Hello steemians!! Hope everybody is feeling good, my topic of choice for today is EXTINCTION, extinction is a problem gradually eroding our wildlife and it's rising at quite an alarmingly rate and if we don't find a solution to it we will as they say be left with eggs on our faces.
Extinction can simply be defined as the annihilation of animals or plants from existence. Over the course of history extinction has always taken its simple natural selection, the weak die and the strong survive, but nowadays due to human activities it's has increased more than what nature designed and it's becoming major problem as its beginning to affect our way of life.
Categories of conservation
Extinct: Extinct (EX),Extinct in the Wild (EW).
Threatened: Critically Endangered (CR),Endangered (EN),Vulnerable (VU).
Lower Risk: Near Threatened (NT),Conservation Dependent(CD),Least concern(LC)
image source Bone formation of various extinct dinosaurs
CAUSES OF EXTINCTION
- Climate heating and cooling, the alternate heating and cooling of the atmosphere sometimes have adverse effects on wildlife and plant.
- Climate change, climate change due to anthropogenic factors have accelerated the rate of extinction since the beginning of the industrial age.
- Changes in sea levels and sea currents
- Diseases
- Extinction by poaching from human hunters
- Habitat deterioration and invasion by humans
- Acid precipitation (rain), poisonous chemicals like sulphur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide gets absorbed by the droplets of water and after condensation has taken place it comes down in this form.
- Asteroid and meteor shower, foreign satellites from outer space has being the cause of one of the major extinction cases ever to happen on this planet( the complete extinction of dinosaurs were caused by a meteor shower)
image source The dodo bird is an example of extinction caused by humans, this bird was mercilessly hunted down. now days we can only see coloured paintings of it as seen above
Examples of extinct animals: Tasmania tiger, dodo bird, west African black rhinoceros, Caribbean monk seal, seal mink, these animals all went to extinction due to human activities.
EFECTS OF EXTINCTION
- Loss of biodiversity
- Disruption in the food chain causing further extinction
- Loss of food sources for both humans and animals
- Loss of medicinal crops and roots needed for making of medicines
- Gradual decreasing quality of life.
WAYS OF CONTROLLING EXTINCTION
- Creating awareness is the first and most important step
- Cleaning up our atmosphere and reducing our carbon footprint
- Stopping the amount of hunting for endangered animals for examples tigers
- Reduce deforestation and habitat encroachment
- Enforcement of animal protection laws by thoroughly punishing offenders
- Stopping the buying and selling of products derived from endangered species.
In conclusion extinction is something that takes place all around us, we can fold our hands and pretend that it isn't happening but pretense won't make the problem go away , solving the problem starts from you and me If we spread the word mass extinction will be a thing only written in the history books
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