According to the World Watch report, a quarter of the mammal species are in danger of extinction. The large mammals will go away first, due to the disappearance of their breeding grounds
Environment and poverty/Dr. Assaf Rosenthal, special for the Hidan website
On the twenty-second of May, the "International Day for the Preservation of Biodiversity" was observed around the world, a day in which the importance of preserving the biological diversity - animals, plants, on our planet for the possibility of future life is emphasized.
At the same time, various bodies publish surveys and studies that come to show on the one hand how important it is to protect the environment, and on the other hand different opinions on the connection between natural causes and poverty. At the head of the publications is a report by a body affiliated to the United Nations called EWH - the health of the natural and human environment, a report based on the collection of data by many researchers in the last five years, and addressed mainly to "policy makers" with the aim of alerting the need for a fundamental change in the governments' approach to the issue of the relationship between a healthy environment and a healthy human population.
According to the report, the loss of the diversity of life is a direct threat to humanity, since if this loss also disappears the "environmental services" such as water filtration by lakes and swamps, medicinal plants and sources of medicines from marine animals, absorption of carbon dioxide by forests, a source Contemporary and future for building, clothing as well as "bathrooms" that we are not aware of and that are only discovered in disasters, or after extensive research.
According to the report, there is a direct and positive relationship between a healthy environment and a healthy human population, that is, where the environment and its resources are preserved, it will be easier to improve the living conditions of its inhabitants in the present and a greater chance for the future. A survey that preceded the writing of the report shows that: organisms - animals and plants , are becoming extinct today at a speed that is a thousand times faster than what can be seen in historical extinctions according to fossils, when in the last fifty years it is possible to notice the severe and comprehensive damage More than half of the world's forests have been converted to human use and destroyed in the process.
Thirty-five percent of the mangrove forests and twenty percent of the corals, it will be said in a framed article that if the natural mangrove forests on the coasts of Thailand, Indonesia, India and other islands had not been destroyed, they would have been used as protection from the damage of the last tsunami.
According to computer simulations, the extinction will increase and at the end of the century it will be ten thousand times more than the data obtained by the study of fossils, that is, the extinction by human hands will approach the dimensions of the largest extinctions in the geological ages, but already today, due to the intrusion of invasive species, the world's population is becoming more uniform, a uniformity that harms the chances the environment to meet changing conditions.
At the same time, a survey is published, the results of which are known, but its publication once again illuminates the "absurd" situation that exists, on the one hand, personal consumption in the developed countries is increasing, while the "developed" countries have recently been joined by India and China, where there is a continuous and sharp increase in personal consumption. An increase in current consumption means more electricity, more cars, more industrial plants, more pollution! But more than that, the immediate proposal of an increase in consumption and the standard of living is an injury to the natural environment and the quality of life as the extraction of natural resources increases without return, i.e. depletion of resources.
Oil consumption in China increased last year by 11%. The consumption of metals in China increased by thirty percent. The increase in demand within five years in China parallels the increase in Europe, Russia, South and North America in the last century, the immediate result - six hundred thousand deaths per year as a direct result of air pollution. But the biggest polluter is still the "superpower" USA, when less than five percent of the human population consumes more than twenty percent of the world's resources and produces more than a quarter of the greenhouse gases, when in the same USA the minimum daily wage is equal to the monthly income of more than half of the world's population living on Less than a dollar a day when the same consumer and polluter does not join the Kyoto Convention, the picture is difficult, disturbing and scary, but clear.
In the year of the millennium, a special body was established in the United Nations whose mission definition is to reduce the level of poverty and the number of the poor in the world by fifty percent to two thousand and fifteen" with the help of volunteer bodies and organizations and the help of the rich countries that will enable development in poverty-stricken countries and regions, the development of access to clean water, the development of systems Health, development of accessibility to sources of livelihood, all under the slogan "sustainable development" meaning without harming the environment and taking into account the needs of the generations the future ones. The development should be careful and considerate since it is populations that are considered to need support that are more dependent on their natural environment such as the natives in the Amazon forests, the Pygmies in Central Africa, the Bushmen in the Daraf, the Inuit in Alaska, the inhabitants of the isolated islands in the Indian Ocean, and more.
The need to protect the environment with the recognition and understanding that a healthy environment is an essential place for human society leads to debate and disagreement between bodies that are supposed to act together since they don't always manage to connect goals that are supposed to be similar and mutual.
There are many examples. In industrialized Europe, they are moving to create clean energy mainly by building facilities to generate electricity from the wind, in many cases the Green Hams shout that the facilities "harm the landscape, change the skyline and may harm the birds" to try to study the period in which the mammoths became extinct and the role of human hunters in the destruction of the giant mammals, also with the intention of helping the effort the world to stop the warming. The entrepreneurs intend to populate a large area in Siberia with large mammals: Yucatan horses, reindeer, bison, musk sheep, as well as small mammals: rabbits, marmots, ground squirrels, following the vegetarians, predators will be imported: foxes, wolves, tigers, and tigers. After the area is populated, it will be possible to see how it changes , which is difficult to learn from fossil research. Opponents of the project claim that it is possible that following the revival of Today most of the area is "perma-frost", which means that most of the year the ground is frozen and as a result of the warming that will cause thawing and the growth of the grassy areas, an accelerated activity of bacteria will arise. that they convert the carbon in the ground into carbon dioxide, which is a greenhouse gas, since the frozen ground contains higher amounts of carbon than the forests absorb, the area will "contribute" to global warming in Canada They are working in accordance with the Kyoto Convention and are planning dozens of dams on streams and rivers, dams that will create waterfalls to generate electricity, the green claim Because some of the planned dams will cause the final disappearance of one of the fish giants In Canada: river sturgeon.
