolitical, scientific and technological, and cultural drivers all contribute to habitat destruction.
Demographic drivers include the expanding human population; rate of population increase over time; spatial distribution of people in a given area (urban versus rural), ecosystem type, and country; and the combined effects of poverty, age, gender, and education status of people in certain areas.
Most of the exponential human population growth worldwide is occurring in or close to biodiversity hotspots. This may explain why human population density accounts for 87.9% of the variation in numbers of threatened species across 114 countries, providing evidence that people play the largest role in decreasing biodiversity. The boom in human population and migration of people into such species-rich regions are making conservation efforts not only more urgent but also more likely to conflict with local human interests. The high local population density in such areas is directly correlated to the poverty status of the local people.
FEEDBACK & INTERACTIONS
There are also feedbacks and interactions among the proximate and underlying causes of deforestation that can amplify the process. Road construction has the largest feedback effect, because it interacts with—and leads to—the establishment of new settlements and more people, which causes a growth in wood (logging) and food markets. Growth in these markets, in turn, progresses the commercialization of agriculture and logging industries. When these industries become commercialized, they must become more efficient by utilizing larger or more modern machinery that often are worse on the habitat than traditional farming and logging methods. Either way, more land is cleared more rapidly for commercial markets. This common feedback example manifests just how closely related the proximate and underlying causes are to each other.
Parrots & Toucans: Birds In Danger
27 Sep, 2021
While it's quite common to keep parrots and toucans as “pets” for human entertainment, they are creatures of the wild and not meant to be caged. Thousands of these birds are still taken away from their families and flocks every year, packed up as if they were toys and sold at bird shows, through pet shops, or peddled on the internet. Many don't survive the journey, and those who do are likely to be destined for a life of misery. As a result of the demand, populations in the wild have suffered immensely, compounded by deforestation, animal agriculture, hunting and logging. Some species have been completely wiped out from parts of their range.These birds are often stolen from the wild illegally and falsely declared as captive bred. They are then laundered into the global wildlife trade, often “legalized" along the way. The illicit pet trade industry is believed to have contributed to the threatened status of 66 parrot species and the extinction of the Spix’s Macaw. Nearly 27 percent of worldwide parrot species are now at risk.
Whether wild caught or captive bred, a birds' instinctive yearning to fly is thwarted when they are confined to a cage. Exotic birds are not "domesticated" even when they are bred in captivity; they retain their wild needs and instincts. Even in a large aviary, it is virtually impossible to provide birds in captivity with a natural existence, since naturally changing temperatures, food, vegetation, and landscape cannot be recreated indoors, nor, of course, can the birds fly freely.
There are nearly 390 species of parrots with habitats spanning from the Tropic of Cancer downwards to virtually all the countries in the Southern hemisphere. Though the primarily color of the parrot is green, there are multi-colored species – especially found in the deep jungles of Papua New Guinea.
Toucans are distinguishable from the parrot by their large and colorful bills. Their geographical spread of habitat is much narrower than the parrot, being restricted to the Amazon region of Brazil and North-eastern parts of the South American continent and the jungles of the Caribbean.
Illegal trafficking in parrots is quite common in India, despite the activity being banned by the authorities since 1991. Smuggling three to four week old chicks is rampant, threatening what is left of the 12 species of the bird left in the wilds of the country. Many of the birds die en-route to their chosen destinations. The plum-headed, red-breasted, malabar, Himalayan and Finsch’s parakeets are some of the threatened Indian parrot species.
Most vulnerable are island parrots. Rapidly growing human habitations and limited land space are squeezing out forest areas, and consequently the parrots. There are just 800 St. Vincent parrots left on the Caribbean island of St. Vincent. The Society islands of the Pacific are home to a dwindling population of a parrot species known as blue lorikeets, of which just 2,000 are left.
In the Amazon, common threats afflicts all wildlife - deforestation, growing farmlands and rampant logging. Diminishing food sources, and a lucrative illicit trade, have reduced one of the largest and most colorful species of parrot to near extinction. The Lear’s macaw was one of the most commonly found birds in the Amazon forests, but now is ensconced in a small patch of forest in the North-eastern Brazilian state of Bahia. There are only 960 of these birds that have been declared critically endangered. Parrot protection groups have gone to the extent of purchasing 4,000 acres of forest in the region to be under protection as suitable habitat to these rare birds.
Even worse is the fate of the blue-throated macaw of Bolivia, a victim of extensive mining activity, forest farming and illegal trade. Their absolute paltry numbers, just around 87, have prompted a captive breeding program desperately attempting to save these rare Bolivian birds.
Species like the thick-billed parrots were hunted to the point of extinction in Arizona. They are found across the border in Mexico where they presently face the twin threats of logging and illegal pet trade. Thick-billed parrots depend on their natural habitats of mature pine forests for their food source. Since such forests are vanishing fast, the birds are being driven out to drier desert regions where they simply cannot last long.
Among the most fascinating and loved of feathered animals in the world are the parakeets, or lorikeets. Wild parakeets inhabit the thick mountainous jungles of Papua New Guinea, the forest regions of Northern Australia, and the Polynesian islands in the Pacific. A combination of dazzlingly different colors and vocal variations make them the most sought after creatures by zoos of the world, and as pets doomed to life in captivity. Despite being protected in the still vast virgin tropical forest tracts of the Australasia region, their remarkable traits and appearance still make them targets of illegal trade. The budgerigar is one such species of lorikeet which has been in great demand as “pets” for decades.
The Australasia species also face a threat in the form of Proventricular Dilatation Disease (PDD). PDD causes regurgitation, a state in which food remains undigested in the digestive tract or blood. PDD is known to be caused by a virus called Bornavirus that results in weight-loss, feather-plucking, toe-tapping, and other issues.
The threat to toucans is not dissimilar to that of parrots. In fact, their much limited habitat and small number of species, just five, make their survival a much bigger threat. Loss of habitat due to deforestation, and wanton creation of farmlands especially in the Amazon, are common threats. The toucan is hunted for the rich fabric of its feathers that has great commercial value. The toucans fare even worse as pets than the parrots and can die from sheer desolation. Being deep forest birds, they are susceptible to diseases arising out of sudden human presence in their vicinity.
Parrots are more threatened than other bird groups. Loss and degradation of habitat, animal agriculture, hunting and the wildlife trade are all threatening the future of parrots and toucans. An alarming 56 percent decline of all parrot species is currently taking place. Action must be taken now to save these birds from being lost forever.
Hunting Wildlife To Extinction
27 Sep, 2021
In just the past 40 years, nearly 52 percent of the planet’s wildlife species have been eliminated. The leading cause of these shocking declines is irresponsible and unethical human activities. In addition to the devastating consequences of deforestation, animal agriculture, development, and environmental pollution, the wildlife trade is playing a major role in species extinction. Poaching, which involves the illegal killing, hunting and capturing of wild animals for sale, is the biggest threat to wildlife after habitat destruction. Poaching is hunting without legal permission. The difference between poaching and hunting is the law.
Legal hunters also kill tens of millions of animals per year. For each of those animals, another animal is illegally killed. Whether done legally or illegally, all types of hunting have led to extinction of species. If not controlled, many more animals will be doomed to extinction.
In addition to their body parts, the animals themselves are in demand as exotic “pets”. There are around 5,000 tigers being kept as pets in the U.S., while only around 3,000 remain in the wild. Australia’s palm cockatoos, stolen from the wild, sell for tens of thousands of dollars on the black market.
Illegal wildlife trade generates up to 20 billion dollars each year, making it the fourth most lucrative illegal trade operation on the planet – just after drugs, human trafficking and the arms trade. The animals who fall victim to this trade are quickly becoming threatened and endangered. As their numbers drop, their value on the black market increases.
The rise in human population has been accompanied by rapid economic growth in some parts of the world. This growth has led to affluence and a huge and growing demand for animal by-products. China is now the largest importer of illegal wildlife. But poaching knows no boundaries. The United States is the second largest importer of illegal wildlife.
The exponential rise in illegal wildlife trade threatens to undo the decades of hard work by conservationists. Wildlife trade is now run by large international criminal syndicates with deep pockets and tentacles reaching into corrupt governments secretly abetting their activities. There are no available exact figures as to the size of this trade, but there are estimates that it could be as vast as $150 billion annually.
Iconic Species Being Hunted To Extinction
Some of the most common forms of poaching are the hunting and killing of elephants for their ivory, tigers for their skin and bones, and rhinoceros for the alleged medicinal value of their horns.
A huge surge in black market prices of ivory in China has led to heightened activity in elephant poaching in Africa. Over 30,000 elephants were killed in one year alone. The ban on ivory trade by virtually all African governments has done little to deter the poachers. In Tanzania, frenzied poaching has reduced the number of elephants from 100,000 in 2010 to just 44,000 presently. Poaching eliminated 48% of the elephant population in Mozambique during the last 5 to 6 years. Many of the local populace kill the animals for cash. Even militia groups are involved in the poaching of elephants.
The sub-Saharan black rhinoceros is now almost extinct by extensive poaching. There are only 4,000 of these animals left now, compared to the 100,000 that roamed the wilds not even half a century ago. An almost 7,700% rise in poaching of white and black rhinos has occurred in 9 years in South Africa. Rising affluence in Vietnam in the last decade has spiked the demand for rhino horns. Rhino horns are crushed into powdered form for its bogus medicinal value.
This is just one chapter of the sordid story. Millions of of animals, birds, plants and marine life are killed every year. Wildlife trade accounts for the killing or capture of 100 million tons of fish, 1.5 million living birds, and almost 450,000 tons of plants annually. The combined population of all species of wildlife on Earth has fallen by as much as 40% since the 1970's.
