Wikibooks: Adventist Adventurer Awards/Saving Animals

• Format: Book
• Language: English
• Subjects: Canada; peregrine falcon
• Online Access: https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Adventist_Adventurer_Awards/Saving_Animals

Adventist Adventurer Awards/Header uilder =Why are animals endangered?= 1. Overhunting This has been the fate of most large animals slow animals and tasty animals when humans have migrated to a previously uninhabited area. History abounds with stories of animals going extinct because of hunting and the consequent deaths of their predators if not by direct hunting as well then by starvation because they no longer have a food source. 2. Habitat loss Deforestation agricultural spread water extraction mining and human migration have either destroyed the only habitats the species can survive in or driven the species to a severely fragmented habitat generally meaning simply a slower demise of the species. 3. High specialization Rarity has its own problems. Highly specialized species that have very specific habitat requirements do not fare well when faced with a changing environment such as a changing climate or a habitat loss. 4. Pollution Although biologists have been unable to isolate a single cause for the recent rapid decline in numbers and extinctions of many species it appears that much of it is due to pollution. For example the Peregrine Falcon almost became extinct in Canada when DDT was widely used prior to becoming banned in the U.S. and Canada in 1971. 5. Invasive species Invasive species are a major cause of loss of diversity of both plants and animals. When a new species arrives with no natural predators to keep it in check it can take over. A familiar example is the brown tree snake inadvertently arriving in Guam on a cargo ship following WWII. The venomous brown snake has decimated on virtually all of the local bird fruit bat and lizard populations 6. Human wildlife conflict As our populations increase and more people move into areas where wildlife previously lived in abundance new human wildlife conflicts arise. Sadly in many cases wildlife is killed when they cause too big harm to farmers by hunting livestock or destroying crops. 7. Disease Diseases kill humans and animals alike. The Ebola virus ...