Species Extinction example essay topic

Of all the species that have lived on the Earth since life first appeared here three billion years ago, only about one in a thousand are still living today. All the others have became extinct usually within ten million years after they first appeared. This in turn has contributed greatly to the current level of biodiversity on the planet. Extinction is the loss of populations of interbreeding organisms. It can be caused by habitat destruction, predation and the inability to adapt to changing environments. It can also be caused by changes in the climate and environment or by the evolution of new, better-adapted types of organisms that have displaced earlier forms.

Commercial exploitation, damage caused by non-native plants and animals introduced in to an area and pollution also contribute to the extinction of species According to many biologists the human population is the primary reason for the increase in the rate of extinction. Since 1600 about 1100 species have became extinct. The rapid disappearance of species was ranked as one of the planet's gravest environmental worries, surpassing pollution, global warming and the thinning of the ozone layer, according to the survey of 400 scientists commissioned by New York's American Museum of Natural History. Since the 1600's, worldwide commercial exploitation of animals for food and other products has caused many species to become extinct or endangered.

The whaling industry, in which whales are slaughtered for oil and meat, has led many whale species to the brink of extinction. The African black rhinoceros, killed for its horn, which is prized as a medicine and aphrodisiac, is also critically endangered. The great auk and the passenger pigeon became extinct in the 19th and early 20th centuries because of over hunting, and the Carolina parakeet also died as a species because of the combination of over hunting and habitat destruction. Humans participate in the destruction of species habitats in numerous ways.

The habitats are normally destroyed to benefit humans in one way or another. For instance, we drain swamps or fill them so we can build houses or parking lots or anything we want to benefit us. We cut down trees for limber to build houses, and other buildings, also to benefit us. Sometimes we are even destroying species habitats without even realizing it. Every time we drive a motor vehicle sulfur and nitrogen oxide is released into the air creating acid rain, which destroys forests and contaminates lakes and streams making them uninhabitable because of its highly acidic precipitation. Global warming is also contributing to the factor of the extinction of species.

Carbon dioxide and other gases are released into the atmosphere by the burning of fossil fuel such as oil, coal and natural gas. The atmosphere is trapping heat there creating the green house effect. The greenhouse effect is the term for the role played by the atmosphere in maintaining higher temperatures near the earth's surface than could exist if the atmosphere were not present. Global warming could increase an average temperature by three to eight degrees Fahrenheit by the year 2050. The higher temperatures will disrupt the biosphere to a great extent. It will raise sea levels, making species more vulnerable to diseases and altering habitats.

This will threaten numerous species therefore causing them to migrate in order to survive. Humans also pollute the earth in many ways. Humans liter all the time. When driving down the road, instead of putting trash aside we just throw it out in the window. Whether it's just a gum wrapper or a cigarette or it is a drink cup. Animals will then go and eat it and it can get stuck in their throats and it kills them.

Big oil companies will just dump oil into pond or rivers there by polluting the water and killing thousands of species that live in the water. Habitats with the highest number of threatened mammals and birds are lowland and mountain tropical rainforest. Freshwater habitats are extremely vulnerable with many threatened fish, reptile, amphibian and invertebrate species. In the last 500 years, because of humans 816 species of animals have been forced into extinction. Many species have been eliminated from areas dominated by human influences.

Even in preserves, native species are often out-competed or consumed by organisms introduced from elsewhere. Extinction is a natural process, but it is occurring at an unnaturally rapid rate as a consequence of human activities. Already we have caused the extinction of 5%-20% of the species in many groups of organisms, and current rates of extinction are estimated to be 100-1,000 times greater than pre-human rates. The Carolina parakeet used to range from Mexico to New York State.

It was the only parakeet to adapt successfully to the harsh winters of eastern North America, but because of the destruction of America's woodlands to create farmland, this species of parakeets home was destroyed. These birds were also shot to protect farmers' crops, for a sport, and for their beautiful feathers, which the ladies liked to wear on their hats. Once one of the parakeets was wounded or killed, the other ones would fly around it instead of deserting it, which made it easier for the hunters to pick them off one by one. Cause of this species extinction? Humans destroyed their habitats for the benefits of themselves and killed them for a sport.

There used to be thousands and thousands of Passenger Pigeons. So much that they were said to be able to uproot a tree when they all landed on it because of the weight of all of them. During the nineteenth century, hundreds of thousand of the birds were sold to the meat markets of New York City. Hunting for sport also affected the number of the species incredibly. There was a competition that the winner had to kill 30,000 passenger pigeons to retrieve his prize. By the 1890's the birds were scarce.

