Why do animals become endangered?

Question

I need to do a school project on the topic of animal endangerment. My group have reached the consensus that human seems to be the main cause of it. Why does a species become endangered? How does that lead them to be pushed to the brink of extinction?

Answer 1

Animals become endangered because of a destruction of their habitat. Animals are considered endangered if their numbers are reduced to such a low amount that they are at risk of becoming extinct. One of the main culprits of pushing a species to the brink of extinction is the change or damage to their habitat. A habitat is not merely a home, it is an environment where the animals forage for food, live, mate and raise their youngs. To put it in focus, it is a place where the animal species have specially adapted to rely on, with any major change in their home disrupting its lifestyle. More often than not, this loss of habitat is caused by human intervention.

Agriculture gets human to cut down the trees and opening up the forest to allow for bigger area for farming, replacing variety of life with a single species of crops, often burning down forest just because it’s cheaper and faster. Then we develop our home, paving roads and building infrastructures over what used to be a jungle. Then there is also the pollution, from factory chemical waste and pesticides to protect our foods. This destroys the home of the species that rely solely on their environment to survive. With that environment damaged, the animals dies. Often, the habitat works alongside a food chain, so a decrease in a certain species in the food chain will increase the number at the bottom and decrease the ones higher up the chain. Destroying their habitat creates a domino effect that will is really harmful to the balance of the population. Thus, the animals that rely the most on their respective environment suffers the most and dies out. Destruction of the habitat is the leading cause of animal endangerment.

Comments

Yeah, I agree with you on why do animals become endangered for the same reason!

Answer 2

Illegal poaching is of species is a real threat to species of animal. Hunters ignored the government laws that regulate hunting, instead hunting the species to the numbers of endangerment. They are difficult to catch since hiring wardens is unfeasible to cover every corner of the habitat protected. To make matters worse, species that are endangered are pricier in the market, so become the main target for the game hunter. Not only would they destroy the local food web, the killing is fueled by greed or just for “sports”. The one-horned rhino is hunted for its horn, which are sold in the Asian black market for an exorbitant price since they sought after it for their medicinal properties. The ridiculous part of hunting them for healing, other than the irony, is that the horn is made of the same protein that makes our hair, so they can’t be digested. In fact, poaching material is often useless in what they are assumed to do, merely a belief of what they are supposed to do. Consuming shark fin is not any healthier than any other fish, might instead be worse due to mercury accumulation, they are tasteless and could easily be substituted. They are however eaten and extremely costly because the market price it as the symbol of wealth and, again, falsely assumed healing powers. Poaching is a real problem that must be dealt with quickly.

Answer 3

An introduction of an exotic species to a food chain can cause a species to be endangered. When human migrate from a country to another, they would bring the species local to their nation to the other foreign one, usually as a food source. Others are unwanted, such as rats and insects that sneak aboard. If they released these animals to the wild of the foreign country, by accident or on purpose, it will destroy the existing ecosystem. The usual process goes the following way: let’s say a rat brought in from overseas does not have a natural predator in the foreign environment, the rat could freely breed and eat up all the food without the danger. The grow so rapidly that they choke out the food supply for the rest of the native species, say, by eating up all the seeds, the birds get less food and more of them dies. If that bird relies solely on seeds to survive, the lack of food could kill so much of them they become endangered. So when considering the factors of why do animals become endangered, we need to think about the introduction of an invasive species to a foreign environment, since it as well could destroy the ecosystem enough, causing starvation to the native species that leads them to endangerment.