Poaching Facts
One rhino is poached every 8 hours. Rhino horns are more valuable than gold. They can sell for as much as $30,000 a pound. Gold is worth about $22,000 a pound. Rhino horns are believed to cure impotence, fever, hangovers, and even cancer, but they actually have no medicinal properties. Rhino horns are not true horns. They are an outgrowth of the skin, like human hair or fingernails. They have no more medicinal effect than chewing on your fingernails.
Around 100 African elephants are killed every day by poachers – one elephant every 15 minutes. Ivory is carved into jewelry, trinkets, utensils, and figurines. Heavily armed militias and crime networks use ivory profits for terrorism and war funding.
Asian elephants are also at risk. Only around 32,000 Asian elephants remain in the wild. Around 30 percent of the remaining population are inhumanely held prisoners in zoos, circuses, and roadside attractions for human entertainment and profit.
Lemurs are among the most endangered mammals on Earth. 90% of all lemur species are considered vulnerable, endangered or critically endangered. Hunting lemurs for meat is diminishing their populations, already decimated by deforestation and climate changes.
Logging, roads and migrations caused by wars have brought people within the habitats of gorillas. Subsistence hunting has quickly grown into an illicit commercial business of gorilla meat, served up as “bushmeat” to wealthy clientele. Gorillas are also killed for their body parts for folk remedies, and as “trophies”. Baby gorillas are poached and sold for up to $40,000 each. Less than 900 mountain gorillas survive in Africa due to poaching.
Musk deer populations in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bhutan, India, Nepal and Myanmar have been nearly wiped out for their sacs that contain ingredients used in perfumes – despite a ban on musk from international trade.
Tigers are poached for their teeth, claws, and whiskers, believed to provide good luck and protective powers. Skins and bones are considered status symbols. One tiger can bring as much as $50,000 on the black market.
Up to half of Africa’s lions have been illegally killed in just 20 years. Only about 32,000 remain in the wild.
The sun bear as a species has been rendered almost extinct in its habitat in South-east Asia, Myanmar, Bangladesh and North-Eastern India. The gall bladders of these animals find use in medicines among the Chinese. A bear’s gallbladder can fetch more than $3,000 in Asia.
Poached sharks, manta rays, and sea cucumbers are used by Asian consumers to make shark fin soup. Over 11,000 sharks are killed every hour, every day.
The American black bear is one of the top 10 most endangered bears on the planet. While 34 states have banned the trade of black bear bile and gallbladders, poaching and legal hunting is killing almost 50,000 bears every year. Their gallbladders and bile are sold to treat diseases of the heart, liver, and even diabetes.
Over 28,000 freshwater turtles are poached daily – used for medicine, food and kept as pets. About 80 percent of Asia’s freshwater turtle species are now in danger of extinction.
The Sunda pangolin's population in its habitat in the jungles of Malaysia and Java, Indonesia has halved in the last fifteen years. Their meat fetches considerable demand as a luxury food among affluent Chinese, and their scales are sought for their medicinal properties.
Millions of Tokay geckos are poached every year from South-east Asia, the Philippines and Pacific islands for use in traditional medicine.
Despite being on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Endangered List since 1998, bighorn sheep populations continue to dwindle. Their antlers sell for over $20,000 on the black market.
Poaching isn't limited to exotic and threatened species. Deer and other wildlife species are often hunted “out of season”. Millions of animals are killed every year.
These are a few of many cases which have come to light, while many cases of over-exploitation of species have gone unnoticed. Conservation efforts, and various laws banning the illegal trade in wildlife resources, have had little effect in deterring those involved in wildlife trade. Educating humans on the urgent need to conserve our wildlife resources also seems to be falling on deaf ears. Until consumers stop purchasing wild animal products, and governments make the issue more of a priority, the wildlife trade will continue to flourish.
Species Imperiled From Agriculture, Land Conversion, Hunting
27 Sep, 2021
Three quarters of the world’s threatened species are imperiled because people are converting their habitat into agricultural lands and overharvesting their populations. 72 percent of species are imperiled by overexploitation (the harvesting of species from the wild at rates that cannot be compensated for by reproduction or regrowth), while 62 percent of species are imperiled by agricultural activity (the production of food, fodder, fiber and fuel crops; livestock farming; aquaculture; and the cultivation of trees). In comparison, 19 percent are considered threatened by climate change.There are 5,407 species threatened by agriculture alone, according to the University of Queensland, Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
Illegal hunting is decimating populations of all rhinoceros and elephant species, western gorilla and Chinese pangolin. Other threats are affecting substantially fewer species, for example hooded seals being threatened by climate change. Climate change is ranked 7th among 11 threats.
Addressing overharvesting and agricultural activities are key to turning around the biodiversity extinction crisis. This must be at the forefront of the conservation agenda. Government and society must focus on proposing and funding actions that deal with the biggest current threats to biodiversity.
History has taught us that minimizing impacts from overharvesting and agriculture requires a variety of conservation actions, but these can be achieved. Actions such as well managed protected areas, enforcement of hunting regulations, and managing agricultural systems in ways that allow threatened species to persist within them, all have a major role to play in reducing the biodiversity crisis. These activities need to be well funded and prioritized in areas that will reduce threat, according to scientists.
While overharvesting and agricultural activities are currently the predominant threats to species, this may change in the coming decades. Reducing immediate impacts is essential to tackling the biodiversity crisis, but climate change could become an increasingly dominant threat for species.
Thankfully, those actions that best reduce current threats such as unsustainable use, habitat destruction, and invasive species are also the best solutions in responding to the challenges of rapid climate change.
Coral Reefs: Rainforest Of The Sea
25 Sep, 2021
Coral reefs, rainforest of the sea, are one of nature's most remarkable creations - teaming with thousands of unique and valuable plants and animals. More than one-quarter of all marine species depend on coral reefs for their survival. Humans depend on the survival of coral reefs too. Coral reefs provide a natural wave barrier which protects beaches and coastlines from storms and floods.Coral reefs have existed on our planet for over 50 million years, but recently we have lost over 20% of the world's reefs in just the last 20 years. Up to 70% of the reefs may be destroyed by humans in the next few decades if we don't take immediate action.
The biologists have seen the future, and their message could not be clearer: Living coral reefs are the foundation of marine life, yet all over the world they are dead or dying because people are destroying them, killing them at a catastrophic rate. Already 10 percent are lost, and scientists say 70% of all corals on the planet will be destroyed in 20 to 40 years unless people stop doing what they're doing: pollution, sewage, erosion, cyanide fishing, clumsy tourism, and get serious about saving the coral reefs now. There's hope yet. Reefs are resilient and they bounce back quickly when protected.
Protection is the real solution and it's ordinary people who are making it happen. Government efforts in much of the world have been frankly pathetic: late, weak, underfunded, unenforced. Persian Gulf oil states pass useless pollution laws then ignore them. Indian Ocean poachers outwit and outnumber British Royal Navy patrols. Ecuador stalls for decades while tourism explodes in the delicate Galapagos, only to enact a plan that makes it worse. The status quo scarcely wavers: relentless destruction of coral reefs.
In those bright spots where people are changing the way they treat the reefs, you'll find students, divers, biologists, concerned citizens of all stripes transformed into activists and volunteers...taking matters into their own hands to protect the coral reefs that are dear to them and vital to us all.
10 Interesting Things About Water
25 Sep, 2021
Water could be the key to finding life. There aren’t many qualities that are true of all life on Earth, but the need for water is one of them. It’s in all living things, whether they live at the bottom of the ocean or the driest desert. Water made life possible on Earth. Because of this, astrobiologists (scientists who search for life on other planets) think our best bet for finding life is to search for water.Almost all Earth’s water is in the oceans. A whopping 96.5 percent of water on Earth is in our oceans, covering 71 percent of the surface of our planet. And at any given time, about 0.001 percent is floating above us in the atmosphere. If all of that water fell as rain at once, the whole planet would get about 1 inch of rain.
Most freshwater is in ice. Just 3.5 percent of Earth’s water is fresh—that is, with few salts in it. You can find Earth’s freshwater in our lakes, rivers, and streams, but don’t forget groundwater and glaciers. Over 68 percent of Earth’s freshwater is locked up in ice and glaciers. And another 30 percent is in groundwater.
The amount of salt in salt water varies. In a gallon of average ocean water, there is about 1 cup of salt. But it does vary. The Atlantic Ocean is saltier than the Pacific Ocean, for instance. Most of the salt in the ocean is the same kind of salt we put on our food: sodium chloride. The saltiest water in the world is found in Antarctica in a small lake named Don Juan Pond.
A lot can live in one drop of water. There can be a lot going on in a single drop of ocean water. It will most likely have millions (yes, millions) of bacteria and viruses. And it could also have fish eggs, baby crabs, plankton, or even small worms.
Some water may have come from comets. The rocky material that formed Earth contained some water. But that probably doesn't account for all the water we see today. Comets are mostly water ice. It’s possible that comets made regular water deliveries to Earth. It would take a lot of comets to fill the ocean, but comets could well have made a big contribution.
It’s really great that ice floats. Usually when solids form, atoms get closer together to form something denser. This is why most solids sink in water. But solid water, or ice, is actually less dense. This is unusual. The water molecules form rings when water freezes. All that space makes ice less dense. This is why it floats. This is great because ice floating on top of a body of water lets the rest of it stay liquid. If ice sank, whole oceans could freeze solid.
Our bodies are mostly water. A newborn baby is 78 percent water. Adults are 55-60 percent water. Water is involved in just about everything our body does. It’s a big part of the blood that brings nutrients to all our cells. We use it to get rid of wastes. It helps us regulate our body temperature. It acts as a shock absorber for our brain and spinal cord. We are very dependent on water.
