Loss of Species Due to the Biodiversity Crisis

The Mexican gray wolf is a large prey that, in the past, preyed on livestock which contributed to their near extinction by humans. However, the decline in the Mexican wolf lead to an overabundance in plant life which had a direct effect on other wildlife. There are many challenges involved with re-introducing wolves to other stakeholders such as to academics, mangers, ranchers, or landowners. It is not as simple as taking the Mexican wolf from where they are now and placing them in different areas in Arizona, New Mexico, the US, and across the border in Sonora, Mexico. This is a very large area of land that policies would have to cover. The best ways to illustrate that this concept is not as easy as it may seem are best described by nature culture dichotomy, social-ecological systems involving ecosystems with people, and the Anthropocene comprised with the idea of humans as agents of change.

Faith & Surovell offer hopes for further testing for biological and spatial histories of individual species and their migrations in relation to climate, ecology, and human permeation. They state this will uncover which if not all of the three main mechanisms: climate change, overkill, and extraterrestrial impact, caused the North American mammal extinctions in the late Pleistocene (Faith and Surovell, 2009).

Biology Issues Investigations: “Should we bring back the woolly mammoth from extinction? Or should we not tamper with the past and leave things how they are?

In 1993, Steven Spielburg’s Jurassic Park introduced the concept of bringing extinct species back. In 2003, a team of Spanish and French scientists took Spielburg’s movie to the next level—they successfully brought back the Pyrenean ibex, a species of wild goat (93). With increasing rates of extinction, the scientific community is debating whether or not this process of de-extinction should continue to be pursued. Although it would be remarkable to visit an exhibit featuring a saber-tooth tiger or woolly mammoth, these animals went extinct for a reason; humans should not bring back extinct animals, but instead use the funding for more practical purposes.

Humans have caused another extinction, one that could possibly take us down in the process, species are exponentially going extinct because of habitat loss, species exportation, and invasive species bullying native species. On the other hand, scientists are trying to safe guard native species, keep animals in captivity whether it be for the animals well-being or for research, and widespread invasion. In this essay I will be comparing and contrasting “What Everglades Pythons and Other Invasive Species are Trying to Tell Us,” by Julia Whitty and “The Sixth Extinction,” by Jeff Corwin.

Conservation of our biodiversity not only demonstrates foresight, it protects the natural resources so vital to our own continued existence. The value of any single species to an ecosystem is immeasurable; the environment will not endure without its species, despite size or niche. These animals are not dispensable. And, they are apt to face extinction in the not too distant future, unless a resolve for their preservation is insisted by the public and enforced by governments internationally.

There were multiple issues identified in opposition to this claim, the first being the lack of evidence for contemporaneity between the arrival of humans with the extinction of the megafauna. Without consensus on these two time periods inferences about the cause of megafaunal extinction cannot be made. Judith Field suggests that the site at Cuddie Springs demonstrates long periods of co-habitation between humans and now extinct megafauna, which generates issues in the rapid extinction aspect of Flannery’s hypotheses (“Taming the Fire”, 1998). In addition Bowman (1998) also proposes the evidence for primarily human induced megafaunal extinction is unsubstantial and possibly caused by numerous factors including climate and habitat changes (pp.

The Mexican gray wolf is a large predator that, in the past, preyed on livestock, which led to their near extinction by humans because they were tired of the wolves eating their livestock, they were a danger to people, and there were land use conflicts. However, the decline in the Mexican wolf lead to an overabundance of plant life which had a direct effect on other wildlife. There are many challenges involved with re-introducing wolves to other stakeholders such as to academics, mangers, ranchers, or landowners such as the reasons listed above which led to their near extinction. It is not as simple as taking the Mexican wolf from where they are now and placing them in different areas in Arizona, New Mexico, the US, and across the border in Sonora, Mexico. This is a very large area of land that policies would have to cover. The best ways to illustrate that the re-introduction of the wolves in the many expected areas is not as easy as it may seem are best described by nature culture dichotomy, social-ecological systems, and in the Anthropocene humans are seen as agents of change.

