Harrison Ford once said, “Nature doesn't need people - people need nature; nature would survive the extinction of the human being and go on just fine, but human culture, human beings, cannot survive without nature.” This statement is even more relevant in a time like this, where more than 37,400 species and more than a million animals and plants face the risk of being wiped off from Earth entirely. In the following few sections, I will mainly be speaking about how animals are being affected.
What are some of the animals being threatened?
According to the IUCN Red List, which is essentially a database that contains the conservation status of each species and a tool used to assess the world’s biodiversity, the number of threatened species for each animal group is as follows: 3,040 for fish, 2,390 for amphibians, 1,848 for insects, 1,481 for birds, 1,449 for reptiles, 1,317 for mammals, and 203 species for arachnids. As well-beloved as they are, species like the giant panda, Asian elephant, sea otter, gorilla, and tiger are only some that may disappear soon. Some of the rarest animals (with fewer than 1,000 alive) include the pangolin, Seneca white deer, hirola, Northern hairy-nosed wombat, the vaquita, Amur leopard, and Philippine eagle.
Seneca white deer
Who or what is threatening these animals?
There are numerous reasons that more and more creatures are designated with the “endangered” status. Most of them are caused by humans, whose population has been increasing by the millions each year. Because of their nearly 8 billion population count, people have been overhunting and overfishing for their meat or materials (like ivory from elephant tusks); destroying natural habitats with urbanization, deforestation, water extraction, mining, etc.; polluting the world with plastics, smoke, and artificial light; and spreading diseases like mumps or Salmonella infection to animals. There have also been cases where humans have brought invasive species like kudzu, killer bees, and Burmese python to a non-native habitat, leading to wreckage upon the ecosystem these animals were introduced to as they compete with native organisms for limited resources.
Why does this matter?
Extinction rates have continued to accelerate over these last decades. In the last century, at least 543 species of vertebrate land animals have gone extinct. Rachel Nuwer, an award-winning journalist for the New York Times, reported that roughly the same number of species would go extinct within the next twenty years. This shockingly high amount of predicted extinctions in the near future will not just send ripples throughout Earth’s ecosystem, but it will send quakes of suffering throughout our land and seas.
When an animal goes extinct, something akin to a game of Jenga takes place. An ecosystem is like a stack of wood blocks, while an animal is a single block. It is similar to how taking one block out of a stack, no matter how meticulously the block is taken out, can result in everything toppling over. Removing a species from its carefully crafted ecosystem will affect the food web, thus affecting every other animal that lives in the same environment. This is also referred to as the “extinction domino effect”. If apex predators are removed from the habitat (or if there’s an overpopulation of them), a “trophic cascade” occurs.
Here’s a famous example of a trophic cascade: when wolves in Yellowstone Park were nearly hunted to extinction by 1930, the elk and deer population greatly increased. These herbivores devoured willow trees and aspen trees, leading to less cover for stream banks and no home for songbirds. The stream banks eroded, the mosquitoes and insects multiplied, and because the elk and deer did not need to worry about predators, their speed and strength remained the same. Once wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone Park, life flourished again: overgrazing ceased, the plants grew taller and healthier, the elk and deer became stronger and faster, and the stream banks were safe from erosion.
Now, imagine something like this happening everywhere. Our biodiversity, our environment, our Earth will deteriorate without all the wonderful species that populate it. Truthfully, cases like this are already happening, but there are far too many to describe in only one article.
How can we help?
You may think, “I’m only one person. Can I make a change?” Yes, you definitely can! These animals (and plants) need as many helping hands as they can get.
First, learn more about this topic by reading articles, watching media, engaging in conversations, or doing anything to educate yourself about this critical global issue. Then, take some steps to protect biodiversity: eat sustainable foods like beans, organic vegetables, and rice; lower your levels of plastic pollution by opting for reusable, non-plastic items and recycle; never purchase products made from threatened or endangered species like fur or ivory-carved items; and teach your friends and family about endangered species.
You can also donate to a wildlife organization such as the World Wildlife Fund, the Defenders of Wildlife, the International Animal Rescue, the PADI AWARE Foundation, or the Sea Turtle Foundation. If there is a local organization, you can also donate to them.
Even if you only do one of these, please know that you are making a positive change. And please understand that these endangered species are counting on people to save them. Thank you for reading this.
Endangered animals
Learn more:
https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/blog/2019/05/nature-decline-unprecedented-report/
https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/blog/2019/05/nature-decline-unprecedented-report/
https://www.britannica.com/story/what-makes-a-species-endangered
https://www.ck12.org/book/cbse_biology_book_class_xii/section/19.3/
https://www.endangered.org/10-easy-things-you-can-do-to-save-endangered-species/
Tiffani Pe
The Carbon Newsprint
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