In plants, water defies gravity. Water has an interesting characteristic. It’s sort of “sticky.” It likes to stick to itself and other things. That’s why water forms round droplets. Not all liquids do that. This “stickiness” helps get water from the roots of plants up to the leaves. Water molecules travel up thin straws called xylem in the plant by holding onto each other and the walls of the tube. They’re pulled upwards as water evaporates from the leaves at the top.
We get to see water in three different states, and that’s odd. We experience water in all three states: solid ice, liquid water, and gas water vapor. That’s actually pretty unusual. While all substances can be solid, liquid, or gas, a lot of them only change states at extreme temperatures. You probably don’t see liquid silver or solid oxygen very much because their melting points and freezing points are at temperatures that would kill us.
What Is An Endangered Species?
25 Sep, 2021
Life on Earth over the millennia has been defined by the evolution, survival and demise of multitudes of species. The churning of species is part of the life process and extinction is one inevitable component. But humans are now playing a large part in the extinction of many species.Human activities are responsible for the significant changes in the world's environment. Human activities cause climate changes from industrial emissions and animal argiculture, destruction of wildlife habitat, reduced wildlife populations through hunting and poaching, and ecosystem disruption through pollution and litter. All these activities are major contributors to a serious decline in wildlife numbers.
Endangered Species Versus Threatened Species
Species of animals facing a high probability of becoming extinct in the future are categorized by conservationists and scientists as threatened. This kind of species is one whose existence in its natural habitat is at risk. The threat to its habitat could arise out of reasons like human developmental activities, climate change and introduction of foreign species.
Endangered species are those that are so extremely rare, and their population so low, that they are dangerously prone to extinction in the near future. The dangers they face are very similar to those faced by threatened species, the only difference being that the degree of threat is even higher given their low numbers and uniqueness of habitat. The risks of extinction here are much more.
The terms endangered and threatened species are often used interchangabley. When described in a general context, an endangered species is one that is faced with the threat of extinction but not necessarily protected by law. In a regulatory context, endangered species could come under a protective ambit when listed by bodies like US Endangered Species List and International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The IUCN has a detailed and complete list of endangered species that it calls the Red List. The Red list has been graded into categories based on the degrees of risk to their survival ranging from safe to complete extinction.
Least Threatened: Species that face no immediate threat of extinction.
Near-threatened: Species in this category could possibly face threats in the foreseeable future.
Vulnerable: Species in this category could come under threat of extinction in the medium term.
Endangered: Species of animals facing a high probability of becoming extinct in the immediate future.
Critically Endangered: Species that are extremely rare and whose population are very few and on the decline and could become extinct anytime soon.
Extinct In The Wild: No populations of such species exist in the wild and they survive and thrive only in captivity.
Extinct: These species are no longer found anywhere on earth, either in the wild or in captivity.
The usage of different terms used by the IUCN is to highlight the level of risk faced by a particular species at a given point of time, which is, presently. Such grades enable conservationists and scientists to study the degree of threat a particular species may be under and direct their conservation efforts accordingly. One of the main objectives of the IUCN's list is to emphasize the plight of the critically endangered species and create the groundwork for saving such species from the threat of complete extinction. Simply put, the list's trend leading from Least Threatened to Extinction is an enabler for conservationists to prioritize their efforts accordingly.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the US Endangered Species Act (ESA)?
Enacted into a law in 1973 during President Richard Nixon's tenure, the ESA is administered by the US Fish & Wildlife Service and NOAA Fisheries. Its objective is to protect endangered plant, animal and aquatic species through conservation of the habitats such species survive on.
How can I get a copy of the US Endangered Species Act?
A PDF version of the US Endangered Species Act can be obtained from the US Fish & Wildlife Service website.
How do rare animals make it to the Endangered Species List?
The authorities concerned adopt certain formal steps while ascertaining levels of threats to a certain species before declaring it to be endangered.
How do you find out which animals are on the Endangered Species List?
The Threatened and Endangered Species System (TESS) website maintains an up-to-date list and information of endangered wildlife species. This site is maintained by the US Fish & Wildlife Service and NOAA.
What endangered animals are in my state?
In addition to the Federal list, most states have their own lists of endangered species of animals. A knowledge of such species close to your home will help you make important lifestyle choices in their protection and conservation. A web search of your state's endangered species legislation can be helpful.
How can I contribute to conservation efforts of endangered species?
Rapidly reducing habitats pose a serious threat to the survival of the world's wildlife. Agencies and organizations may have chapters close to your home. Simple lifestyle changes such as reduced consumption, recycling, refraining from littering and polluting, and adopting a vegan diet go a long way in helping endangered wildlife.
Birds & Climate Change
25 Sep, 2021
A few years ago, northern parts of the central United States got an unexpected visitor in the summer. Actually, it got thousands of them. The area experienced an invasion of a brown and yellow bird named the dickcissel.Dickcissels are common to many areas in the United States. They are not common in northern parts like North Dakota, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. Why did the dickcissel show up in these areas? Extreme weather caused by climate change may have forced them to find a new home.
Climate change does a lot more than just heat up our planet. Climate change can also cause more intense weather. That could mean more hurricanes, floods, heat waves, droughts, and even cold spells. This extreme weather can be trouble for birds.
Scientists have noticed that when extreme weather happens, fewer birds show up in the places they call home. Why? One idea is that the birds avoid the extreme weather by moving to a friendlier area.
Amazingly, scientists can use satellites to test this idea. Even though these satellites are high above Earth, they can tell us a lot about what is happening on the ground. The scientists use two types of satellites. One type works like a big 3D camera that takes pictures of the ground. They use this kind to map the neighborhoods of different species of birds. The second type looks at weather and climate. These satellites can measure things like temperature, precipitation and evaporation, and cloudiness. Scientists can then combine this information to see when extreme weather happens in the areas that different birds call home.
But how do they know if these weather events are affecting the birds? This is where field scientists, amateur birders, and everyone can help by collecting data on where birds show up (and where they don’t show up). Using this data, scientists can see when and where birds travel.
If scientists find a bird species in a new area at the same time their regular home experiences extreme weather, this could explain why there appear to be fewer birds. Their numbers don’t shrink—they just move somewhere else.
Scientists have just begun to use satellites to figure out what happens to birds during extreme weather. Their work is very important. If birds are moving to other areas because of climate change, they may need our help. We may need to protect their new habitats. Thanks to satellites, we can get the clearest picture so far of where these new habitats could be.
Exploring Ways To Coexist With Wildlife
25 Sep, 2021
Although protected areas such as national parks can play a crucial role in conserving wildlife, most species of large carnivores and large herbivores also depend on being able to occupy human-dominated landscapes. This sharing of space is often associated with conflicts between humans and wildlife, and between different groups of humans with divergent interests. In order to achieve a situation that can be described as "coexistence", there is a need to develop a more nuanced and realistic understanding of what this state looks like.Recent research looks at ways to improve the ability of humans and carnivores to co-exist, which is crucial to carnivore conservation efforts around the world. Based on studies in areas as diverse as North America, Europe and Asia on species such as wolves, tigers, leopards, lynx and bears, researchers note that large carnivores need larger ranges than many protected areas afford. This means that carnivores often come in contact with human populations that are sometimes less than welcoming.
What actions could help mitigate the negative impacts of these contacts, allowing both humans and carnivores to more peacefully coexist in shared landscapes? Scientists suggest that mutual adaptations are key to success. Not only do wild animals have to behaviorally adapt to the presence of humans, but humans also have to adapt their behavior to the presence of wild animals.
Studies have shown that many species of large carnivores show an incredible ability to occupy heavily modified human-dominated landscapes. Many human societies also show a wide range of adaptations to the proximity of large carnivores. This includes changes to the way they farm and the adoption of cultural or religious practices to "negotiate" their relationship with their wild neighbors.
However, in many areas these adaptations have been lost, either due to a temporary absence of large carnivores or in the face of changing social-economic situations. The result is often severe conflicts of both an economic and social nature. Realizing the necessity of adaptation by both humans and the carnivores is a key first step towards transforming conflict to coexistence. Conservation efforts that fail to focus on both halves of the equation are doomed to fail.
A factor for success has to do with recognizing that a state of coexistence does not involve an idealized absence of conflict. Rather than trying to eliminate all risk, which can mean eliminating a species, we must explore ways to keep risks below tolerable levels. That involves understanding what factors influence tolerance.
While some communities may not tolerate any risks from carnivores, others may tolerate high risks because they attribute carnivores with ecological and cultural benefits that exceed those risks. In many communities, the priorities of various stakeholder groups are still sometimes at odds, and there is a reduced trust in authorities. Interventions such as new policies must take into account local concerns such as the adoption of novel decision-making strategies that give voice to varying viewpoints.
The challenges are surmountable through the help of community leaders, conservation organizations, and state or federal agencies. Insights from studies on coexistence can help reconcile debates about carnivore conservation in shared landscapes and advance broader discourses in conservation such as those related to rewilding, novel ecosystems, and land-sharing vs. land-sparing.
In many ways, large carnivores represent the ultimate test for human willingness to make space for wildlife on a shared planet. If it is possible to find ways to coexist with these species, it should be possible to coexist with any species.
Saving Species
21 Sep, 2021
Wildlife preservation is informed management of the natural environment to protect and benefit plants and animals. Extinction may occur due to natural causes. However, the actions of people and the growth of human population have all too quickly created a threat to the well being of wildlife. There have been declines in the numbers of some species and extinction of others. The need for conservation was created by human beings.About 2 million years ago, when Homo sapiens first appeared on the earth, their world was biologically rich. Millions of species of plants and animals flourished...from the single celled to the complex. The first humans enjoyed a lush and beautiful environment filled with brilliant color and variety. Every ecosystem harbored life in many forms...from forest to meadow, wetland to desert.