In 1914 the last passenger died in the Cincinnati Zoo. Humans hunted them for a sport. The Blaauwbok, or Blue Antelope, was all ready limited in number when they were first discovered. Their habitat was the grassy countryside of Africa. When the grassland changed into bush and forests as the climate got warmer and livestock was introduced into the habitat, the population of the Blaauwbok declined greatly. Then the Dutch came with their firearm hunting and killed off the remaining of the Blaauwbok.

The change in their habitat, the introduction of live stock by humans and then the Dutch shot them and killed them for no apparent reason which finished them off. The Great Plains Wolf, who ranged from Missouri to the Dakotas and up into Southern Canada, is now extinct. This wolf would follow the prairie bison and feed on the young and sickly but when humans built railways the bison suffered a massive onslaught. They cut down on the food supply for the Great Plains Wolf so they were forced to go after cattle. The farmers then killed them to protect their cattle. Trappers killed them for their pelts and settlers simply killed them because they were scared of them.

Humans cut down on their food supply, killed them to protect themselves or for their pelts and from fear. The Burch ell's Zebra, or Dau w, used to populate Africa's plains in great numbers. Settlers report seeing groups of thousands. Over hunting, the cultivation land, and competition with farm animals for grazing land during periods of draught caused the population to be wiped out. Humans over hunted it, cultivated their habitat and they did not have enough food supply. The Barbary Lion roamed North Africa from Tripoli through Tunisia and Algeria to Morocco.

The Romans may have used these lions in their brutal coliseum shows. Ecological change caused by farming is thought to be the major cause of their extinction. Cattle destroyed forests and the food supplies of deer and the gazelle, which was what the lion ate to survive. In Algeria, Turks encouraged the killing of lions by giving lots of money for their skins. The ecological change in their habitats, the destruction of their food supplies, and the hunting for their skins. The Falkland dog was thought to have descended from an abandoned prehistoric domestic dog.

It survived for thousands of years on a diet of seabirds and seal pups. The dogs were extremely friendly and trusting. Traders wanted the dogs fur so they would lure the sweet dogs in with a piece of meat in one hand but in the other hand they would have knife so when the dog came up to get the meat, they would stab it to death. The farmers began to believe the dogs were killing their sheep off so they organized an intensive poisoning campaign. Humans killed them for their skin and then poisoned them. The Martinique Giant Rice Rat was very plentiful.

The islanders loved to eat this delicate meat. They hunted them heavily but this was not the cause of its extinction. In 1902 the volcano Mount Pelee erupted and a cloud of poisonous gas killed 20,000 islanders but it also wiped out the species of the Martinique Giant Rice Rat. It is too late to save the Martinique Giant-Rice Rat, the Falkland dog, the Barbary Lion, the Burch ell's Zebra, the Great Plains Wolf, the Blaauwbok, Passenger Pigeons, the Carolina parakeet and the other thousands of species. There are thousands more species that we can save. There are almost as many endangered or threatened species as there are extinct ones.

The California condor is the largest flying bird in North America. The cultivation of California led to the species' rapid decline. Farmers would set out poisoned carcasses to kill coyotes and squirrels and the California Condors would come and eat the carcass and it would kill them. Running into electrical wires also killed them and humans hunting them almost brought them to the verge of extinction. Between 1985 and 1987, biologists captured the last nine California Condors in the wilderness and mated them.

In 1992 the biologists tried to return the birds to the wilderness because the population of the birds had grown. By 1997 the population of the birds had increased to 133, which 33 of them live in the wilderness. The American Bald Eagle was once plentiful near lakes and coasts in North America, but because hunters prized the bird's white head and 7 foot wingspan this species was near extinction. Habitat loss, the cutting of nesting trees, poisoning, and electrocution by high wires also threatened the eagles's urvival. The United States government began protecting it in 1940 but the pesticide DDT almost killed the species off completely by weakening the linings on eagles' eggshells.

DDT was banned in 1972, and since the 1980's the population has increased. Illegal hunting remains the most fatal threat to American Bald Eagles. Many of the primates's species are used as laboratory animals. The Cotton-Topped Tamarin or the squirrel monkey are two types of the primate specie that is used for laboratory experiments. At the rate we are going with using these species as laboratory animals, they will become extinct soon. Scientists need to find a substitute for these animals.

