Causes of Biodiversity loss : Explained

The main causes of biodiversity loss include land ‑use change, changing levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, changing climate, biological invasion and nitrogen deposits (air pollution). The causes of biodiversity loss are many and varied, and often interrelated. 

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Bio­di­ver­si­ty loss

Habitat loss

Habi­tat refers to the area where species seek food got shel­ter and repro­duc­tion the great­est threat to wild plant and ani­mals species is due to destruc­tion or alter­ation of their habi­tat if an ani­mal habi­tat is destroyed or dis­rupt­ed, it must adapt to the new change, move else­where or die. When it is forced out of its ter­ri­to­ry and if it finds a suit­able habi­tat there is a pos­si­bil­i­ty that the habi­tat already in use con­se­quent­ly it must com­pete with the local pop­u­la­tion of the same species as well as oth­er ani­mals the oth­er option a that it must migrate into a mar­gin­al habi­tat where it may suc­cumb to pre­da­tion, star­va­tion or dis­ease . Some organ­ism such as pigeon, house spar­rows, rodent (like rat and mice) and deer flour­ish in the mod­i­fied habi­tats pro­vid­ed by human activ­i­ties but many oth­er do not. Some habi­tats are move vul­ner­a­ble to species extinc­tion, these are called frag­ile habi­tats. Coral reefs, Ocean­ic island and moun­tain top are impor­tant frag­ile habitats. 

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Habi­tat Loss

Habi­tat destruc­tion is recog­nised today as the most sig­nif­i­cant threat to glob­al bio­di­ver­si­ty and bears respon­si­bil­i­ty for much of the species loss world­wide This include:

  • Felling of for­est for land use(eg clear felling for devel­op­ment agri­cul­ture), large scale log­ging and small scale patch­work agri­cul­ture. Shift­ing cul­ti­va­tion alone is believed to be respon­si­ble for 70% of defor­esta­tion in Africa, 50% of Defor­esta­tion in Asia and 35% of For­est defor­esta­tion in America. 
  • Destruc­tion of Man­grove sites for agriculture
  • Min­ing and destruc­tion of corals
  • Con­ver­sion of wet­lands for land use
  • Over extrac­tion of tim­ber and fuel wood
  • Human induced bur­ing of habi­tats (eg for­est fir­ing for shift­ing cul­ti­va­tion and fir­ing grass­lands to improve fod­der for cattle) 
  • Damming of rivers
  • Sil­ta­tion and Sed­i­men­ta­tion of fresh­wa­ter bodies
  • Pol­lu­tion also dis­turb the nat­ur­al habi­tat con­sid­er­ably. Indus­tri­al wastes cause severe impact, par­tic­u­lar­ly on the aquat­ic habi­tat. For exam­ple: dur­ing the 1950s and 1960s , Insec­ti­cides par­tic­u­lar­ly chlo­ri­nat­ed hydro­car­bons, reduced the pop­u­la­tions lev­els of sev­er­al birds such as bald eagle and brown pelican. 

Human Wild Life Conflict

Peo­ple use some plant and Ani­mals species at a greater rate than the species can replace them­selves. Nine of the world’s major ocean fish­eries are declin­ing because of too much fish­ing as well as water pol­lu­tion and habi­tat destruc­tion, eg South­ern bluefin tuna, the Atlantic hal­ibut and the Pacif­ic and Atlantic salmon. 

Cur­rent log­ging rates threat­en to elim­i­nate mahogany and many oth­er trees species that take many years to grow and mature. 

the $10 bil­lion a year mar­ket in wildlife — For pets, folk med­i­cines, gourmet foods, dec­o­ra­tive objects and oth­er uses — threat­ens ele­phant and rhi­no, sea hors­es and col­or­ful corals, trop­i­cal plants and birds, bears, pan­das and tigers. 