These early people chose to decorate their dwellings with paintings of the wildlife that made up their environment. As they evolved and developed belief systems, they used the plants and animals that surrounded them in their rituals. Nature was integrated into their culture. It has played an important part in the way modern man thinks and behaves today. We bring nature into our daily lives. If you have a companion animal, or even a house plant, if you enjoy a landscape painting or a piece of nature photography, or if you visit a park or a nature preserve, you are recognizing the importance of natural elements in your life. The difference we perceive in the range of natural settings, from the beauty of a garden to the desolation of a vacant lot, is determined by the kinds of organisms that each contains and the communities they form.
ALL THINGS CONTRIBUTE
Few of us would prefer an environment of concrete buildings and asphalt paving to gorgeous coastlines, majestic mountains or peaceful forests. Our pleasure in life would be diminished if only one bird sang, or merely a handful of fish lived in the sea. But our aesthetic appreciation of the wildlife that fills our earth is only one reason to preserve the variety and abundance of species. All living things contribute to the ecology and are vital to its health and continuation. Despite our advances in technology, we as human beings still rely on our environment to provide many of the things necessary to our survival. The earth's biodiversity supports all life, including that of humans. Our food, medicines, energy sources, textiles and building materials are all derived directly or indirectly from living organisms. Our way of life is inextricably linked to the natural world.
FOOD
Plants convert the energy of the sun through photosynthesis into the energy that sustains all life on this planet. Everything we eat can be traced to either a plant or to an animal that lived by eating plants. For this reason, the vegetation on this planet is necessary to our survival. Maintaining a variety of plant forms is crucial. Although the food we consume represents only about 100 kinds of plants, there are countless others we might utilize. As our population increases and land for agricultural use dwindles, we will have to look for other food crops and new ways to grow them. It is important to preserve a variety of plant species with their future use in mind.
MEDICINE
Almost all of our medicines come from living organisms: some directly as from bacteria or fungi or plants, others are now synthetically made but were originally discovered in their natural form. In China and other parts of the world, medicinal plants in their original form are used as treatment for all kinds of illness. Many of our manufactured pharmaceuticals offer a more controlled use of these plants, but are none the less dependent upon them. Science hopes to identify even more organisms beneficial to the treatment of disease. We have only scratched the surface of the vast number of plant species to be studied. A great discovery could still be found that might change the lives of millions.
KNOWLEDGE
The study of living things advances our knowledge in all areas. By observing the behavior of the great apes anthropologists learn about prehistoric man. By studying the movements of the creatures and plants of the earth engineers can learn about mechanics. Yet there are organisms that have yet to be scientifically studied. For example, fungi exist in countless numbers and forms. They can be used to preserve food, to produce medicine such as antibiotics without which many lives would be lost and much of the food we eat depends on them. We would have no bread if not for yeast to make it rise, no wine without fermentation. The importance of the organisms around us gains some perspective when we see the practical and economic applications of those organisms. Yet we have explored only a fraction of the species of existing fungi. There are secrets yet to be learned and benefits yet to be gained. If even one species is lost we may have missed a vital opportunity to improve our lives. The one species that perishes might have had the potential to feed entire populations, to cure disease or to provide invaluable knowledge.
ECOSYSTEM SERVICES
We must also see beyond our own needs. There is a much larger picture and many ecological reasons to preserve species. Scientists refer to the role played by living things as "ecosystem services." Communities of microbes, plants and animals, along with nonliving environmental features such as soil and water, constitute an ecosystem. Ecosystem services are provided by many species including those that prevent soil erosion or affect the quality of the air, or convert the energy from the sun into food, or influence the climate, and other functions vital to the ecosystem as a whole.
Optimally, the earth is self-perpetuating, but its continued ability to be a healthy environment for humans is dependent upon the species that sustain its ecosystems. The forests, wetlands, prairies and deserts are all necessary to its well being. If we continue to allow species to die out, it will become increasingly difficult for these ecosystems to operate successfully and it may become difficult for all living things to survive.
The very climate of the earth is dependent on the vital ecosystems that comprise it. The earth's forests perform the vital task of photosynthesis, which removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as plants make food. If the forests are cleared and not replaced, our atmosphere will change.
TAKING IT FOR GRANTED
There is dramatic evidence that the earth's ecology is badly stressed. We have taken the importance of the ecosystem for granted and we are blind and deaf to the signs of the strain. Because plants that hold soil in their roots have been eliminated, about one-fifth of all the topsoil in the world has eroded and is lost. The consequences of this loss are fewer plants, fewer productive farms and therefore less food for animals and humans alike. Understanding and maintaining natural communities is the key to sustaining life on earth. No species is unimportant. They are all part of the system.
DOING THE RIGHT THING
Beyond the questions of ecology and economics is the ethical issue. What right do we have as one single species to destroy other living things. Human beings began to destroy the other organisms in their environment when they began to practice agriculture more than 10,000 years ago. There were no more than several million people then. With our exploding population the rate of consumption has proportionately increased...about 40 percent of the net biological productivity (what is produced by all living organisms) on the land. We are already taking a disproportionate share of the bounty of the earth. Ecologists believe that we need to respect the value of other organisms and preserve them before we increase that share. These organisms deserve our respect. They support our very lives on the planet.
With the development of ever more efficient weapons, humans have been able to kill wildlife with growing efficiency. Hunters have caused several species of animals to perish. For agriculture, industry and for living space we have cleared the forests, drained the wetlands, and dammed the rivers. This encroachment on the environment has negatively impacted vast amounts of plant and animal habitat. What hasn't been destroyed has been disrupted, and the natural processes altered. This affects the diversity and size of wildlife populations in these habitats. Some are no longer connected to their ecosystems.
Various species became extinct before there were humans on the earth, but new species developed to replace them. The variety of life continued. Now, however, when people kill off a species there is little hope that it will be replaced. The variety of life is decreasing. Many species of wildlife are gone forever. In North America alone such extinction includes the Carolina parakeet, the passenger pigeon, the California grizzly bear and a birch tree that once flourished in Virginia.
SAVING SPECIES
An increased interest in conservation began in the late nineteenth century. Many governments passed laws to protect and set aside national parks and reserves for wildlife. It was these efforts that saved the American bison, the pronghorn and many rare plants found in Hawaii and in the Galapagos. Yet several hundred species of animals and thousands of species of plants are still at risk. These include well-loved animals like the Giant Pandas, the Asiatic lion, the Bengal tiger, the blue whale, the mountain gorilla, the whooping crane, the California condor, the Florida panther and all the Asian rhinoceroses. The St. Helena redwood, the black cabbage tree, the Ozark chestnut and several kinds of California manzanitas face extinction as well.
10 Interesting Things About Ecosystems
21 Sep, 2021
Coral reefs are beautiful and fragile. Coral reefs are busy underwater ecosystems. Some people call them the “rainforests of the sea.” The corals look like rocks but actually are animals. They have hard calcium carbonate skeletons like clams. They form a base for lots of other organisms to live. You’ll find crabs, sea stars, worms, clams, sponges, jellies, sea turtles, and lots of fish. Coral reefs are complicated and very fragile. They are easily affected by pollution.
The bottom of the ocean has thriving communities. At the bottom of the ocean, there are small underwater volcanoes spewing scalding hot water, gases, and chemicals like methane and ammonia. They’re called hydrothermal vents. It’s a dark place to live, but some animals love it there. Giant tube worms over 6 feet (1.8 meters) long, clams, and shrimp call these vents home. The tube worms have bacteria inside them that make food out of the methane and ammonia from the vents.
Freshwater ecosystems have rare species. Ponds, lakes, streams, and rivers are home to lots of different species that can’t live in salty ocean water. There are freshwater ecosystems all over the world. They are home to some amazing creatures. There are many kinds of frogs, fish, insects, and microscopic organisms like amoebas. And there are rare species like river dolphins in Asia and South America, otters in North America, beavers in North America and Europe, and platypuses in Australia.
Wetlands are home to baby fish. Swamps, marshes, and bogs are types of wetlands. Wetlands can have freshwater, salt water, or a mixture of both. They are home to lots of different aquatic plants and animals. Wetlands can serve as nurseries for lots of animals. Fish, frogs, alligators, and crocodiles lay eggs here. It’s a great place for the babies to hatch and grow. They are also home to many different kinds of insects like dragonflies.
Boreal forests are home to lots of trees. Much of North America, Europe, and Asia is in a temperate region, between the Arctic and subtropics. Here, the weather is generally not too hot, not too cold, with distinct seasons. There are many big forests. The trees here are usually pine, spruce, and larch. They are green all year around and have needles instead of leaves. Animals like bears, porcupines, and eagles make homes in these vast forests.
Half the world’s species live in tropical rainforests. Tropical rainforests are near the equator where it’s almost always warm and wet. These are the key ingredients for making lots of lush plants and trees. Half of the whole world’s species—types of living things—live in tropical rainforests. It’s a very busy ecosystem with many kinds of plants, animals, fungi, and microscopic organisms. Many of them live here and nowhere else. The plants in tropical rainforests produce 40% of Earth’s oxygen.
To live in the desert, you have to save water. In the world’s many deserts, there is very little rain. The land is very, very dry. Here, living things have creative ways of finding and saving water. Cactuses are very good at storing water. They can live without rain for months. The kangaroo mouse lives in the Nevada desert. It never needs to drink water. It can get all its water from the seeds it eats.
Grasslands are all around. Every continent except Antarctica has grasslands. These are areas with medium rainfall. You’ll find many different types of tall grasses, herbs, and flowers all mixed together. From the savannahs of Africa to the prairies of Kansas, grasslands are home to lots of different species that live in the soil, feed on the grass, or eat the animals that eat the grass. In the United States, that could be buffalo and cows. In Africa, it’s gazelles, lions, and elephants.
