Threats to Biodiversity Extinction is a natural part of life on Earth. Over the history of the planet most of the species that ever existed, evolved and then gradually went extinct. Species go extinct because of natural shifts in the environment that take place over long periods of time, such as ice ages. Today, species are going extinct at an accelerated and dangerous rate, because of non-natural environmental changes caused by human activities. Some of the activities have direct effects on species and ecosystems, such as: Habitat loss/ degradation Over exploitation (such as overfishing) Spread of Non-native Species/ Diseases Some human activities have indirect but wide-reaching effects on biodiversity,
New roads are being built and forests are demolished and destructive logging practices and unsustainable wood collection can eventually lead to a spiral of degradation. In Australia, agricultural expansion, primarily for beef cattle production, is the major leading driver of tree-clearing. Deforestation and tree-clearing is the major cause of habitat loss for many potentially endangered and endangered species. In Sydney, this includes the Tasmanian Devil, the Southern Cassowary, Tasmanian wedge-tailed eagle, the Carnaby 's cockatoo, Bennett 's tree kangaroo, the Cape York rock-wallaby, and
Increasing proportions of deforestation is because of industrial activities and large scale agriculture. By the beginning of the 2000’s more than three quarters of forest clearing was for cattle farming Illegal logging is a main cause of deforestation in the vicious cycle of rainforest destruction. This is when farmers remove valuable timber from areas that they have illegally occupied. This results in land grabbers building roads that lead into untouched parts of the Amazon which opens more doors into the wonders and exposes the forest to exploitation and destruction without even a second thought or an understanding of the damage being done and the consequences of these
The last one is effect on society. They may destroy the vast amounts of forest products such as wood, food and medicines. Especially, tribal people and the rural poor who lost their livelihood, even many firefighters who attempted to put out a forest fire have put their lives in
Also a famine occurred in China claimed the lives of nearly two million people after the flood Hwang River. The spread of agricultural pests spread of diseases among crops could destroy the crop altogether and thus lead to a severe famine. An example of what happened in Ireland after the potato crop damage in full in the middle of the nineteenth century led to the low population. Very significantly as a result of death or emigration to escape. Poverty or famine, may also be cause from some insects that destroy private agricultural crops locusts.
These 5 strains on biodiversity are: (1) Habitat loss (2) Pollution (3) Bio invasion (4) Over-exploitation (5) Climate Change, with the main cause of biodiversity loss due to habitat loss and degradation, often brought forth by deforestation. In fact, a study that took 20 years has presented that habitat destruction is possibly leading towards the loss of about 12.5% species of plants in the world. These species have now become so rare that they could easily become extinct (Knight
Another effect will be that wood will be expansive because of its rareness, and that will trigger criminal to illegal cut the remaining trees for profits. Another result that will cause by habitat destruction is the decrease of oxygen amount. Since trees are enormous plants, their production of oxygen is significant. It is expected by Curley (2017) that 40 percent of the earth's oxygen is generated by tropical rainforests, though they cover only about 6 percent of the land. Rainforests in the Amazon have reduced by 17 percent in the last 50 years as a result of deforestation and that will work on decreasing the amount of oxygen and rising the mortality rate of all living beings.
This area decreased dramatically to 130,000 acres in 1920’s (Reeves Smyth, 1997). The depletion of the woodland continued into the 19th and 20th centuries, where it was cleared as used as farmland. This overexploitation of the woodland by human activity during the seventeenth and eighteenth century, saw the destruction of our native woodland “In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Ireland saw the wholesale destruction of its native forests” (Fitzgerald et al., 2007). The landowners and the owners of
Another main reason of child trafficking is Assam is severely affected by natural calamities like erosion for which large scale migration took place to metros. An estimated around 3,86,476 hectares of agricultural land in Assam has been lost due to erosion of river estimated around 7 per cent of such land in some districts of Assam. Due to disasters, the people of the affected areas have been walkout in search of alternative livelihood option. It has been observed that from Assam large scale migration of the local population to the comparatively richer parts of the country. The growing need for better livelihood options and employment has turned Assam into a fertile place for human traffickers and in the past few years,
Out of these, about 1.4 million species have been identified so far. Each species is adapted to live in specific environment, from mountain peaks to the depth of seas, from polar ice caps to tropical rain forests and deserts. All this diversity of life is confined to only about one kilometre thick layer of lithosphere hydrosphere and atmosphere which form biosphere. Though the study of environment and ecology is quite old, the term biodiversity has been introduced by Walter Rosen in 1986. Scientists are aware of the immense potentials of various life-forms existing on the earth.