Selective Destruction Of Species

The selec­tive destruc­tion of one species of an exist­ing fau­na can pro­duce equal­ly unfor­tu­nate results. The per­fect demon­stra­tion of unex­pect­ed. Con­se­quences of such selec­tive destruc­tion can be explained to you by the exam­ple of Pas­sen­ger pigeon. The pas­sanger pigeon (Ectopistes migra­to­ri­ous ) was prob­a­bly most abun­dant bird on earth as recent­ly as the mid­dle of the 19th cen­tu­ry. Their flocks dark­ened the sky dur­ing migra­tion and one such flock alone was 400 km long and had no less than two bil­lion birds . so huge was their num­bers that the branch­es of trees would break under the weight of the perch­ing birds. It tools hours for the flocks to pass through a place . there used to be as many as 90 nests per tree through­out a stretch of for­est of about 5km width and 67km length. 

In 1871, an esti­mat­ed 136 mil­lion pas­sen­ger pigeons nest­ed in a 2,299sq. Km area of cen­tral Wis­con­sin, USA. An immense ton­nage of drop­ping fer­tilised the forests where pas­sen­ger pigeons roost­ed. Today there is not even a sin­gle pas­sen­ger pigeon on the earth . you must be won­der­ing why this extinc­tion occured . This hap­pened because mil­lions of pas­sen­ger pigeons were killed for food every year 

Domestication Of Selective Species

Humans have tak­en care of the liv­ing beings which are use­ful to them through exten­sive breed­ing pro­gramme, to derive max­i­mum ben­e­fit of their prod­ucts. Dur­ing the process, the species have lost cer­tain use­ful char­ac­ter­is­tics so much so that these forms can­not sur­vive on their own in nature . a very good exam­ple is corn , which is pam­pered so kuch by humans that if is left on its own,its can­not survive.

Today human has large herds of domes­tic ani­mals. These ani­mals can also play a sig­nif­i­cant part in the reduce ruin of ani­mal pop­u­la­tions by over­graz­ing the kand, thus destroy­ing the veg­e­ta­tion on which both thay and the wild ani­mals depend. The native wildlife of a par­tic­u­lar area is capa­ble of util­is­ing tye native plant life much more effi­cient­ly than intro­duced domes­tic cat­tle and is thus much less like­ly to con­vert fer­tile areas into deserts.

The oth­er impor­tant para­me­ter is that tge domes­tic cat­tle are car­ri­ers of sev­er­al dis­ease which can trans­mit to wild ani­mals. For exam­ple, the steady reha­bil­i­ta­tion of the gre­ta indi­an Rhi­noc­er­os was seri­ous­ly ham­pered by the rid­er dis­eases which they con­tract­ed from they con­tract­ed firm the local domes­tic cattle.

Use Of pesticides.

Pes­ti­cides harm insect pol­li­na­tors , includ­ing man­aged hon­ey bee pop­u­la­tions, which can in turn reduce crop yields. Runoff seep­ing into rivers , lakes and coastal envi­ron­ment can pro­duce neg­a­tive impacts on entire aquat­ic ecosystems.

sev­er­al pes­ti­cides banned in the unit­ed states are still export­ed to devel­op­ing coun­tries such as DDT, DDE and PCBs. These sub­stances mim­ic or inter­face with nor­mal hor­mones in liv­ing organ­isms. Repro­duc­tive abnor­mal­i­ties have been found in alli­ga­tors, terns, salmon and gulls exposed to high lev­els of chem­i­cal from pes­ti­cides and ani­mal hor­mones in their environment.

Global Climate Change

Substantial evidence demonstrate that people are contributing to measurable changes in the global climate , threatening life, by buri burning fossils fossils such as oil, natural gas and coal and by burning trees, we have dramatically increased the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere . while scientist do not know the exact effects of increased CO2 , they predict that it will lewd to higher overall global temperatures , increasing sea levels and changes in climate patterns.

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Cli­mate Change

The changed atmos­pher­ic con­di­tion that result from glob­al warm­ing could cre­ate greater num­bers of intense storms and pro­longed drought . on the oth­er hamd , the expect­ed speed of cli­mate changes cou­pled with direct loss of nat­ur­al habi­tat May pre­vent some species from adapt­ing quick­ly enough. They are like­ly to become extinct , local­ly or more broad­ly and their roles in nat­ur­al sys­tems will be lost forever.

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