In the tundra, it feels like winter all the time. Tundra occurs near the north and south poles of our planet. We call them the Arctic and Antarctic tundra. There is also tundra at the top of the world’s tallest mountains. It’s a hard place to live. There are short but hardy shrubs, mosses, and lichens. In the Arctic tundra, there are polar bears, foxes, and reindeer. In the Antarctic tundra, there are seals and penguins resting on the shores between swims in the ocean.
There are ecosystems even in big cities. Big cities around the world have interesting ecosystems too. There are many animals that share living spaces with people near roads, houses, and buildings. In many cities, raccoons, coyotes, opossums, skunks, foxes, birds, and all sorts of insects are common neighbors. And in some places, people build wildlife crossings. These are special bridges over roads that animals can use. It lets them move between places without getting hurt by cars.
Grasslands
21 Sep, 2021
Grasslands habitats are dominated by grasses with few large shrubs or trees. The three main types of grasslands include temperate grasslands, tropical grasslands or savannas and steppe grasslands. Grasslands have dry seasons and rainy seasons. They are susceptible to fires during dry seasons.● Temperate grasslands have a lack trees and large shrubs and are dominated by grass. The soil has an upper layer that is nutrient-rich. Seasonal droughts result in fires that keep trees and shrubs from taking over the area.
● Tropical grasslands are located near the equator with warmer, wetter climates than temperate grasslands and more pronounced seasonal droughts. They are dominated by grasses, but also have scattered trees. The soil of tropical grasslands are porous and drain quickly. Tropical grasslands can be found in South America, Australia, Africa, India and Nepal.
● Steppe grasslands are dry grasslands that border on semi-arid deserts. Their grasses are much shorter than temperate and tropical grasslands and they lack trees except along rivers and streams.
Animals that inhabit grasslands include American bison, African elephants, lions and spotted hyenas.
Grasslands are areas where the vegetation is dominated by grasses and other herbaceous (non-woody) plants. They are also known as prairies and savannas. Grasslands occur naturally on all continents except Antarctica.
Grassland habitats are located in most climates, with the grasses varying in height from very short to very tall. Woody plants, shrubs or trees are found in some grasslands – forming scrubby grassland, semi-wooded grassland or savanna such as the African savanna plains. Some grasslands are called wood-pasture or woodland.
Grasslands may occur naturally or as the result of human activity. Grassland vegetation remains dominant in a particular area usually due to grazing, cutting or natural or manmade fires, all discouraging trees and shrubs from growing. Some of the world's largest expanses of grassland, located in Africa, are maintained mostly by wild herbivores.
Grasslands are often dependent on their region and differ around the world. In temperate areas, such as north-west Europe, they are dominated by perennial (year-round) grasses. In warmer climates, annual grasses make up most of the plant life.
Grassland habitats support a wealth of wildlife including mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and insects. Smaller animals are common as the open and uncovered areas make predators easier to see. Some large herbivorous mammals do also inhabit grasslands.
Grasslands once covered two thirds of the planet. As a result of human agriculture, only small pockets of original grassland ecosystems remain. Half of Africa remains grasslands.
Sustaining Tropical Forests
21 Sep, 2021
Strategies for preserving tropical forests can operate on local to international scales. On a local scale, governments and non-governmental organizations are working with forest communities to encourage low-impact agricultural activities, such as shade farming, as well as the sustainable harvesting of non-wood forest products such as rubber, cork, produce, or medicinal plants. Parks and protected areas that draw tourists—ecotourism—can provide employment and educational opportunities for local people as well as creating or stimulating related service-sector economies.On the national scale, tropical countries must integrate existing research on human impacts on tropical ecosystems into national land use and economic development plans. For tropical forests to survive, governments must develop realistic scenarios for future deforestation that take into account what scientists already know about the causes and consequences of deforestation, including the unintended deforestation that results from road-building, accidental fire, selective logging, and economic development incentives such as timber concessions and agricultural subsidies.
Scientists are encouraging the conservation community to re-consider the belief that vast, pristine parks and protected areas are the holy grail of forest conservation. Scientists using satellite and ground-based data in the Amazon demonstrated that far less “unfettered” deforestation occurred in recent decades within territories occupied and managed by indigenous people than occurred in parks and other protected areas. The deforestation in the protected areas resulted from a combination of illegal logging and devastating fires that raged through logging-damaged forests during drought. While some might argue that these losses could be prevented in the future through better enforcement of environmental laws, it may also be true that inhabited forest reserves are a more realistic strategy for preserving the majority of biodiversity in larger areas than parks alone can accomplish.
Finally, on the national and international scale, an increasing value in the global marketplace for products that are certified as sustainably produced or harvested—timber, coffee, soy—may provide incentives for landowners to adopt more forest-friendly practices, and for regional and national governments to create and enforce forest-preservation policies. Direct payments to tropical countries for the ecosystem services that intact tropical forest provide, particularly for carbon storage to offset greenhouse gas emissions, are likely to become an important international mechanism for sustaining tropical forests as more countries begin to seriously tackle the problem of global warming.
15 Animal To Be Extinct Soon
21 Sep, 2021
Fifteen animal species are at the greatest risk of becoming extinct very soon. Expertise and money is needed to save them and other highly threatened species.According to a recent study of highly threatened species, 841 endangered animal species can be saved, but only if conservation efforts are implemented immediately and with an investment of an estimated US $1.3 billion annually to ensure the species' habitat protection and management. For 15 species, the chances of conservation success are really low.
The 15 species with the lowest chances for survival in the wild and in captivity are:
Mammals:
- Mount Lefo brush-furred mouse, Lophuromys eisentrauti, Cameroon
- Chiapan climbing rat, Tylomys bullaris, Mexico
- Tropical pocket gopher, Geomys tropicalis
Amphibians:
- Bay Lycian salamander, Lyciasalamandra billae, Turkey
- Perereca Bokermannohyla izecksohni, Brazil
- Campo Grande tree frog, Hypsiboas dulcimer, Brazil
- Santa Cruz dwarf frog, Physalaemus soaresi, Brazil
- Zorro bubble-nest frog, Pseudophilautus zorro, Sri Lanka
- Allobates juanii, Colombia
Birds:
- Ash's lark, Mirafra ashi, Somalia
- Tahiti monarch, Pomarea nigra, French Polynesia
- Zino's petrel, Pterodroma madeira, Madeira
- Mascarene petrel, Pseudobulweria aterrima, Reunion Island
- Wilkins's finch, Nesospiza wilkinsi, Tristan da Cunha
- Amsterdam albatross, Diomedea amsterdamensis, New Amsterdam (Amsterdam Island)
Their low chance for survival is due to high probability of their habitat becoming urbanized; political instability; and high costs of habitat protection and management.
The opportunity of establishing an insurance population in captivity for these 15 species is low, due to high costs or lack of breeding expertise for the species.
Although the cost seems high, safeguarding endangered species is essential if we want to reduce the extinction rate by 2020. When compared to global government spending on other sectors - e.g., US defense spending, which is more than 500 times greater - an investment in protecting high biodiversity value sites is minor.
10 Interesting Facts About The Earth
16 Sep, 2021
Earth isn’t perfectly round. Earth is thicker around the equator, the belt around the middle. How much thicker? Well, it’s about 0.3% thicker. It’s not much, so when you see a photo of Earth, it appears round. But it’s just barely not.Days are getting longer. When Earth first formed 4.6 billion years ago, a day was about six hours long. Since then, the Earth has slowed down. It takes longer to spin around. Every 100 years, the day gets 0.0017 seconds longer. Why? The moon is slowing down Earth’s rotation with the tides it creates. As the tides rise and fall all over Earth, it creates a force that slows down Earth’s rotation.
Continents are always on the move. About 250 million years ago, all the continents we see today were one big supercontinent called Pangaea. They’ve slowly moved ever since to spread out and form the continents we see today: North America, South America, Africa, Europe, Asia, Australia, and Antarctica. But Pangaea wasn’t the first supercontinent. About 800 million years ago, all the continents were pushed together too. We call this previous supercontinent Rodinia.
There wasn’t just one Ice Age. You may have heard of the Ice Age on Earth. It was a time when woolly mammoths roamed. But this didn’t just happen one time 30,000 years ago. There may have been as many as four different Ice Ages in the past. During these times, Earth would have been covered completely in ice.
The driest place on Earth is near the ocean. The Atacama Desert in northern Chile is the driest place on Earth. It is said that a city there went without rain for 400 years! And yet, this desert is right next to the biggest body of water on Earth, the Pacific Ocean. Do you know what they say about the ocean? Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink.
Earth’s gravity isn’t the same everywhere on Earth. If the Earth were smooth and perfect, gravity would be the same everywhere. But Earth has mountains, oceans, valleys, and other features. The differences in gravity across Earth are called gravity anomalies. A mission called GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) has a satellite that orbits Earth and maps the gravity across the surface.
Sea levels have changed in the past. During the last Ice Age, so much water was trapped in icy glaciers that the sea level dropped by as much as 390 feet (120 meters). That’s about as tall as building 40 stories high. Long before that, the sea level was actually much higher than it is now. It was as much as 230 feet higher. There are parts of land today that used to be far beneath the ocean waters.
The sun won’t shine forever. Don’t worry, the sun isn’t going anywhere for a very long time. But nothing in the whole universe lasts forever and ever. Our sun will run out of energy in about five billion years. If anyone is around when it happens, they’ll have to leave Earth and find a new planet. Luckily, we have these next five billion years to plan for that.
