The world is currently facing many inescapable truths, undergoing an array of immense quandaries. Animal extinction is one among the prominent crises. What this calamity has in common with others is that it is a consequence that is derived from the actions and implications of the human race.
Animal extinction is a crisis that should act as an incentive for people to implement change and lend a helping hand. Conversely, demands like this have a tendency to generate fear, a factor in which people may turn a cold shoulder to. The predisposition to disregard global tragedies can be most notably recognized with the world’s stance on environmental crises like global warming where action has appeared to be either absent or progressing at a trickling rate. Animals need a voice more than ever to communicate what they cannot: help us save our fleeting species before it is too late.
There is a substantial and imbalanced difference between human rights and animal rights. Humans have a luxurious ability that animals lack: a voice used to protect and preserve their right to live. This key difference is apparent in the overpopulating number of humans in comparison to the diminishing number of animal species.
It has been distinguished through research that the current cause of 99 percent of current species in which are threatened or endangered are due to causes directly linked to human actions such as, industrial growth and progress, human population, increasing habitat loss, deforestation, poaching, and climate change.
Habitat loss is the most fretful cause of animal extinction. Animal’s environments like the rainforest are subject to destruction for production demands such as wood, petroleum resources, mineral resources, cash crop plantations and substance farming. These demands leave animals of the rainforest homeless and without food sources. Arguing that destroying the rainforest for means of production can be an implausible argument to make, as immense means of substitution such as hemp exist, that do not put the lives of endangered and threatened animals at risk.
If preserving wildlife habitats may not act as a motivation for people to get involved to defend animal rights, perhaps relating the negative effects habitat change has on the human race may provoke change. Habitat change has a depleting and damaging effect on all aspects of the ecosystem, which will undeniably have a diminishing effect on the quality of life for the human race.
Driving animal species to extinction is also poaching and wildlife trade. Progress has been made however to counteract animal trade and poaching by establishing animal reservations and restricting international trade of endangered species. Although efficient methods have effectively halted sectors of the problem, contesting avenues have been designed for poachers and illegal traders to further continue their activity. Drug trade and international wildlife trade have been notably associated as it provides an interchanging avenue for business. Smuggling drugs and importing animal fur, body parts and meat trade are both horrific and disturbing illegal activities that now go hand in hand with one another.
Endangered and threatened animals also face the risks that global warming presents. Studies have predicted that global warming is to put at least 20-30 percent of plant and animal species in a likelihood of extinction, and in more fretful circumstances, 40-70 percent. The human-derived dangers of global warming are affecting animals around the world, giving species death sentences for malicious environmental crimes they didn’t committee. Arctic animals such as Polar Bears and Penguins, Sumatran Orangutans, Blue-throated macaw of the rainforest, Black Rhinos and Dama Gazelles of Africa, are just a few animals from the overabundant endangered, threatened and vulnerable species list that are showing signs of disappearing.
Radial action needs to be taken, and it just may be the responsibility of the human race to restore nature for wildlife species by becoming the voice of motivation to fight against animal extinction. By shedding light on the avenues of animal rights activism, conservations and protecting and restoring habitats are all active ways to become enlightened, and get directly and personally involved to protect animal species. Volunteering, donating and promoting global animal foundations like World Wildlife Fund and The Wildlife Act Conservation are also among the many methods in which have the ability to produce positive growth and change for animal species.
It should be understood that much work remains to protect endangered and threatened animal species, but it is also equally important to acknowledge the remarkable accomplishments that have been made to preserve and protect threatened species. Not all shoulders have been turned to the global crisis of animal extinction. In fact, the active involvement and investment of many in defending animal rights has proven to be miraculous. For the first time in a century, tiger numbers have substantially raised. Also, green sea turtles of Florida and Mexico and Manatees are no longer endangered. This news is groundbreaking for animal protection agencies and conservations groups globally. Not everything is impossible, and with this notion, the threat posed to threatened and endangered species is not something that will be liberated just yet. The threat all species face is something that time and history has shown to be a continuing possibility.
The sense of entitlement that humans have gained from being at the top of the food chain has generated a tendency to neglect and disregard the importance of the basic rights of others. For animals, their right to live has been disregarded. Does the prerogative of being at the top really give humans the authority to have more vitality of life over others? Compassion and sympathy are characteristic of the human race which we all share, and animal extinction and endangerment is a crisis that needs the reflections of caring nature to be shown.