Once humans migrated to North America and Australia, they killed or ate large animals, potentially wiping out entire species. Desertification, deforestation, erosion, and soil salinization were all human measures to build more cities. Changes in climate and diseases brought by domesticated animals were also linked to the extinction of large animals from Eurasia. The Pleistocene re-wilding of North America has two aspects: restoring past potential and preventing new extinctions with more protected populations. C. Josh Donlan from “Restoring America’s Big, Wild Animals” argues that although species such as camels, lions, and mammoths that disappeared 13,000 years ago cannot be brought back in the same form, restoring close relatives is a possibility and can potentially economically and culturally benefit ecosystems. Donlan then proceeds to explain the importance of large animals, his strategy, and challenges of reintroducing large creatures. On the other hand, Dustin R. Rubenstein, Daniel I. Rubenstein, Paul W. Sherman, and Thomas A. Gavin from “Pleistocene Park: Does Re-Wilding North America Represent Sound Conservation for the 21st Century?” assert that humans should focus on preventing the extinction of new animals since bringing back vanished species is improbable. In fact, restoring North America to its pre-human state may be detrimental to current species and ecosystems.

In her article titled “Animal Extinction: The Greatest Threat to Mankind,” Whitty emphasizes the drastic increase in extinctions and the rising number of endangered species by relating “the path of a dying species” (172) to death by dehydration. In the first paragraph, she explains what happens in the final stages of dehydration in rather gruesome detail; her objective is to swiftly grab the attention and sympathy of her reader. After the stomach churning hook, she writes about the history of extinction and how “today we’re living through the sixth great extinction, sometimes known as the Holocene extinction event” (Whitty 173). Whitty moves on to elucidate her point by including statistics and referencing other authors who have written about the environment in some manner such as Edward O. Wilson and Henry David Thoreau. Like Leopold, she praises the importance of biodiversity in the fight for species survival and included a study done by the University of New Mexico on how “extinctions lead to co-extinctions” (Whitty 176). Her solution involves maintaining predators and wildlife-linkages; she argues that when nature is tightly controlled, the danger of extinctions and other catastrophes mounts. Whitty’s proposed solution to the extinction epidemic is “rewilding,” which is restoring the land to its natural state. She emphasizes its credibility by reporting that “Wilson calls [rewilding] ‘mainstream

Licht, Millspaugh, Kunkel, Kochanny, &, Peterson. (2010) states the concept of wolf recovery hinders the acceptance of reintroduction because it is limited to the numbers of wolves, instead of promoting wolf reintroduction as the key to a healthy ecosystem (Licht, et. al., 2010). And that wolves provide benefits to education, ecological, recreational, and science (Licht, et al, 2010). The case studies they reviewed were from Coronation Island, Alaska where reintroduction occurred, since there was no active management the wolf population declined and deer populations rebounded (Licht, et al, 2010). They also studied Wind Cave National Park and determined while it had no existing wolf population, based on the park’s size, believes it could support

Bill Freedmen, author of “Endangered Species—Human Causes Of Extinction and Endangerment” notes, “scientists approximate that present extinction rates are 1,000 to 10,000 times higher than the average natural extinction rate.” These distressing numbers should be acted upon to save the endangered species and avoid the catastrophic change to this planet if these species were to become extinct. In order to produce change, people need to recognize that habitat loss, climate change, and poaching are all factors in why our animal species are going extinct.

Rewilding aims to save species allowing nature to bring back the wildlife and the ecosystem that has been endangered. Monbiot argues the time when the megafauna existed compared to the wildlife today that is being damaged by humans. He claims his argument to be more informative and encouraging to the reader. He also used chronological order to explain the wildlife existence. For example, “the migration of elephants, rhinos, and hippos by ice around 40,000 years ago and the preservation of lions and hyaenas around 11,000 years ago”. The concept the author used about the elephant adaptation in European trees is extremely interesting. He elaborates more on the idea of taking a walk around the

They died. Sadly, for every species that is alive today, perhaps a thousand more have lived previously and had become extinct. Arguably, extinction could be considered part of the evolutionary processes. Undoubtedly, in the wild, endangered species try to adapt to the alterations in their niches, but sometimes they fail for the reason that they cannot cope fast enough with the deviations. Accurately, change could be considered as a threat to survivability [1] whether or not it comes from the nature or from humans. Could this happen in organizations that go through an organizational change? Surely, innovation and change are constant in organizations around the world due to the rapid advancement of the technology and business in general.

Have you ever heard of the Holocene extinction? Well, I’m sorry to break the news to you but we are in the middle of the Sixth Great Extinction of our planet, “an event characterized by the loss of between 17,000 and 100,000 species each year” (Biodiversity, 2013). Today, I want to inform you about diseases, which is one of the lesser-known aspects of extinction and wildlife conservation. I am knowledgeable on this topic due to a considerable amount of scholarly, research, and from firsthand experience within my field of fisheries and wildlife. The diseases I will be sharing with you today include white-nose syndrome, chronic wasting disease, and chytridiomycosis.