Earth has other “moons.” Besides our moon, there are two other objects in space that orbit near Earth. They're not truly "moons," but they are there. One of them is an asteroid that follows Earth as we orbit around the sun. It’s called Cruithne. A different asteroid orbits the sun near us but its orbit is horseshoe-shaped, so it only gets near Earth every 95 years.
Before a big storm hits, sometimes there is a moment of calm. When a storm grows, it pulls in warm, wet air around it. The air goes into the storm cloud, and when it gets to the top, it rolls out over the big head of the cloud. Then it falls back down. As it falls, it becomes warmer and drier, which makes for stable, calm weather. This is the calm that can happen right before the storm hits.
Pollution: Choking Wild Animals
16 Sep, 2021
An ecosystem is the natural balance between organisms, plants, and animals in a particular place. Certain species of wildlife depend on particular species of plants, insects and organisms for survival. Even a small patch of forest can have a complete ecosystem of its own. So can a rivulet, a pond, a lake and sea. In any given landscape, there can be numerous ecosystems. This is what is called biodiversity.Never before has biodiversity faced such destructive forces as it has in recent times from human activities. Almost half of what took millions of years to take shape and evolve has been destroyed by man in a very short time.
Man-made pollution is one of the main threats to wildlife habitat. Humans have regarded the air, water, and soil as waste receptacles, giving little consideration to the ecological consequences of pollution. Wildlife populations are constantly confronted with a massive array of pollutants released into the environment.
In the last 80 years, the world chemical output has grown 500-fold, contaminating entire landscapes, accumulating in bodies of animals and plants, and altering and disrupting the DNA of wildlife in those places. Out in the seas and oceans, destruction caused to marine life cannot be fathomed. Trash washed down rivers and city streets, mountains of plastic, garbage and debris, are finding their way into the oceans by the ton on a daily basis – causing massive disruption in coastal ecosystems. Pollution from industrial emissions, traffic and other commercial activities have eaten into the ozone layer and altered complete climatic patterns. Ecosystems that have survived and evolved through the ages, dependent on climate and seasonal cycles, have been totally derailed.
These destructive human activities are causing massive extinctions. Up to 30% of mammal, bird and amphibian species are already threatened with extinction, including: 1 out of 4 mammals, 1 out of 8 birds, 1 out of 3 amphibians, and 6 out of 7 marine turtles. A third of reef-building corals are threatened with extinction. If global temperatures rise by more than 3.5°C, up to 70% of the world’s known species risk extinction. Extinction risks are outpacing conservation successes.
Pollution Disrupting Ecosystems
Thousands of synthetic chemicals are being released into the environment at alarming rates, altering the distribution of naturally occurring substances. Wild animals are facing conditions they have never experienced before. These alien conditions disrupt the delicate biological balance that has evolved over thousands of years.
Toxic metals from human activities accumulate to create a bewildering number of hazards to wildlife. Animal agriculture, fossil fuels, mining, metal refining, and waste-water discharge create toxic levels of pollutants beyond what naturally cycles through soil, air and water.
Pollution is have detrimental effects on the health of wildlife. Synthetic chemicals, acid rain and oil are all toxic. Additional types of pollution harm wildlife in indirect ways, changing or destroying their habitats. Carbon dioxide is accumulating in the atmosphere, resulting in changes in climate and the distribution of habitats. The ozone layer is being damaged by chlorofluorocarbons, causing destruction from the effects of excessive ultraviolet radiation on wild animals and their food sources. Grasslands, marshes and canyons are being destroyed by solid waste landfills.
Air Pollution Harming Wildlife
Gases, solid particles and aerosols are polluting the air. Air pollution negatively affects wildlife by changing plant communities. Stunted plant growth from atmospheric ozone affects the quality of habitat and food sources.
Birds are threatened directly by coal power production exhaust, which damages their respiratory systems. Air pollution also indirectly threatens birds. pH level increases result in fish kills, causing a decline in food sources. Mercury accumulates in the food chain, wreaking havoc on predatory bird populations.
Acidic rivers and streams, resulting from acid rain, causes respiratory distress in fish. Clearer water from higher acid levels also results in temperature and light increases in the water, causing native fish to relocate to cooler and darker habitats. Amphibians have changed both physiologically and behaviorally due to air pollution. Ozone damages their immune systems.
Insects are especially susceptible to the dangers of air pollution. Air quality fluctuations can cause insects to relocate, affecting the plants and animals connected to them. Insects more resilient to air pollution digest organic waste less effectively, resulting in a buildup of organic waste when air pollution increases.
Metal smelters release toxic metals through tall smokestacks that have negative effects on wild animals. Pollutants cause environmental contamination both close to the source, and downwind of smelters.
Air pollution is damaging lung tissues of animals. Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) have damaged the ozone layer that protects the Earth from ultraviolet radiation. Ozone molecules near the ground damage wildlife lung tissues and reduces plant respiration by blocking openings in leaves. A plant not able to photosynthesize at a high rate due to inadequate respiration cannot grow. Holes in the ozone layer also cause skin cancer in wildlife.
Greenhouse gases from air pollution are warming the planet. Through photosynthesis, plants convert carbon dioxide into oxygen and use the carbon to grow. But the amount of carbon dioxide being released by human activities is much greater than plants can convert. Ice and frozen ground are melting near the Poles. As a result, habitats and resources are changing for plants and animals. Ocean warming and rising sea levels are affecting shallow marine environments, including coral reefs. Less rainfall, caused by global warming, is limiting water resources for plants and animals.
Air pollution is particularly hazardous to animals when in the form of acid rain. Acid rains kills fish by increasing water acidity. Rising pH (a measure of acidity) levels are destroying plants and trees.
Acid Rain Killing Wild Animals
Acid rain, primarily caused by sulfur and nitrogen released into the atmosphere from automobiles and the combustion of oil and coal, discharges toxic aluminum into water systems. Acid rain has numerous disastrous effects on ecosystems, especially aquatic ecosystems. pH levels are changed, killing many wild animals outright and throwing ecosystems completely out of balance.
Gravity draws acid rain towards water bodies in low areas. When the acidity in these water bodies increases, fish and other organisms lose their ability to survive and reproduce. Acid rain has already killed off fish populations in hundreds of lakes.
Water Pollution Detrimental To Wildlife
Water pollution is detrimental to wildlife. Frogs species are in decline. Water bodies polluted with nutrients are causing massive growths of toxic algae that are eaten by animals, resulting in diseases and deaths.
Mining operations result in weathering waste rock and ore deposits, creating "acid mine drainage." Acid mine drainage creates toxic water pollution.
Monumental amounts of toxic metals are released into the air by industries and automobiles. These toxins settle to the ground and are then transported by fallen rain, along with pesticides. "Storm water runoff" is carried to local sewer systems, streams, rivers, lakes and oceans. It is one of the largest sources of toxic water pollution.
Oil spills result in the deaths of countless wild animals. Oil coats animal fur and feathers reducing their insulating properties, and exposes animals to deadly toxins. The long-term effects of oil spills are more subtle, but just as detrimental. Toxic chemicals on beaches, in the water, and in the food web results in anemia, decreased disease resistance, impaired reproduction, cancers, birth defects and neurological damage.
In coastal belts where human habitation concentration has grown the most in the past few decades, wanton garbage disposal, especially of plastic, has almost completely wiped out marine ecosystems within miles of the shores. Spectacular creatures such as whales and dolphins, that were once a common sight for beach goers, have been driven from their natural habitat into deep seas – having lost their centuries-old feeding grounds to pollutants.
In closeted water bodies like lakes, pollutants like oil, detergents, nitrogen and phosphate can create havoc in its ecosystems by stimulating growth of unwanted plants and choking the water of oxygen so essential to the survival of fish.
Wild Animals Affected By Noise Pollution
Pollution is not always physical. Sound waves from oil rigs, ships and sonar travel for miles disrupting communication, hunting, migration, and reproduction of aquatic animals. Noise pollution from gas and oil explorations are causing mass strandings and chronic stress.
Animal Agriculture A Major Threat To Wildlife
Pollution from animal agricultural is one of the biggest threats to wildlife. Pesticide usage in agriculture has jumped 26-fold in the last 50 years causing serious consequences for the environment. Lakes, streams, drains and groundwater have been contaminated to an extent that not only are they not fit for use, entire ecosystems around them have perished. Chemical runoff leaches into streams, waterways and groundwater. Fertilizers alter nutrient systems in waterways, creating explosive growths of algae that deplete oxygen in the water. Around 400 dead zones have already been created as a result.
Animal agriculture produces significantly more greenhouse gases than all of the traffic in the world combined. Spouting out huge percentages of carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide, the industry is leaving behind pollutants known to remain in the atmosphere for more than 100 years. Animal waste also produces toxic levels of methane and ammonia, which leads to climate change as well as acid rain. Cows alone produce approximately 120lbs of manure per day, resulting in about 150 billion gallons of methane each day. Unmanageable amounts of animal waste is collected in cesspools and is either sprayed on fields or left to sit. The toxic fumes from the pools are emitted into the air and harm the environment.
Pesticides not only harm wild animals through long-term exposure via the food web; direct exposure also kills wild animals. Pesticides drift, decimating mammal, bird and fish populations.
Littering Killing Wildlife
Littering causes the deaths of many wild animals. Toxic trash can be fatal. Entanglement in litter is a common threat. Tons of plastic litter finds its way into the oceans, washed off streets and blown from landfills. Animals often mistake litter for food and attempt to eat the litter, resulting in fatalities. Litter accumulates in giant patches. Some is transported by currents and washed onto shore. Trillions of other pieces of decomposing plastic create gigantic swirling garbage patches in the ocean.
Effects of Household Pollutants On Wild Animals
Many households products contain toxic metals. Household waste-water often transports toxic metals into aquatic environments. Toxic chemicals used in households are washed down drains and flushed down toilets. Even more massive amounts of solvents, cleansers, and other chemicals are used in industrial activities, adding toxic pollutants to industrial waste-waters.