Anything they use will become extinct soon if they keep using it to conduct experiments but if they used a variety of animals or plants, it would slow down the rate at which these primates are becoming extinct. There are five species of the rhinoceros. There is the African white, Indian, African black, Javan, and the Sumatran. There are many legends about these animals. People believe that chewing rhinoceros meat is said to cure dysentery; the umbilical stump is boiled to make a soup that heals rheumatism and arthritis; a rhinoceros horn is valued throughout Asia as an aphrodisiac, a poison detector and a remedy for the stomach ailments and the flu. Because of all these legends the rhinoceros is on high demand in the market.

Hunters capture and kill the rhinoceros just for their horn. This illegal poaching has caused the species to go down drastically in number. There are barely two thousand animals left in the wild. The rhinoceros is also threatened by habitat fragmentation, which is when the contiguous habitats can be fragmented resulting in a new landscape that differs substantially in a number of ways from the old landscape. The Javanese Wattled Lapwing once lived in Sumatra, Java and possibly even in Timor. As the population of human increased, lowlands were cultivated, and the birds' homes were destroyed.

This bird is characterized as endangered although the last sighting of this bird was in East Java in 1939 and it is doubtful that this species has survived. The New Zealand wren family consists of four species, which are all endangered or extinct. None of the species of this bird can fly. They spend their day hopping about between bushes and shrubs. Since they cannot fly, this makes them easy for prey by the predators. The bush wren is still thought to survive in the rugged territory of Ford land.

The Sumatran Hare was so shy that the local people of its homeland, West Sumatra, did not even know that they existed. Dutch settlers caught these hares all the time, though, on their coffee plantations. The last specimen was caught in December 1929. These animals were thought to be extinct until there were picture of some taken in 1998. This species is thought to still survive but their future looks bleak because of the rate of deforestation of their habitat. Solenodons were always rare and presumed extinct until the twentieth century when two species were discovered.

They are now protected in forest reserves, but they are still threatened by dogs, cats, and mongooses. They have a low birthrate, which makes the population particularly vulnerable. The Green Sea Turtle was common in shallow areas of the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans. Sea Turtles can be kept alive for weeks and not need a refrigerator and still provide good fresh meat. Hunter wanted turtle oil to make cosmetics and the turtle skin for the leather trade.

The female turtles would be flipped up side down and slaughtered before they could lay their eggs, so this affected the population because the turtles could not lay eggs in order to increase the population. There are now conservational efforts to protect the Green Sea Turtle such as there is a strict control of the trade in sea turtle products, the protection of nesting beaches and the establishment on hatcheries. Birding Butterflies are highly prized by collectors and many of these species can only be seen in museums and collector's cabinets. The law protects these butterflies but the destruction on the rain forest, which is their home, is still a threat to them. Habitat destruction continues to threaten the species of the Aye-Aye. In some areas the aye-aye is an omen of disaster and they will kill it on sight.

Some even think that if an aye-aye points its long, bony middle finger at someone, then that person will die a swift, unpleasant death. The Coquerel's Sif aka is threatened by forest destruction and is now restricted almost entirely to Ankarafantsike and Bora nature reserves in northwestern Madagascar. All these animals can be prevented from becoming extinct but it is all up to us humans. As you can see we are the primary reason for most of these species extinction or endangerment. If we stop destroying their homes, making it a competition of whom can kill the most of what animals, and just stop polluting our earth. It's not just the animals' earth; it is our earth too.

If we keep polluting it and killing off all the animals in it, then pretty soon we are going to end up killing off ourselves. We need the animals. We need them for food, to help us with labor, companionship and to keep the biodiversity on the earth. There are all ready plenty of reservation parks that are trying to help preserve and save our endangered animals. These reservation parks protect the animals.

They do not allow for hunters to hunt them, and they provide for them. They have food to eat, shelter, and everything that they would normally have in their own habitat that humans are taking away from them. By staying in these parks, they are able to increase their population. Everybody can help with saving our endangered animals.

We can stop destroying their homes, and polluting our earth. If anything we can help by giving donations to parks that are trying to preserve and save the endangered animals. You can either give money or volunteer your time and help the extinction of species because one day, it might be us humans becoming extinct. That is what will happen if we do not keep other species from becoming extinct. We will eventually, but there is no need to speed the progress up.