Major threats to wildlife Resources in Nigeria

 

Major threats to wildlife

Fewer natural wildlife habitat areas remain each year. Moreover, the habitat that remains has often been degraded to bear little resemblance to the wild areas which existed in the past.Habitat loss due to destruction, fragmentation or degradation of habitat is the primary threat to the survival of wildlife in the United States. When an ecosystem has been dramatically changed by human activities such as agriculture, oil and gas exploration, commercial development or water diversion it may no longer be able to provide the food, water, cover, and places to raise young. Every day there are fewer places left that wildlife can call home.
There are three major kinds of habitat loss:

• Habitat destruction: A bulldozer pushing down trees is the iconic image of habitat destruction. Other ways that people are directly destroying habitat, include filling in wetlands, dredging rivers, mowing fields, and cutting down trees.
• Habitat fragmentation: Much of the remaining terrestrial wildlife habitat in the U.S. has been cut up into fragments by roads and development. Aquatic species’ habitat has been fragmented by dams and water diversions. These fragments of habitat may not be large or connected enough to support species that need a large territory in which to find mates and food. The loss and fragmentation of habitat make it difficult for migratory species to find places to rest and feed along their migration routes.
• Habitat degradation: Pollution, invasive species and disruption of ecosystem processes (such as changing the intensity of fires in an ecosystem) are some of the ways habitats can become so degraded that they no longer support native wildlife.
  • Climate change: Global warming is making hot days hotter, rainfall and flooding heavier, hurricanes stronger and droughts more severe. This intensification of weather and climate extremes will be the most visible impact of global warming in our everyday lives. It is also causing dangerous changes to the landscape of our world, adding stress to wildlife species and their habitat. Since many types of plants and animals have specific habitat requirements, climate change could cause disastrous loss of wildlife species. A slight drop or rise in average rainfall will translate into large seasonal changes.Hibernating mammals, reptiles, amphibians and insects are harmed and disturbed. Plants and wildlife are sensitive to moisture change so, they will be harmed by any change in moisture level. Natural phenomena like floods, earthquakes, volcanoes, lightning, forest fires.
  • Unregulated Hunting and poaching: Unregulated hunting and poaching causes a major threat to wildlife. Along with this, mismanagement of forest department and forest guards triggers this problem.
  • Pollution: Pollutants released into the environment are ingested by a wide variety of organisms.Pesticides and toxic chemical being widely used, making the environment toxic to certain plants, insects, and rodents.
  • Perhaps the largest threat is the extreme growing indifference of the public to wildlife, conservation and environmental issues in general.Over-exploitation of resources, i.e., exploitation of wild populations for food has resulted in population crashes (over-fishing and over-grazing for example).
  • Over exploitation is the over use of wildlife and plant species by people for food, clothing, pets, medicine, sport and many other purposes. People have always depended on wildlife and plants for food, clothing, medicine, shelter and many other needs. But today we are taking more than the natural world can supply. The danger is that if we take too many individuals of a species from their natural environment, the species may no longer be able to survive. The loss of one species can affect many other species in an ecosystem. The hunting, trapping, collecting and fishing of wildlife at unsustainable levels is not something new. The passenger pigeon was hunted to extinction early in the last century, and over-hunting nearly caused the extinction of the American bison and several species of whales.

Today, the Endangered Species Act protects some U.S. species that were in danger from over exploitation, and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Fauna and Flora (CITES) works to prevent the global trade of wildlife. But there are many species that are not protected from being illegally traded or over-harvested.