We Must Act Now
Pollution, along with habitat loss and degradation, over-exploitation, unsustainable practices, and invasive alien species, are affecting biodiversity around the globe. The result is the massive destruction of ecosystems and a frightening reduction in biodiversity.
Earth's ecological system has been in balance for millions of years, but is now threatened by human activities. Current extinction rates are likely to result in collapses of ecosystems on a global scale.
Pollution has had devastating impacts on wildlife. Most types of pollution are not necessary, and others can be drastically reduced. Technology is available that can significantly reduce pollution. Reduced consumption of fossil fuels would also bring down emissions of toxic metals and acid rain. Shifting to plant-based, organic farming would eliminate the massive amounts of pollutants produced by the animal agriculture industry.
Awareness, creativity, and a willingness to modify our lifestyles will curtail threats that pollution causes to both wildlife and humans. You can help wildlife and ecosystems by supporting environmental groups that are fighting polluting practices, as well as by making your own conscious decisions regarding eating choices, waste management, harmful chemicals and irresponsible household products.
Destructive Dams
15 Sep, 2021
Rivers are essential to the health of the Earth. They are among the most diverse ecosystems on the planet. Rivers can be degraded by many human activities, including pollution, channelization and watershed destruction – but dams have the greatest impacts.Dams are barriers that hold back water and raise the water level, resulting in a reservoir. They are constructed for electric production, flood control, water supply and irrigation. Despite their benefits to humans, dams are destroying riparian ecosystems.
With an ever-increasing demand for energy and water, the amount and size of reservoirs is increasing around the world. Environmental consequences are outnumbering the benefits of dams – which degrade water quality, disrupt flows, affect the movement of sediment and nutrients, destroy habitats, and reduce recreational options. Dam reservoirs also slow and widen rivers, raising their temperatures. Water quality is degraded, and non-native species invade the ecosystems.
Dam Devastation
There is no such thing as “clean hydro power” on a large-scale. Hydro dams result in fluctuations in downstream flows, dewater stream channels, and cause the death and reduction of aquatic species.
Dams eliminate habitats both in the reservoirs and in the river below. Migratory fish may not survive their downstream travel, faced with numerous man-made obstacles. The return trip is even more challenging. Dams also contribute to global warming. Within the last 20 years, large dam methane emissions have equaled about the equivalent of 7.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide.
Degraded water quality results when organic materials from in and outside rivers build up behind dams. When the movement of sediment is disrupted, materials build up at the mouth of the reservoir, starving downriver ecosystems of vital ingredients. These backed-up materials, when decomposing, consume large amounts of oxygen, often resulting in algae blooms that create oxygen-starved “dead zones”. Temperatures of the water are affected, threatening marine life. When the oxygen-deprived, temperature affected water is released, downstream ecosystems also suffer.
Dam Development Out of Control
The United States has built thousands of dams, while some countries are just beginning to construct dams and are doing so at a disturbingly fast rate. Withing the next 30 years, thousands of new dams are expected to be constructed globally. Seventy percent of rivers impacted by the new dam construction are home to the greatest diversity of fish species on the planet. The irreversible destruction caused by these dams will affect both people and wildlife.
The Three Gorges Dam in China, built on the Yangtze River in 2003, supports a catchment area of almost 400,000 square miles. The Hubei region in which the dam is situated is home to 6,300 species of plants, 57 percent of which are endangered. This Central Yangtze region also supports 378 species of freshwater fish, 280 species of mammals and 166 species of reptiles. The project has severely affected temperatures of water and flow patterns that has taken a toll on aquatic life surrounding it. Instances of rotating turbine blades injuring fish abound. The most serious case of wildlife abuse has been the complete extinction of the Baiji, or Chinese river, dolphin.
Destruction of wetlands in the wake of the Three Gorges project has driven away tens and thousands of the rare Siberian crane that come to spend winters there. Today, only around 3,000 of these majestic birds are to be sighted in these wetlands. The Yangtze sturgeon, a species of fish endemic to the waters of this region, have been nearly driven to extinction. To make matters worse for wildlife survival, the human population in the Yangtze River Basin has doubled in the last 50 years which resulted in more dams to cater to the energy and irrigation needs of probably the biggest concentration of human population in the world. The number of dams in China is now 80,000, a majority of which have been constructed after 1949. What this has done to ecosystems and the biodiversity it supports is unfathomable.
Similarly, hydro power projects on the Mekong, Congo and Amazon rivers have caused incalculable losses to the once rich biodiversity and wildlife abounding their catchment areas. Dam construction on the Xingu River, a tributary of the Amazon, threaten the existence of 50 species of fish unique to the waters of the lower Xingu.
Dams interfere with the natural water flow of rivers and cause intense harm to downstream flora and fauna. Dam projects on the Mekong River in South-East Asia are causing massive disruption to aquatic ecosystems the river supports. Nearly two-thirds of the freshwater fish are long-distance migratory species that travel downriver for spawning in the Lower Mekong. The construction of dams on the upper Mekong has blocked such migratory routes, causing a huge drop in the population of such fish. A massive reduction in commercial fish catch by as much as 30 percent is a poignant indicator of this.
The above are not just isolated instances; hundreds of them occur in various parts of the world. Forest areas totaling 9 million hectares have been submerged as a result of the 1,800-odd dams constructed between 1980 and 2000. Ecosystems supporting flora and fauna were obliterated overnight. Unlike humans, wild animals are incapable of being forewarned of impending floods and this creates panic among them. Wary of leaving their habitat, some of them simply drown and the more fortunate migrate to safer but unknown territories.
Canals or drainage for irrigation purposes can also act as obstructions to wildlife habitats; so can power lines cutting through forest patches. Dams also affect the biosphere by way of greenhouse emissions.
Nearly 500 dam projects are currently in the pipeline worldwide. This spells danger to the 4,000 unique species of fish in just three major rivers systems alone – the Amazon, the Mekong and the Congo. What lies in store in numerous other river systems of the world are the extinction of many fish and other aquatic species, the decimation of floodplains, wetlands and farmlands that support a vast array of bird life, and erosion of coastal deltas.
Dam Removal
As communities begin to realize that the environmental, economic, and cultural consequences of dams outweigh the benefits, dam removal is becoming a popular occurrence. Removing dams helps to restore ecosystems and river flow for wild animals while restoring natural nutrient flow and sediment and nutrient flow.
Dam removal can also eliminate safety issues in a community, protect wetlands and coastal beaches, improve community water quality, restore recreational opportunities, and save taxpayer money.
Dams Are Not The Solution
To meet the needs of a burgeoning human population, plundering of natural resources and destruction of the world's ecosystem have been resorted to, posing a grievous threat to the future of Earth's wildlife. Among the millions of pinpricks inflicted on nature by man, one has been the wanton construction of dams.
Despite the construction of such a huge multitude of dams, over a billion people still are deprived of clean drinking water. Two billion are bereft of basic sanitation, and a similar number still lack electricity.
Scientific studies have shown that dams are not the green, clean and economical source of electricity they are made out be. For the sake of the world's dwindling wildlife population, governments and authorities must pay heed to their plight.
New technologies offer more environmentally responsible alternatives to dams. More efficient energy sources – including wind, solar, geothermal, tidal, wave and biomass options – can help eliminate our dependence on dams. Residential, commercial, and agricultural water reduction is also an effective solution to reducing the need for dams.
Impacts Of Coal Mining
15 Sep, 2021
Coal is our most abundant “fossil fuel”. China is now the chief coal producer, followed by the United States. Other major coal producers are Australia and India. Five countries – China, the United States, India, Japan and Russia – account for more than 75% of worldwide coal consumption.The US has more coal than the rest of the world has oil. There is still enough coal underground in the United States alone to provide energy for the next 200 to 300 years. But coal is far from a perfect fuel. Trapped inside coal are traces of impurities like sulfur and nitrogen. When coal burns, these impurities are released into the air.
While floating in the air, these substances can combine with water vapor (for example, in clouds) and form droplets that fall to earth as weak forms of sulfuric and nitric acid – scientists call it “acid rain.” There are also tiny specks of minerals, including common dirt, mixed in coal. These tiny particles don't burn and make up the ash left behind in a coal combustor. Some of the tiny particles also get caught up in the swirling combustion gases and, along with water vapor, form the smoke that comes out of a coal plant's smokestack.
Also, coal, like all fossil fuels, is formed out of carbon. All living things, even people, are made up of carbon. But when coal burns, its carbon combines with oxygen in the air and forms carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is a colorless, odorless gas, but in the atmosphere, it is one of several gases that can trap the Earth's heat. Many scientists believe this is causing the Earth's temperature to rise, and this warming could be altering the Earth's climate.
Threats To Wildlife From Coal Mining
Surface mining of coal is the method resorted to by the industry when coal deposits are found just below the Earth's surface. This happens to be the most used mining methodology of coal world over and has a direct and negative effect on ecosystems, environment and wildlife of places where such activity is carried out.
Excavation of the soil and heaping of spoils damages the Earth's surface beyond repair and causes decimation and displacement of wildlife species. It's worse for sedentary species like reptiles, small mammals, beavers and burrowing rodents, all of whose primary habitat is the Earth's surface.
Pollution of aquatic habitats is another outcome of surface mining for coal. Wastes and chemicals from it trickle and seep into streams, rivers and underground water-bodies. As a result, effects are manifested in places that are far away from mining sites. Most damaging are the kinds of chemicals pumped into the ground through pipes – mercury, methyl-mercury, cyanide and arsenic.