In order to understand the "conflict" between the Millennium Goal of eliminating poverty and the need to protect the environment, one must examine the development needs in poor and backward areas: to provide health services and clean drinking water to remote populations, access roads are needed, opening roads in the Amazon rainforests allows access Not only for well diggers and doctors, the roads will be used by loggers, hunters and farmers who will damage the forest, The same in Africa, in order to reach weak populations, they will open ways that will serve the poachers and forest destroyers of all kinds.
Since in both cases the populations they want to help raise animals from the natural environment - the forest around them, their reward from the accessibility possibilities came out at their loss. The problem is acute, since the way to realize the "thousand goal" must be found with the understanding that the realization should be without damage to the natural environment, meaning again, open and sustainable.
The rhinos, elephants and apes will be extinct by the end of the century
News and voila! Zafir Rinat, Haaretz
Most of the area that constitutes the habitat of great apes is not within nature reserves * Less than 15% of the habitat of tigers and lions is within reserves The population of the black rhinoceros in Africa shrank by 96% between 1992-1970 as a result of hunting
The 21st century will probably be remembered as the century in which man caused the final extinction of the large mammals that live on Earth, led by the big cats, great apes, rhinoceroses and elephants. This is according to the conclusions of the annual report of the American World Watch Institute published this month. According to the report, many of these species are already in real danger of extinction.
The report published by the institute is called Vital Signs and it includes information from around the world on environmental, economic and social aspects. According to the report, a quarter of the mammal species are currently in danger of extinction. Within five decades, animals like chimpanzees may disappear completely from the wild, remaining only in zoos or fenced reserves.
Based on a rich variety of scientific publications and data from the World Conservation Organization, the American Institute claims that man has completely or partially destroyed the habitats of many animals. This, as a result of construction, road construction, deforestation and the construction of dams that stopped the flow of rivers. In addition, hunting of wild animals still continues on a large scale, and the invasion of foreign species brought by man to different areas results in the suppression of local species.
The large mammals need habitats in a large area and are therefore the main victims of human activity. A striking example of this are the black and white rhinoceros, which once lived across large areas in Africa. Today, 80% of the rhinos live in South Africa, after they were almost completely exterminated in the other countries on the continent. The population of the black rhinoceros in Africa shrank by 96% between 1992-1970 as a result of poaching.
In China, panda bears and tigers can only be found in 24 mountainous areas, and even in these areas they are surrounded by villages, roads and agricultural areas. Both mammals have been pushed into areas too small for long-term existence and the chances of their survival seem small.
According to the definitions of the International Organization for Nature Conservation, about half of the cat species in the world are in danger of extinction, as well as half of the bear species. In addition, four of the five species of rhinoceros, the two species of elephants and the species of apes - gorilla, chimpanzee and orangutan - which are the closest animals to the human race, are at risk. Most of the area that constitutes the habitat of these species is not within nature reserves. Less than 15% of the habitat of tigers and lions is inside reserves.
AdvertisementAnother example of the plight of large mammals can be found in a report by the newspaper "Orlando Sentinel", which is published in the state of Florida in the USA. A few months ago, the newspaper reported on an increase in the number of bears that die as a result of collisions with vehicles. The reason for this is the widespread expansion of settlements and roads that reduced the ability The movement of the bears and their possibility to avoid crossing the roads.
If there is not an effective and effective policy of preventing poaching, especially in developing countries, and a significant expansion of the habitat areas where wild animals are protected, the new report predicts that the situation of the large mammals will only get worse and worse. One of the report's recommendations is to involve the local population in the protection of reserves and share it with economic profits from tourism, so that residents have an incentive to protect the large mammals instead of hunting them.
A fifth of the Amazon rainforest has been cut down
New data published by the Brazilian government indicates that the rainforests in the Amazon are being destroyed at a record pace. The Ministry of the Environment there reported that 26 square kilometers of forest were cut down in the 12 months preceding August 2004. The BBC reported that deforestation was particularly severe in the state of Mato Grosso, where huge areas were cleared for agricultural crops.
The summary of the data shows that a fifth of all the rain forests have been cut down and are no longer there. In the state of Mato Grosso, it is about half of the area, which was replaced by soy crops. The export of Brazilian soybeans, mainly to China and Europe, caused Brazil to strengthen investments in the cultivation of the plant, which was perceived as more important than the quality of the environment.
In an official statement, the "Greenpeace" organization called the governor of Mato Grosso "the king of deforestation". The governor is himself one of the largest soy producers in the world.
In response to the data, the Brazilian government announced that it had increased satellite surveillance of the threatened areas, and created some of the largest nature reserves in the world. However, environmental experts fear that the shrinking of the Amazon forests will increase the dose of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, especially in light of the mass burning of the felled trees.