Mercury contamination is one of the most detrimental outcomes of coal mining. In the North-east mountain ranges of the US, it's been known to contaminate fresh-water lakes and in turn affect fish and fish-eating birds while damaging their neurological and reproductive systems. Studies show that 92 species from 11 North-Eastern states from Maine to Virginia are vulnerable to mercury contamination.
The wetlands that support a vast array of bird-life are especially open to one of the worst forms of pollution – methyl-mercury poisoning. Air pollution arising out of coal mining can quickly acidify water bodies. It hastens the process by which bacteria convert inorganic mercury from coal into organic methyl-mercury. Bogs, coastal marshes, beaver ponds, foggy mountaintops and forest floors are all absorbers of methyl-mercury. From such wetlands, it permeates into terrestrial grounds and this can corrupt an entire food web. Biomagnification takes over, and with each step of the food chain concentrations of mercury rise. This happens when creatures in these wet habitats feed on plant debris containing mercury, allowing it to enter terrestrial food sources. Rusty blackbirds and Saltmarsh sparrows have shown the highest levels of mercury contamination. Mercury poisoning of Virginia water-bodies threaten to hamper the Saltmarsh sparrow's ability to choose safe nesting sites.
Small traces of methyl-mercury, that were previously ignored as being harmful, have now revealed the adverse effects it can have on reproduction of species. Just a minuscule amount of 1.2 parts per million of methyl-mercury found in the blood of the Carolina wren have accounted for a 20 percent drop in their reproductive capacities. The wrens are scavengers and glean the forest floors for spiders, which too are contaminated.
Most surprising is the case of the tiny Dome Island in the middle of the pristine Lake George in the uplands of New York State. This untouched 16-acre island in the Adirondack region is considered to be a conservation gem and is home to species of songbirds like the red-eyed vireos, black-capped chickadees and song sparrows that flutter among ancient cedars, beech, hickory and oak. Shockingly, these birds have revealed the highest concentrations of mercury in the North-east region. They are victims of airborne mercury pollution. Almost 50 tons of neurotoxins are belched into the atmosphere annually by coal-based power plants in the US. This “atmospheric deposition” of mercury is a global hazard, but is more pronounced in the bio-diversity rich hotspots that lie downwind to coal-burning epicenters of Ohio, Illinois, Pennsylvania and Indiana.
Wanton mining practices elsewhere in the world have results in coal fires that can burn for decades, as in the case of numerous mines in Eastern India. It releases fly ash into the atmosphere, along with smoke full of toxic chemicals and greenhouse gasses. Coal mine methane, a greenhouse gas emitted by mining of the mineral, is 20 times more toxic than carbon dioxide.
In China, even though 95 percent of the mines are underground, the threat of a methane outburst always looms.
Other problems that have environmental consequences are coal storage piles or waste piles. These afflict countries like China, Russia, the US, Indonesia, Australia and South Africa in a considerable way.
The biggest threat to the environment comes from countries with huge reserves of coal. A fear for these countries is there could be alternative sources of energy in the future that could replace a fossil-fuel like coal. So the idea of mining and finishing whatever stocks of coal remain before such a replacement happens weighs heavily on the minds of policy makers. Hence the near-frenetic activity in coal mining in places like India and China. Also, both depend heavily on this mineral to make-up for the huge shortfall in oil to meet their ever-growing energy needs.
Coal Impact On Climate
Coal is an abundant fuel source that is relatively inexpensive to produce and convert to useful energy. However, producing and using coal impacts the environment.
Climate change is one of the greatest environmental challenges we face. Climate impacts affect the entire planet. Unchecked carbon pollution leads to long-lasting changes in our climate, such as rising global temperatures; rising sea level; changes in weather and precipitation patterns; and changes in ecosystems, habitats and species diversity. These changes threaten human and wildlife health and welfare.
Environmental risks include more heat waves and drought; worsening smog (also called ground-level ozone pollution); increasing the intensity of extreme events, like hurricanes, extreme precipitation and flooding; and increasing the range of ticks and mosquitoes, which can spread disease such as Lyme disease and West Nile virus.
Overwhelmingly, the best scientists in the world are telling us that our activities are causing climate change – based on troves of data and millions of measurements collected over the course of decades on land, in air and water, at sea and from space.
Emissions From Burning Coal
Most of the coal consumed is used as a fuel to generate electricity. Burning coal produces emissions that adversely affect the environment and human health.
There are several principal emissions resulting from coal combustion:
- Sulfur dioxide (SO2), which contributes to acid rain and respiratory illnesses
- Nitrogen oxides (NOx), which contribute to smog and respiratory illnesses
- Particulates, which contribute to smog, haze, and respiratory illnesses and lung disease
- Carbon dioxide (CO2), which is the primary greenhouse gas emission produced from the burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas)
- Mercury and other heavy metals, which have been linked to both neurological and developmental damage in humans and other animals
- Fly ash and bottom ash, which are residues created when coal is burned at power plants. Fly ash is generally stored near power plants or placed in landfills. Pollution leaching from ash storage and landfills into groundwater and the rupture of several large impoundments of ash are environmental concerns.
Coal And Water
Coal not only pollutes our skies and fuels climate change, it also deprives us of our most precious resources: water. The world’s rapidly dwindling freshwater resources could be further depleted if plans for hundreds of new coal power plants worldwide go ahead, threatening severe drought and competition.
If all the current proposed coal plants are allowed to be built, the water consumed by coal power plants around the world would almost double. Globally, coal power plant units already consume enough water to meet the basic water needs of 1 billion people. A quarter of the proposed new coal plants are planned in regions already running a freshwater deficit, where water is used faster than it is naturally replenishing.
Coal is one of the most water-intensive methods of generating electricity. According to the International Energy Agency, coal will account for 50% of the growth in global water consumption for power generation over the next 20 years. Research shows that if the proposed coal plants come online, their consumption of water will increase by 90%.
Public Lands Mismanaged
America has more coal than any other fossil fuel resource. The United States also has more coal reserves than any other single country in the world. In fact, just over 1/4 of all the known coal in the world is in the US. The United States has more coal that can be mined than the rest of the world has oil that can be pumped from the ground. Currently, coal is mined in 26 of the 50 states.
The Bureau Of Land Management (BLM) has responsibility for coal leasing on approximately 570 million acres where the coal mineral estate is owned by the Federal Government. The surface estate of these lands could be controlled by BLM, the United States Forest Service, private land owners, state land owners, or other Federal agencies. BLM receives revenues on coal leasing at three points: a bonus paid at the time BLM issues the lease; an annual rental payment of $3.00 per acre or fraction thereof; and royalties paid on the value of the coal after it has been mined. The Department of the Interior and the state where the coal was mined share the revenues.
Surface mines (sometimes called strip mines) are the source of about 65% of the coal that is mined in the US. These mining operations remove the soil and rock above coal deposits, or seams. Mountaintop removal and valley fill mining has affected large areas of the Appalachian Mountains in West Virginia and Kentucky. In this form of coal extraction, the tops of mountains are removed using explosives. As a result of this technique, the landscape is changed, and streams may be covered with rock and dirt. The water draining from these filled valleys may contain pollutants that can harm aquatic wildlife downstream. Although mountaintop mining has existed since the 1970s, its use became more widespread and controversial beginning in the 1990s.
Underground mines have less of an impact on the environment compared to surface mines. The largest impact of underground mining may be the methane gas that must be vented out of mines to make the mines a safe place to work. Methane is a strong greenhouse gas, meaning that on an equal-weight basis its global warming potential is much higher than other greenhouse gases. Surface mines contributed about 2% of total US methane emissions. The ground above mine tunnels can also collapse, and acidic water can drain from abandoned underground mines.
Using public lands for coal mining poses a significant threat to natural heritage. Coal mining dramatically alters the landscape, destroys wildlife habitat, causes erosion, and leads to the deterioration of drinking water.
Time For Changes
The ecological devastation from coal activities is disturbing. Action needs to be taken. Innovative technologies for improved mining and processing must be a priority to respond better to global environmental challenges, while governments and private sectors need to shift to alternative energy sources.
Does Coral Make A Good Gift?
15 Sep, 2021
Corals are popular as souvenirs, for home decor and in costume jewelry, yet corals are living animals that eat, grow, and reproduce. It takes corals decades or longer to create reef structures, so leave corals and other marine life on the reef.Corals have long been popular as souvenirs, for home decor, and in jewelry, but many consumers are unaware that these beautiful structures are made by living creatures. Fewer still realize that corals are dying off at alarming rates around the world.
Coral reefs are some of the most biologically rich and valuable ecosystems on Earth, but they are threatened by an increasing array of impacts—primarily from global climate change, unsustainable fishing, and pollution. Strong consumer demand for coral, heightened over the holiday season, is another factor that is contributing to the decline of coral reefs. Each year, the U.S. imports tons of dead coral for home decorations and curios. Most of these corals are shallow-water species.
The U.S. is also the world's largest documented consumer of Corallium, red and pink corals often used to create jewelry. Finished pieces of jewelry and art crafted from this type of coral can fetch anywhere between $20 and $20,000 in the marketplace. Continued consumer demand is contributing to the decline of these delicate corals around the world.
Commercial harvesting to satisfy the demand for coral jewelry has reduced colony size, density, and age structure of Corallium over time. Harvesting is also lowering the reproduction capability of this species and is decreasing its genetic diversity. Research indicates that removal of red and pink corals for the global jewelry and art trade is also leading to smaller and smaller Corallium in the wild.
Corals grow very slowly, are extremely long-lived, and take years to reach maturity. It takes corals decades or longer to create reef structures. Once coral is harvested—especially when it's extracted at a young age—surrounding coral beds often do not recover. That's why it's best to leave corals and other marine life on the reef.
Remember: corals are already a gift. Don't give them as presents.
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